Creature from the Black Lagoon

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) is Jack Arnold's classic monster horror, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A geology expedition pushes deep up the Amazon hunting fossils and wakes something that should have stayed buried.

Cut off in a muddy backwater lives the Gill-man, a scaled half-human, half-fish believed to be the last of his kind. The scientists want to bag him for study. He wants Kay, the lead researcher's fiancee. The underwater sequence where the Creature glides beneath her, unseen, is a textbook lesson in silent dread, all rippling water and slow menace.

This is the final great Universal monster of the black-and-white era, and the only one invented from scratch in the 1950s rather than lifted from gothic fiction. They shot it underwater in Florida, and the rubber suit is still rated among the finest creature designs ever built. Guillermo del Toro called it a lifelong love, and you can hear its echo all through The Shape of Water. Cool, patient, charmingly old-fashioned fright. Stream Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) online on iFILM.