Tales from Development Hell: John Carpenter’s Creature from the Black Lagoon
- cepmurphywrites
- 3 hours ago
- 9 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
In many respects, the monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s from Universal were the first film franchise as we understand them today. A stable of characters, sequels, spin-offs, crossovers, later a ton of merchandise. Despite many attempts by Universal since their heyday however, most attempts to revive their Classic Monsters in film have been a failure to varying degrees. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, and more have all been remade by Universal, sometimes multiple times, since the 1970s. Even the biggest exception, The Mummy (1999) and its sequels, largely succeeded because it moved mostly away from its horror roots.
There is one Universal Classic Monster that has yet to be remade, despite numerous attempts at it with some major names attached. It is the last addition to the stable of Classic Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) stands apart from the rest of the Universal Monsters. It came after the heyday of the rest of the series, almost more akin to contemporary sci-fi horrors of the 1950s than the Gothic predecessors. Unlike most 1950s sci-fi horrors, however, sequels soon followed, and the Gill-Man had soon joined the pantheon of Universal Monsters.
The earliest attempt in earnest to remake Creature dates to the early 1980s. At the time, Universal were looking to mine their back catalogue for remakes (they were really ahead of the curve on this), from which John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) was one result. Creature was especially enticing over the other Universal Monsters because with their origins in Victorian literature, other filmmakers have always been free to do their own adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein. The Gill-Man was one of the few owned outright by the company.
This project to remake Creature was spearheaded by John Landis, fresh off An American Werewolf in London (1981). Landis brought aboard Manx screenwriter Nigel Kneale to pen the script. Kneale’s script would have featured two monsters, one gentle in nature and one violent, who end up in conflict with the US Navy. Landis did not intend to direct the film himself, but rather bring aboard original director Jack Arnold, by then directing solely on television, especially The Love Boat, and film it in 3D as a throwback to its 1950s origins. It would be the insistence on filming in 3D that would stop this project from moving ahead.
The early 1980s saw a revival in 3D brought about by the rise of home video. Much like 3D how in the 1950s was in response to the arrival of television, and in the 2010s a response to on-demand streaming, Hollywood trots out the gimmick whenever they seem to be in trouble. Since sequels were a more accepted part of Hollywood by the 1980s there was a nice alignment of second sequels to successful films that could use 3D as a gimmick: Friday the 13th Part III: 3D (1982), Amityville 3-D (1983), and, most relevant to Landis’s Creature project, Jaws 3-D (1983). Universal seemed to think that a 3D release of Creature would distract attention away from Jaws 3-D, eventually released to largely negative reviews.
By the time that possibility had passed the brief flirtation with 3D had also passed, so the Landis/Kneale project ground to a halt. The idea never went away, however. Joe Dante and Michael Finnel, director and producer, respectively, of both The Howling (1981) and Gremlins (1984), were linked at one point but this did not even get as far as the Landis project. That would be it until the 1990s, when John Carpenter, whose brief time as a studio director stuttered after The Thing was slaughtered by Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) at the box office, was linked to the project.
Much like a decade prior, Carpenter was encouraged to look through Universal’s back catalogue and see if there was anything he fancied. Creature from the Black Lagoon was his first thought. Kneale’s script was rewritten by Carpenter, abandoning the notion of filming in 3D and updating it for the interceding decade. Carpenter and Kneale had previously worked together on Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), to which the latter asked for his name to be removed when he disliked some changes Carpenter made to his script. This is probably why a collaboration was out of the question, though as a fan of Kneale, Carpenter was well-placed to translate his ideas as he had done on Prince of Darkness (1987), heavily inspired by Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit (1958) and The Stone Tape (1972), for which Carpenter adopted the pseudonym ‘Martin Quatermass’ for his work on the screenplay.
Carpenter’s screenplay sought to retain the best aspects of both the original script by Harry Essex and Arthur Ross, as well as Kneale’s earlier attempt at a remake. Carpenter also added elements drawn from the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
Who killed John Carpenter’s Creature from the Black Lagoon? The answer is easy and direct: it was Chevy Chase.
Before he got a chance to make Creature, Carpenter made Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) starring Chase. Memoirs was based off H. F. Saint’s 1987 novel, which updated H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (1897) to Reagan’s America. It started out with a screenplay by William Goldman to be directed by Ivan Reitman. The latter saw it as another special effects heavy, high concept comedy like his earlier success Ghostbusters (1984). Chase, however, wanted a serious, melancholic drama. The constant clashes led to both Reitman and Goldman, the latter of whom saying he’s “too old and too rich to deal with this shit”, leaving the project. Carpenter tried to pick up the pieces left, and saw the film through to completion, but the experience was such that Carpenter even considered quitting the business after it.
Memoirs was a massive disappointment, despite starring Chase and Daryl Hannah. It grossed under $15m from a $30-40m budget and was slated by almost all critics. What little praise there was for the film was usually directed at the effects. Universal cooled considerably on Carpenter’s approach to Creature, despite lots of preproduction work already being completed. It eventually fell the way of the prior attempts to remake the film.
Further attempts have been made to remake Creature since then. Peter Jackson was offered the job in 1995, starting from the same script developed by Timothy Harris and Hershel Weingrod for Carpenter. Jackson passed in favour of remaking King Kong (1933), which would eventually come to fruition in 2005. Ivan Reitman was also connected at one point to the same script, but again eventually passed. Stephen Sommers’ action-adventure remake The Mummy (1999) spurred renewed interest. Gary Ross turned in a new draft in 2001, co-written by his father, Arthur A. Ross, one of the screenwriters of the original. Breck Eisner was at one point attached to direct this script, but this version never moved ahead either, delayed first by the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike and then abandoned completely. Both James Gunn and Guillermo del Toro made their own pitches in the 2000s that were turned down. A version simply titled The Black Lagoon was announced in 2012, another was lined up as part of Universal’s Dark Universe was announced but like that whole attempt at a cinematic universe was just talk, and most recently James Wan was in talks as of August 2024.
