Well the time has come. It was 8 years ago today that I published my Blog on The Creature from the Black Lagoon on the old Screwattack Website, the first major blog I had written up to that point. As my first ever VS Blog, by my current standards it was rather amature, I didn’t go through all of his material, I had messy formatting, too many pictures, no calculations and way too many jokes and references. After I migrated over to blogger I started refurbishing all my Old Screwattack blogs and republishing them here, except for this one, which simply had too many problems, so today, I’m redoing it! But for all you craving a new twist on things I got good news for you, after going through all the Creature Material, this blog will not be focusing exclusively on the Gillman from the 1950s, but instead a peak member of his species, and trust me, there’s a lot more to this monster than you might think. So now without further adieu, I give you The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Background:
The year was 1954 when a group of American scientists on an archeological expedition to the Amazon Rainforest, discovered the fossilized arm of a mysterious creature from a long forgotten age known as the Devonian. With its strangely humanoid appearance, these men concluded that this must be a missing link that evolved from prehistoric fish into a land animal and eventually, Man. Excited about the discovery, they launched a full search of the area to uncover the rest of the fossils in an area the locals referred to as, ‘The Black Lagoon.’
Little did they know the horrors that awaited them upon their arrival! As one of these ancient creatures remained alive in this very area in the modern day! This Creature in an attempt to protect its own territory, attacked the scientists, killing nearly all of them before they managed to drive it off and escape.
The following year, another group of better equipped humans returned to Black Lagoon and captured the beast, bringing it back to the United States for research, but before long The Creature escaped into the Florida Everglades. After the next 3 years, and ample human casualties, this individual would disappear into the ocean never to be seen again.
Despite the terror caused by this monster, it was soon after forgotten to time, until the futuristic year of 2015 when a young marine biologist Brice Chalefant and his badass girlfriend Cody would uncover the truth. This creature was not merely some Evolutionary missing link, but a savage descendant of an ancient race of Extraterrestrials.
Eons ago, in a time before Trees, Grass and land vertebrates, on a young Earth with a pristine, unscarred moon in the sky, a race of Aquatic Aliens crashed here in their Vessel, The Mother. Unlike a lot of other Alien Ships, The Mother was not advanced technology, but a member of a species of space faring animals that could take these aliens through the stars, and died in the crash. With the Mother dead, and without the knowledge to build a ship capable of space travel, the stranded Aliens made the most of things by settling the Earth as their new home, which thankfully they were very well adapted for.
These beings lived peacefully on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years until one of its members traveled deep into the ocean and found a Hydrothermal Vent which exposed him to Archaea. Archaea is a type of microorganism that is believed to be one of, if not the, first living beings on Earth, and when taken into this Alien species, it took control of him like a fungus and caused him to lose his intelligence, growing violent, savage, and determined to infect other members of his species by slashing into them with his claws.
Overtime, the plague of the Archaea overtook the entire population and the Aliens slowly died out until only the one discovered in the Amazon in the 1950s remained. That is until one day, Brice’s physicist college Web invented a Time Machine, which allowed him to travel back to the Devonian in an attempt to recapture and study one of these beings, and boy was he surprised to not only find out these guys are aliens, but also humanly intelligent beings capable of telepathic communication. While the species true name is unpronounceable to Humans, they have adapted our term “Gillmen” to refer to themselves to us. Gillpeople are a peaceful race with sophisticated ancient culture who are friendly and benevolent towards humanity. With the help of Brice and Cody in an adventure through time that temporarily resulted in a horde of Monsterous Gillmen attacking New England, they managed to stop the infectious epidemic that devolved and wiped out their species Eons ago and save the Gillpeople race.
Intellect & Skills:
Interestingly enough, despite being an Alien species, the Gillmen are not massively more advanced than humans, as they came to earth using a MFTL Spacefaring species of animal rather than building technology capable of doing that. That being said they are far from dumb. Even the Creature from the original films, who had his intelligence massively de-evolved, was still consistently stated by scientists as being far closer to humans intelligence than the second smartest documented animal in regards of intellect, learning commands far more quickly than Cetaceans, Chimps and Cats, and showed the very human qualities such as Reason, Strategy, and Revenge that allowed him to outplay the humans he was up against. A normal member of his species is far smarter than this, being at least comparable to humans in most regards. At one point in the Novel a creature sees a woman wearing metal jewelry, and when they time travel 100 years later the Gillpeople are also wearing metal jewelry, implying they figured out and mastered forging metal in that time period simply from seeing the material.
While normally a peaceful race, Gillpeople have displayed themselves as being skilled fighters on multiple occasions. Their Savage descendant from the 50s was able to kill top American predators like Caimans and Pumas with little effort, and fought and defeated a large portion of a county police force all at once. With their more advanced intellect, the peak Creatures should be able to surpass this.
