- Director: John Sherwood
- Writers: Arthur A. Ross
- Stars: Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason, Leigh Snowden
- Link: https://amzn.to/3cQH9RC
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 18 Minutes
Synopsis
We meet the scientists who are gathering together for an expedition to the Everglades. They’re going after The Creature. The team is led by the wealthy Dr. Barton, who also brings his wife along. Barton’s wife shoots at some sharks.
One of the doctors explains underwater sonar and “fish finders” along the lines of the ones you can get today. They were new at this time period. They arrive in the Everglades, and there are lots of shots of them driving around in the small launch from the big ship they rented. They stop and talk to a man who was injured by the Creature, and he tells them the story of how he was hurt. They look at the blood on the man’s knife, and they verify that it does belong to the Gill man.
Barton, the geneticist, looks at the blood and immediately starts talking about changing the monster. He can be mutated fairly easily. He wants to adapt it for life in outer space, to which man cannot be adapted. Doctor Morgan doesn’t like this at all; it’s not natural. The group puts on their scuba stuff and heads down after the Gill man. We watch the three divers on the sonar until there are suddenly four of them. The Gill man is following them. Marcia starts getting narcosis and acting strangely; the two men with her don’t notice. One of the men catches up to her just as she passes out.
That night, the creature attacks and they set him on fire. Then he knocks them all out of the boat. They shoot it with a sedative, and it finally passes out. His gills are badly burned, and he’s dying. They do a tracheotomy and other surgeries. He might be brain damaged from lack of oxygen, but now he can live on land. Marcia wants to know what’s happening, but she finds herself shut out. There is trouble brewing between Marcia and her husband.
The scientists cut open the bandages and find that the gill-man’s formerly webbed fingers look more like human hands. His scales have been burned away, and humanlike skin lies beneath. They decide to make him wear clothes. He escapes and jumps overboard. With his new human lungs, he gets into trouble immediately and has to be rescued.
They all go to San Francisco. They lock him in a big outdoor cage. They spend a lot of time between Marcia, Morgan, and Barton and the marital situation. Marcia goes swimming, and the Creature watches from his cage. Doctor Grant follows her, and she doesn’t like him. A wildcat comes onto the property and the creature watches it climb a tree. He learns from the cat. He kills the cat when it attacks the sheep in the cage.
That night, Barton kills Grant in a jealous rage. He tries to cover himself by blaming the Gill man. The creature escapes the cage and goes after Barton. There’s a chase through the house, and the Creature wins. He kills Barton and walks out into the woods, heading for the coast.
We see the creature stumble toward the ocean. Will he survive?
Commentary
You can tell how old this film is by counting the number of people smoking cigarettes. These scientists travel in style, that’s quite a boat they took; it had a piano, a lab, and numerous rooms. It was more pleasure yacht than the little fishing boat used in the first two films, but Barton is rich, so why not?
The romance and marriage drama isn’t that interesting, and it detracts heavily from the real story. Every time Barton gets jealous of Grant, the story screeches to a halt. It does, however, distract from the ridiculousness of the rest of the story. I mentioned in my review of the second story about how the freshwater gill man suddenly was able to survive in the ocean. Well, that was nothing compared to him suddenly being mostly human and breathing regular air. There’s no science behind this one at all, and it’s very contrived.