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The Next Picture Show

#117: (Pt. 2) The Shape of Water / The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)

The Next Picture Show

Filmspotting

Tv & Film, Film History, Film Reviews

4.6858 Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2018

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We return to the deep, dark waters of the id to unpack what SHAPE OF WATER director Guillermo Del Toro saw in Jack Arnold’s 1954 horror-sci-fi classic CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON that inspired him to literalize a relationship between a woman and a fish-man. After analyzing the range of reactions we had toward Del Toro’s film and debating whether it is a “snowglobe movie,” we plunge into the connections that link the two films, from the obvious character analogs to their not-so-obvious shared nostalgia. Plus, Your Next Picture Show, where we share recent filmgoing experiences in hopes of putting something new on your cinematic radar. Please share your comments, thoughts, and questions about CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, SHAPE OF WATER, or both by sending an email to comments@nextpictureshow.net, or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730.  Your Next Picture Show:  • Keith: Joe Dante’s MATINEE • Scott: William Wyler’s MRS. MINIVER • Tasha: Agnieszka Smoczynska’s THE LURE Outro Music: Sally Hawkins, “You’ll Never Know” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Sit in quietly once you've made the house all shiny.

0:04.2

Down time can be just fine, playing bangers from the 90s.

0:08.4

Tea break.

0:09.4

Lunch break.

0:10.2

Maybe listen to the outbreak.

0:12.1

Sometimes it's not time for some tombollah, right?

0:15.1

It's enjoying lasagna time, chilling with a book time, or time to visit your nan time.

0:23.8

Go on. Play some other time. visit your nan time go on play some other time put your phone down tombole open for fun terms apply 18 plus gamble aware.org

0:29.3

It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the. You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

0:42.9

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

0:49.2

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film

0:53.3

and the way it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

0:55.6

I'm Tasha Robinson, here again with...

0:57.2

Keith Phipps, Scott Tobias.

0:58.9

We've retrieved Genevieve from her watery grave in the grotto, but she seems to have lost her voice, so she can't join us for this episode.

1:05.3

We're sure she'll be fine, and we'll know when she's back when she breaks out in song, or terrible fish puns. On the first half of this episode, we discussed Jack Arnold's 1954 black and white horror

1:14.4

classic, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the last bastion of the classic Universal

1:18.9

movie monster series, at least until Universal awkwardly tried to revive the franchise in 2017,

1:24.9

with the Tom Cruise version of the mummy. In this episode, we'll look at a more successful revival of the Black Lagoon mythos

1:30.8

in Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, which he designed to play out his childhood fantasies

1:36.0

of a version of the Black Lagoon story where the creature and the girl wind up together.

1:40.2

Here's a quote from a piece about the film in The Hollywood Reporter, where Del Toro talked

...

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