One of the most iconic of all monster movie images is most certainly Universal Pictures' Creature from the Black Lagoon as depicted by numerous actors in the film of the same name.  Although Universal's previous monsters - The Frankenstein Monster, Dracula, The Wolf Man and The Mummy - all had their genesis in the world of literature, the Gill Man, as the Creature is alternatively known as, is largely a cinematic concoction, and his story is no doubt patterned after the King himself, Kong.  While the similarities between the largest inhabitant of Skull Island and the Creature are undeniable, the method of bringing these two nightmare-inducing monsters to the screen is not.  While the former was a combination of stop-motion animation and large-scale mechanics, the latter is the cinema's first depiction of a monster in a beautifully-designed, full-body suit inhabited by an actor, most notably swimmer Ricou Browning in the underwater scenes of not only the original film but of its two sequels.

In 1954, Dragon Books in the United Kingdom published the novelization, or movie "tie-in," of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), written by John Russell Fearn under the pseudonym of Vargo Statten.  It featured colorful cover art by artist John Richards and is very rare, commanding between $1K and $6K dollars depending upon its condition.  Now, Dream Haven Books has reprinted this tie-in here in the United States with a beautiful cover by Bob Eggleton.  What you will find in this new pressing, in addition to the novelization, is an excellent introduction by David J. Schow, himself a CREATURE historian, which provides not only a valuable look into the making of the film, but also the procedures that were in place at Universal Pictures and the team of artists who were tasked with designing, creating and building a suit that would look like a living, breathing being, under the supervision of make-up head Bud Westmore.  The more that I read about this, the more I wished that CREATURE had been filmed in color; unfortunately, Universal wouldn't spend the additional $100K required to do that.  This is a shame as the Gill Man is a truly beautiful creation.  

Mr. Schow also illustrates the finer points of writing a movie tie-in, and how authors of such materials were generally hired on a contractual, per-project basis, and were based upon drafts of the script that were often changed later on thereby making the novelization radically different than its usually far superior cinematic counterpart.  Such books were produced within a quick timeframe, and one can only imagine the possibilities today of utilizing a dictation software package to bang out a few of these books on a laptop in a matter of months, technology only dreamed of fifty years ago.

The novelization of CREATURE goes a few steps further than the film by not only introducing further dialog into the mix to pad out the story and flesh out the characters, but also brings the reader inside the Gill Man's head and gets inside his thoughts, especially in his captivation of Kay Lawrence, portrayed in the film by Julie Adams, and his desire to win her over.   There are also 57 beautiful behind-the-scenes shots of the making of the film, and as a bonus each of the book's nine chapters is prefaced with a publicity still. 

The book is rounded out with a terrific afterward of author Fearn, written by Philip Harbottle, chronicling Fearn's early life in the cotton business, which he abandoned after two years to pursue writing, and his stint as a motion picture theatre projectionist. 

This is a must-have for CREATURE fans, and is highly recommended for horror fans who want to broaden their knowledge of this fascinating progenitor of many subsequent man-in-the-suit horrors, Dan O'Bannon's titular ALIEN being the most obvious and arguably the most frightening in the cinema. 

Click here to order from Dream Haven.