With Halloween season fast approaching, horror movie marathons are a must.  One of the first films screened here was The Creature From the Black Lagoon, the first in a series of three films prominently featuring the Creature.  Knowing what I know about the series as a whole,  re-watching the original this year made me think of it in a different way.  The whole saga of the Creature has some strong parallels with the stories of a great number of Americans.  Let's explore the major plot points of the franchise starting with the 1954 original.


In a far off land, people, animals and "others" go about living comfortably in their habitat until the "civilized" outsider "discovers" an artifact.  Fair enough, but then he returns and brings with him more professionals like him, initially in the name of science.

Once they get word that there is a creature just freely swimming around, greed and the need for notoriety replace science and lead them to a botched kidnapping attempt which ends up destroying the environment.

After a brief setback, the potential for fame and profit is still high so maiming, torturing and capturing the Creature is justifiable.  Because science.

After forcefully bringing the Creature to their country, they put him straight to work while being chained up and depriving him of any dignity.

Eventually, the natives need to make the Creature more like them so he can "acclimate" better. They literally try to make him look like them with surgery, you know for his own good, not because he looks too different.

It's still not enough and he's not what they wanted him to be, he's just too savage, after all they've done "for" him,  There's too much anger in him for some reason so back behind bars he goes.  Large threatening outsiders rehabilitate better after incarceration. 

Soon after, the Creature's story comes to an end in a very tragic way.  If the parallels are not clear at this point, it would be wise to go grab an old American history book, and then a current newspaper.

What a monster.