October...Day Sixteen...

Hi there,

Last night I decided to override the calls for animated Halloween fare for a classic monster movie that I knew none of my kids had watched. The 1954 Universal Pictures classic Creature from the Black Lagoon.

As a kid this movie made a huge impact on me as it was the first 3D movie I had ever watched. Growing up in San Carlos, CA was pretty cool.  We had a great theater, The Laurel, that played a whole array of cool movies. I saw so many classics there, but Creature from the Black Lagoon is WAY up there on the list due to the new 3D experience it offered this monster kid.

Normally I'll check Common Sense Media (here) before I put a movie on as my recollection of movies can sometimes be FAR different than the reality of what I'm putting on. In this case, I didn't because I wanted to get the show started. I checked today and saw that the movie isn't rated there so...

OK...the movie is classic and even when my 11 year old balked at a "black and white movie" it didn't take long for her to get into it. My 6 year old was entranced from the start. All of the aquarium scenes and the overall vibe made it an easy "monster movie" to watch with them. My wife even watched some of it and seemed to like it. They are all swimmers and the movie has a lot of swimming in it. It was funny...every time they called the Creature "Gill Man" I'd think of "The Gilman" in Berkeley...

There was one moment in the movie that bummed my 6 year old out and he talked about it again today, but overall he said he thought the movie was cool and he liked the Creature. We talked about the "dog scene" and the fact that the dog was probably faking being dead...

My band, Rain Station, wrote a song about the Creature...check it out...

Hope you and yours are getting to watch a little bit of Halloweenie cinema this month.

Happy Haunting,

Mark Harvey