The idea of remaking Creature from the Black Lagoon has never fully gone away, which perhaps speaks to the impression the original makes on those who see it. As early as Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch (1955), Marilyn Monroe’s character exits a screen of the original and remarks the Gill-Man “just wanted to be loved”. Decades later the scene where Kay Lawrence (Julia Adams) swims in the titular lagoon not realising the Gill-Man swam immediately below her would become a recurring motif in Michelle McNamara’s posthumous true crime bestseller I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (2018) and its television adaptation.
The tale of Milicent Patrick, the original designer of the creature whose role was intentionally downplayed by Bud Westmore, who received sole credit for 50 years, was covered in another nonfiction bestseller: Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady from the Black Lagoon (2019). Del Toro, after being snubbed in the 2000s, made The Shape of Water (2019) inspired by childhood memories of Black Lagoon. It would win both Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards the next year.
Yet Universal have never got their act together on a remake, despite myriad attempts, and in an era where it seems almost every film gets at least one remake.
What if a remake had been successfully made? How would a remake of Creature form the Black Lagoon have fared if any of the attempts to make one had come to fruition and been released?
Speculation on the answer to that question first has to consider which version gets made. For your writer the most enticing of the options, and one which we know a great deal about and whose fate can be easily changed, is John Carpenter’s attempt from the 1990s.
The how of it couldn’t be simpler: some other poor schmuck gets the job of being Chevy Chase’s whipping boy on Memoirs of an Invisible Man. There might still be some hesitation from Universal, who’d still see it as an effects driven ‘monster’ picture that failed horribly, but at least Carpenter would not be associated with it.
We know a lot about what Carpenter’s version of Creature would have involved and who would have penned it. Carpenter wanted to set his version in the contemporary Amazon, where the Gill-Man would be a missing link between man and fish that would draw inspiration from Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936). Bill Phillips, who penned Christine (1983) for Carpenter, was connected before Harris and Weingrod turned in a version. The script would have seen a ragtag group of scientists, environmentalists, and ne’er-do-wells led by a drunkard seeking revenge against the Gill-Man venture into the Amazon, eventually stumbling upon pyramids that seem to indicate Gill-Man is the last of a society of the same. Various members of the expedition would be dispatched in violent ways.
If there is one thing from what we know of Carpenter’s Creature that might have harmed its chances it is that the vision seems to veer tonally from Lovecraft-inspired, gory monster mayhem and a more pulp-style adventure with pyramids and a script from two writers whose major successes had all been comedies like Trading Places (1983). There was even a planned subplot with a creationist character being confronted with a seeming missing link between human and fish. On the other hand, these seeming contrasts that might hinder it with a general audience might create a dedicated following amongst those that do enjoy both ends.
Reading about Carpenter’s planned characters, pyramids, and being stalked in the jungle brings to mind two other 1990s films. The first, Jurassic Park (1993), had recently become the highest grossing film of all time. It is possible some in the studio might have thought they’re getting another version of that just with different monsters – monsters whose copyright Universal holds. Purely speculative, but the notion of the violent and gory spectacle being torn to shreds in the editing room to achieve a PG-13 rating does come to mind. In that scenario, it might still find an audience eventually, likely on home video, with a Director’s Cut becoming an enticing possibility in years to come.
The other, more optimistic comparison is perhaps with The Mummy (1999) which similarly took a Universal Monster and turned it into action-adventure. It managed to become the sixth-highest grossing film of 1999 and spawned a new franchise all of its own. Like Jurassic Park, however, it is nowhere near as violent as Carpenter would probably go. There may be a way for it to find the success, where it is as hard as a PG-13 film can go and mix of horror and adventure finds an audience.
Carpenter’s next project historically, In the Mouth of Madness (1994), which also took heavy inspiration from Lovecraft, probably won’t happen with Creature. However, he may find bigger budgets coming his way. Creature might be finding some success around the same time that Jan de Bont leaves the project that eventually became Godzilla (1998). One of Carpenter’s earliest efforts was an 8mm film titled Gorgo Versus Godzilla, and he has also spoken about his desire to direct Japan’s giant radioactive dinosaur. Hopefully, he might be too busy with that project to make Escape from L.A. (1996). He might also bring Rick Baker onboard to Godzilla, who had already designed the updated Gill-Man for Carpenter’s Creature before the project was cancelled.
Baker’s design for the 1990s creature can be found online, and it certainly looks as much of a Deep One as it does a Gill-Man. It looks fierce enough to tear any American creationist wandering into its pyramid to shreds, yet the eyes give something of the melancholy that audiences picked up on back in 1954.
John Carpenter’s remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon, seemingly a mix of horror, science fiction, and adventure with Rick Baker doing the creature effects, is the film that gives this writer the biggest pang of any film covered in this series.
Beyond personal taste, Carpenter certainly one of this writer’s favourite directors, it seems like the market would have been so ready for the film. Jurassic Park with a bit more horror and a lot more blood. Some of the same elements that made Sommers’ The Mummy such a successful remake. Even if it had been a box office disappointment, the era was such that home video provided a route to vindication in a way that hasn’t been replicated since.We’ll never know.
We’ll never see it. It was never made. All because Chevy Chase imagined he could pull off a serious, dramatic performance about a man who turns invisible.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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