On a recent Sunday morning, I sat down to breakfast with my muffin and the “Parade” magazine. I checked for anything good to watch on tv while I was eating, and I came up with two choices: “How to Boil Water” on the Food Channel and the second half of “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” an old 1954 movie with Richard Carlson, Richard Denning and Julie Adams. “How to Boil Water” would never have held my interest, so I opted for the movie. The characters were on a scientific expedition on an old, decrepit boat on the Amazon River. Their goal was to capture a prehistoric creature with gills that lived underwater – the gillman. The creature was horrible looking with gills all over and really weird eyes. The people on the boat looked like they had just been made up for a party. As I came in during the middle of the movie, I missed out on everything that had already transpired, but I did my best to catch up.

Julie was always in freshly pressed white shorts and starched blouse with her hair looking as if she had just stepped out of a salon. The men wore black swim trunks – no speedos for them - and looked very handsome with perfectly styled hair. Apparently the gillman thought Julie was really hot, and there had been a scene before I tuned in where Julie was swimming in the river – how stupid is that with a gillman on the loose. She was in a one-piece swim suit, looking hot, of course, and the gillman swam right beneath her and even touched her feet. That was a sexually charged scene for those days – I’m sorry I missed it. The gillman killed one of the guys and almost tore the face off of another so that all you saw of him was a bunch of bandages and his eyes jumping around in his head. The gillman finally reached his claw hand up on the boat and grabbed Julie, dragging her down into the depths of the river. They ended up in some cave where I guess he was going to marry her . . . or something. But the guys rescued her and she came out of the water, still in her pressed, white shorts and beautiful hair.

The men sprayed the gillman with Rotenone - a pesticide that my dad used on his fruit trees to kill aphids, I think - to sort of knock him out. Then they shot him with arrows. I saw the gillman sink to the bottom of the river and figured he was dead. I actually felt sorry for him as all he ever wanted was to be alone in that river with his beautiful Julie by his side. But after checking the internet, it looks like he might still be alive. In fact, he returns in 2 more sequels, “Revenge of the Creature” in 1955 and “The Creature Walks Among Us” in 1956. Someday I’ll see the first half of that movie.