This holiday season, the Off the Wall Theatre celebrates the holidays with a musical spoof on B horror films--The Creature from the Black, Black Lagoon. Off the Wall's Dale Gutzman also cites Hope and Crosby and Lamour's Road pictures.of the '40s. While it's interesting to fuse the two genres, the central engine running the plot is a spoof on Universal International's The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The 1954 film was a huge success. I watched it again on the bus out to see the show this past Friday night. It's not a terribly good film. There are some decent actors in it and the film has a kind of an immersive feel to it. Millicent Patrick did a really clever job of designing the creature. But very little actually happens over the course of the film's 79 minutes. So it's a really good skeleton for a musical comedy spoof.
While Gutzman doesn't really take full advantage of making a sophisticated spoof on the original film, The Creature from the Black, Black Lagoon is quite a bit of fun. The humor is very rough, lacking in all but the most rudimentary sophistication. But there is little denying that the show has heart--an earnestness at its center that is nothing if not endearing.
The challenge in making fun of B-movies lies in intention. What makes bad movies so fun is that somewhere along the line someone was actually taking the project seriously. And somehow the film became very, very bad in spite of the best efforts of those who believed in it. Deliberately spoofing bad movies by deliberately making a bad stage play (for instance) runs the risk of being to smug about itself. Thankfully, there are a few performances here that feel genuine enough to carry the show.
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Jeremy Welter is charmingly oblivious as Dr. David Reed--marine biologist who has an overwhelming interest in tracking down the creature above all else. Welter pulls the humor in the character straight out of the character's complete lack of common social instinct. He's not heartless--just stupid. And it works.
Mark Hagen puts in a crushingly heartfelt performance as Kay Laverne. She's a marine biologist modeled after Kay Lawrence from the original film. She's smart, strong and individualistic. But she's lonely. And she can't seem to get Dr. Reed to notice her. Things get kind of complicated when the creature takes an interest in her. Again--the role wouldn't work at all were it not for the fact that Hagen is clearly taking it seriously enough to try to render realistic emotions on a character who could come across as being profoundly one-dimensional. The more clever scenes end up being those that fuse the comedy with Hagen's sharp characterization. One of my favorite moments has Laverne in the grotto with the monster trying to communicate with him. There are a lot of cheesy gags in the interaction, but there's a genuine desire to communicate that drives the scene and makes it feel like something more than light comedy in spite of itself.
Alicia Rice puts in a very, very memorable performance as the jungle girl Tanya. Tanya is, of course, not found in the film that inspired the musical. Gutzman introduces her as a native of the Black, Black Lagoon who is an escaped virgin sacrifice to the creature. Rice plays the character as a remarkably precise fusion of the noble savage and the femme fatale. She plays the role with a cheesy native accent, slinking around like an animal and looking quite stunning while doing it. Beautiful and funny, Rice has the over-the-top dramatic silliness of B horror film shlock down perfectly and it adds immeasurably to the production overall.
Off the Wall Theatre's The Creature from the Black, Black Lagoon runs though December 31st at the theatre on 127 East Wells Street. For ticket reservations, call 414-484-8874.
