68
Metascore
11 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 88LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenLarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenIn so many monster movies, the pieces show. This creature is seamless.
- 80EmpireKim NewmanEmpireKim NewmanA classic horror that warms the heart and wets the pants.
- 75Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneSlant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneA much more antic, exploitative experience than the Frankenstein/Wolfman/Mummy/Dracula pictures it stands alongside, Creature from the Black Lagoon perfectly typifies the transition from older, more European horror styles into bloodthirsty schlock and ever-cheaper thrills.
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineImbued with great atmosphere by director Jack Arnold, the film is genuinely frightening, but also elicits a certain amount of pathos for the creature, reminiscent of that that goes out to the unfortunate King Kong.
- 75Chicago TribuneMichael WilmingtonChicago TribuneMichael WilmingtonThis Universal sci-fi saga has little of the style or atmosphere of the studio's '30s horror classics; its stars are amiable Richard Carlson and Julia Adams. But it does have a unique monster: the Amazonian gill man, a lovelorn amphibian who spots Adams underwater and doesn't stop swimming after her until the very last minute. [30 Oct 1998, p.I]
- A good piece of science-fiction of the beauty and the beast school, the beast in this case being a monstrous combination of man and fish. It makes for solid horror-thrill entertainment.
- 70Time OutTime OutThe routine story - members of a scientific expedition exploring the Amazon discover and are menaced by an amphibious gill man - is mightily improved by Arnold's sure sense of atmospheric locations and by the often sympathetic portrait of the monster.
- 63Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrArchetypal 50s science fiction—light on brains and heavy on sexual innuendo (1954). But director Jack Arnold has a flair for this sort of thing, and if there really is anything frightening about a man dressed up in a rubber suit with zippers where the gills ought to be, Arnold comes close to finding it.
- 50The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelLow-grade horror.
- It's a fishing expedition that is necessary only if a viewer has lost all of his comic books.