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| The Creature From the Black Lagoon | |
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Sunbathing on deck's the done thing, but it makes the Brylcreem run and stain the collar of your poplin beach shirt. Palm trees drift by as though your sins had turned vegetable and semaphore. Sins of the laboratory, I mean, not the confessional . . . yes, the engine room looks suitable, and through the porthole a wise old man waiting patiently in the wavering water - that's no priest! Captain! But the Captain's a gutless foreigner, drinks gin, and never shaves. You pity the girl in the bathing suit - she may be a palæontologist, but sure as eggs she's going to get a terrible fright. And the ethnic extras, they have to die on our journey towards the knowledge that shimmers behind the South American façade. The priest turns his scaly back: that creature, rising like a new disease from the gene pool, why should we pity him? Deracinated, maybe, but what a guy! No, it's wrong, don't kiss him! I can feel it, soaking through the blood-brain barrier . . . he's never known the touch of a woman's . . . whoops! Here's the nut with the speargun on a hunting spree - Duck, Tabby! Duck and cover! Here comes the bolt from the blue, to shut up sorrow, to stop up the barrel of fun like a dead king. And what colour is the blood, Doctor? Red? Can you explain that? And what of the offspring? |
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