Creature from the Black Lagoon

"In the beginning,

God created the heaven and the earth. "

"And the earth was without form,

and void. "

This is the planet Earth,

newly born,

and cooling rapidly from a temperature

of 6,000 degrees to a few hundred

in less than five billion years.

The heat rises,

meets the atmosphere, the clouds form,

and rain pours down upon the hardening

surface for countless centuries.

The restless seas rise,

find boundaries, are contained.

Now, in their warm depths,

the miracle of life begins.

In infinite variety, living things appear,

and change, and reach the land,

leaving a record of their coming,

of their struggle to survive,

and of their eventual end.

The record of life is written on the land,

where, 15 million years later,

in the upper reaches of the Amazon,

man is still trying to read it.

Tomas! Tomas!

Tomas!

Please.

What that is, Dr Maia?

I don't know, Luis. I have never seen

anything like this before.

Is important?

Yes. I think it is. Very important.

We will take one more picture.

Then we will dig it out.

Luis, I'm going to Morajo Bay,

to the institute.

- You two are to wait here in the camp.

- You be gone long?

Long enough to find out what this is

and get help in digging out

the rest of the skeleton.

I want a man in camp at all times.

Luis, you will be in charge.

I'm sure you scared all the fish away.

At the depth he's working, Doctor,

the fish won't hear a thing, believe me.

Ah. There he is. See him?

- What's he waiting for?

- He's adjusting to the change in pressure.

Ah. Here he comes.

- Hi.

- David, I have a surprise for you.

Yeah?

Carl Maia!

- It isn't you!

- What's left of me, Dr David Reed.

The last I heard, you were up

the Amazon digging for old skeletons.

You too were doing research,

for an aquarium in California.

- What are you doing in Brazil?

- We've been at your institute for a month.

We're looking for specimens of lungfish.

David, you still don't look

like an ichthyologist.

The geologist's point of view. He expected

the lovable old professor with a beard.

I didn't expect him to look like he did

when he was my student.

Give me your shoulder, Kay.

Are you two married yet?

No. David says we're together all the time

anyway. Might as well save expenses.

- How about two living as cheaply as one?

- That's what I keep telling him, Carl.

I'm waiting for Williams to give her

that raise. Then she can afford me.

Come on, let's go ashore.

It's good to see you again, Carl.

Show him what brought you back, Carl.

I found this in a limestone deposit

dating back to the Devonian age.

I was hoping you experts on marine life

could make some identification.

- I've never seen anything like this.

- Look at the webbed fingers.

Maybe we'll know more about it

after I find the rest of the skeleton.

- I'd sure like to be with you when you do.

- So would I.

What about your boss?

Do you think he would be interested?

Williams? If there's a chance of

any publicity, just try and keep him away.

Be fair. Publicity brings endowments.

And without money, there is no research.

Right. If it weren't for Dr Williams digging

up the dough, we wouldn't be down here.

- Where is this thing?

- At the institute.

Here it is, gentlemen.

Exactly as I found it.

- It's amazing.

- It's incredible!

Could it possibly belong

to a Pleistocene man?

Chances are that that hand belonged

to an amphibian, Mark.

One that spent

a great deal of time in the water.

So how do you account for the structure

of the fingers, obviously for land use?

- What do you think, Dr Matos?

- We can be sure of one thing.

Whatever it was, it was very powerful.

You say you hope to find

the rest of the fossil?

As soon as I get

a suitable expedition together.

Well, why don't we make up

the expedition?

It does come under the heading

of our work, doesn't it, David?

It certainly does. More and more we're

learning the value of marine research.

Look. Look over here.

This lungfish - the bridge

between fish and the land animal.

How many thousands of ways nature tried

to get life out of the sea and onto the land.

This one failed.

He hasn't changed in millions of years.

But here...

Here we have a clue to an answer.

Some day spaceships will be travelling

to other planets.

How will human beings survive

on those planets?

The atmosphere will be different,

the pressures will be different.

By studying these, and other species,

we add to our knowledge of how life

evolved and adapted itself to this world.

With that knowledge, perhaps

men will learn to adapt themselves

to some new world of the future.

Nice speech, David.

But there's still a practical side to it.

If I sound more like a banker

than a scientist,

try to remember that it takes money

to run an institute like ours.

A find of any real importance

can be of great financial value to us also.

- Your board couldn't disapprove.

- It certainly couldn't.

Dr Maia, you've got

yourself an expedition.

Good.

We'll leave for Manaus in the morning.

From there we'll take a boat up the river.

No. Tomas!

No. No... No!

It's so hot.

And it'll get hotter.

Couldn't Maia find

anything better than this barge?

I guess not many ships

want to go upriver as far as we're going.

We didn't exactly expect

to get the le de France either.

You don't like the Rita, eh?

- What the doctor meant, Lucas...

- I know what he means.

But what for I need a sweet-smelling boat

to carry fish on this crazy river?

How you like the best cabin,

Miss Lawrence?

- I love it.

- Good.

Well, now we have a lab,

such as it is.

- Well, let's hope we have some use for it.

- I'll be disappointed if we don't.

Assuming that Dr Maia's facts

are well founded.

Dr Maia's a scientist, not a fortune-teller.

How can he guarantee anything?

It seems to me a scientist has need

for both vision and confidence.

I didn't mean it

as any personal criticism, Doctor.

It's just that

I always look forward to success.

And I thought

the Mississippi was something.

It's a winding brook

compared to the Amazon.

This is exactly as it was 150 million years

ago, when it was part of the Devonian era.

- Sounds like the beginning of the world.

- It is.

Even the animals here

grow as they did in Devonian forests.

The anteater is a giant

with the strength of a bear.

The centipede grows to be a foot long.

The Amazonian rat is as big as a sheep.

- That's incredible!

- It's true.

And don't forget our catfish.

They grow to be nine feet long -

and killers.

Like everything in this jungle.

All killers.

Oh, Dr Maia says we're gonna

drop anchor in a couple of hours.

Maybe you'd better get some rest, eh?

Again, Lucas.

We want to make sure

my boys hear us at camp.

When we anchor, we'll take a rowboat.

Luis!

Tomas!

Luis!

Luis! Tomas!

- It's strange they'd be gone.

- Could they have gone hunting?

I gave strict orders for one man

to remain in camp at all times.

- Come on.

- Stay here, Kay.

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