An archaeologist digs up a fossil of a strange clawed and webbed hand in the Amazon jungle and persuades an expedition to return with him to find the rest of the fossil. There's no more! But in exploring the area, the team gradually realizes a living version of the fossil -- a swimming gill-man -- inhabits the waters. While good scientist David Reed (Carlson) tries to find out more about the creature, hard-edged scientist and financier Mark Williams (Denning) just wants to capture it, dead or alive, to wow the folks back home. The creature glimpses Reed's fiancee, Kay Lawrence (Adams, looking mighty terrific in short shorts and a custom-made one-piece swimsuit) and is willing to kill the men around her to get to her. Though portentous and cheesy (the creature's attack music gets pretty irritating, and the characters several times place the Devonian Period at only 150 million years ago), this 1954 horror movie is a classic, partly for a lot of fine underwater footage of scuba diving and Adams's unknowing "water ballet" with the creature beneath her, and partly because the creature's inherent pathos (Kong- and Frankenstein-like) is allowed to show through.
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
