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Creature from the Black Lagoon, the classic 1954 Jack Arnold Universal 3-D (3D; 3-Dimension) science fiction (sci-fi) monster horror thriller ("Sheer, stark terror grips you in underwater... 3-D"; "Terrifying monster of the ages raging with pent-up passions! ...with every man his mortal enemy ...and a woman's beauty his prey!"; "Centuries of passion pent up in his savage heart!"; "Amazing! Startling! Shocking!"; "Monster from a million years ago!"; "Clawing Monster From A Lost Age strikes from the Amazon's forbidden depths!"; "Thrills beyond compare in... 3D") starring Richard Carlson, Julie Adams (billed as "Julia Adams"), Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Paiva, Whit Bissell, Ricou Browning (who played the Gill Man underwater), Ben Chapman (who played the Gill Man on land), and Bernie Gozier. Note that the inspiration for this movie began when William Alland (the producer of this movie) was playing an acting role in "Citizen Kane", and he learned of a myth about half-man half-fish creatures in the Amazon. He wrote notes for a story called "The Sea Monster" in 1951, combining the above myth with the "Beauty and the Beast" story. In December 1952, a 59-page treatment called "Black Lagoon" was written by Maurice Zimm and Leo Lieberman wrote a script based on that treatment in early 1953, but Universal turned it down. After this script was written, a new script was written by Arthur Ross and Harry Essex, and that was the script that was used for the movie as filmed, and the last great Universal monster was created! Finally, note that the wonderful creature costume was created by a woman named Milicent Patrick, who you probably never heard of, but she deserves to be well remembered. She was a top pianist as a young girl, and she graduated from high school at 14. She went to work for Disney as an artist in the animation department in the late 1940s, and she was the first female hired by Disney in that capacity. In 1954, she designed the classic creature costume used in this movie, but the head of the makeup department did all he could do to keep her from getting proper credit, and as a result, she left Universal. It is said that she also created some of the well known costumes in other Universal horror and sci-fi movies preceding this, but there is no clear record as to which ones (but some great monsters of this time, including the ones in "This Island Earth", seem to be unmistakably her design). She turned to acting, appearing in a few movies and on TV, but she pretty much vanished in the early 1960s. She passed away in 1998 at the age of 82. She certainly deserves massive credit for her contributions to this movie and other great 1950s monster movies, but that may never happen.
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Artist: Bos

Important Added Info: Note that we have mistakenly previously sold this poster as a 1962 re-release but have since been told by several French and Belgian poster experts that it IS a Belgian first release! We made this mistake because there are many French 1962 re-release posters from Creature From the Black Lagoon that are mistakenly sold as original, but are actually from the first French re-release in 1962. This poster has similar art to that French re-release poster, but we have spoken with top French and Belgian poster experts, and they feel that this Belgian poster definitely dates from the first Belgian release of this movie in 1954, when it was intended to be shown in 3-D (the word "Relief", which means 3-D, would only have been on a poster printed in 1954), because after that the movie was not intended to be shown in 3-D. They say that the reason this poster has a similar image and design to that of the French 1962 re-release poster, is because the French designer in 1962 likely was inspired by this Belgian poster (or by the 1954 U.S. poster). We have seen two different versions of this poster that are virtually identical (including the "relief" at the bottom), but one of the posters has the Universal logo in black, and one has it in blue, but we believe both posters are original 1954 releases (there were likely two different print runs at that time, but it is impossible to know which one came first). Also note that this movie was originally intended to be in 3-D. The studios created both 3D posters and 2D posters (the 2-D posters were for theaters that lacked the 3-D equipment). This poster is from the "3-D" release (in Belgium and France, the word "relief" was used to designate 3-D).

UPDATED 09/14/2011: Note that we have mistakenly sold this poster as a 1962 re-release in the past but have since been told by French and Belgian poster experts that it IS a Belgian first release! However, we mistakenly listed it as a re-release this time as well. We have corrected this auction to show that the poster is from the Belgian first release and updated the Important Added Info section above.

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