Powers:
The Gillmen species can have a variety of different powers depending on their training, due to their unique biology. Their bodies are covered in incredibly thick and durable scale plates that act as Armor against most types of attacks, they have the ability to see in the dark and incredibly murky water with their specialized eyes, and have specialized feet that distribute their weight in such a way that they cannot sink into thick mud or quicksand, similar to Camels in the desert.
Creatures also do not actually Sleep, but instead go into states of reduced brain activity when resting, meaning they can make certain parts of their body sleep while other parts are still active so that they are never fully vulnerable.
Amphibious Biology:
Gillmen are fully Amphibious beings, able to not only breathe underwater, but also possess an auxiliary set of lungs that allow them to breathe on land for long periods of time. Water reinvigorates a Gillperson’s energy, they can instantly recover from exhaustion when exposed to it, and basically do not get exhausted while swimming. However even outside of water, some Gillmen have been able to run outside of water for hours on end without tiring.
Claws:
Gillmen possess large, pronounced claws on the digits of their webbed hands and feet. These claws are their primary offensive weapon and are sharp and powerful enough to cut through thick ropes, disable wooden and steel structures, and even overcome the durability of other Gillmen’s hardened scales.
Adaptability:
35% of a Gillperson's blood is composed of white corpuscles lacking a nucleus. This allows them the ability to mutate their bodies over a short time to better endure new Environments. Becoming more land based or more predatory in roughly a day's time if the situation calls for it.
Healing Factor:
Through simple rest, the 50s Creature was able shrug off injuries that would have been fatal to humans including having his gills set on fire, a concussion from an explosive blast, and multiple impalement wounds.
Energy Manipulation:
The Gillpeople are able to share and take energy from others, one individual known as Mudshaper was able to reinvigorate Brice after he was completely exhausted by reaching out and sharing some of his energy with him, and its implied they could due the reverse and drain energy out of others into themselves.
Psychic Powers:
But the bread and butter technique of the Gillmen is their suite of Mental Capabilities. The Creatures possess Telepathic powers, and can communicate with peoples minds directly via telepathy, this language of the mind allows beings of completely different species who do not speak the same language to communicate as if they do. The Gillpeople are able to read minds and pull additional information from other beings, allowing them to learn vast amounts of information from them even at a distance. The original Mudshaper was able To scan through the humans memories and drastically improve his own vocabulary while they were sleeping. The more modern mudshaper, was able to see images in Brice’s mind to know what the time machine looks like, something backed up by the original being able to learn the location where the humans started in the past from their memories. Later another Gillperson absorbed the knowledge of how to use a spray bottle from the people around them so they could hydrate themselves with mist.
Psychic Barriers:
Creatures are also able to create powerful Telekinetic Barriers, able to form these into giant doors or domes of Air around people's heads, which they had precise enough control over to prevent any water from seeping through, while allowing oxygen and people to pass through it uneffected, and could casually maintain this for very long stretches of time. The creatures are also accredited for making a massive temporal barrier that prevents people from time traveling to any age between the Devonian era and the present, to prevent paradoxes, which has the implication that their psychic power gives them minor manipulation over time. All of these above powers are standard psychic abilities any Gillperson has access to. Additionally, there are Four more specialized psychic techniques that more powerful Gillmen can master.
Mudshapers:
The first of these four special abilities is called Mudshaper, which is basically a form of psychic Geokinesis. Mudshapers have complete control over rocks, dirt and minerals and are able to manipulate mud into rock hard complex structures such as pathways or buildings just by touching them. This can be used to create geokinetic attacks, restraints, or barriers.
Weatherpullers:
Secondly there are Weatherpullers, who have the ability to manipulate liquid and gas. Weatherpullers have been able to siphon carbon dioxide out of a dome humans were breathing in, and replace it with fresh air from the surface even from a large distance away. They can also manipulate the humidity and pressure system of the environment to cause storms or whirlpools.
Fishcallers:
The third of these abilities is the Aquman-like Fishcaller ability. Fishcaller’s have the ability to mind control animals around them with psychic waves, they were able to search out and detect the minds of the enemy infected Gillpeople dozens of miles away from the shore, and dominate their brains in a psychic wave so powerful it nearly took control of the humans in the area despite them not being the target. Even individual Fishcallers are casually able to control 70 foot long Sharks with total ease. Average Gillmen can also resist the mind control of Fishcaller meaning they have some levels of resistance to their own mental attacks.
- Fleshmolders:
Lastly, and EASILY the most terrifyingly, we have the Fleshmolder ability. Fleshmolders have full control over biological material, and are capable of disintegrating another Gillpersons entire body into liquid with a casual touch of their hands. They can target and destroy microscopic organisms, including the archaea that plagued their species eventually, allowing them to cure disease, heal wounds and undo all sorts of physical and internal damages and mutations.
Feats:
Strength:
The Creature is consistently able to lift immense heavy objects and toss them through the air without any difficulty. Such as lifting a submerged crate containing the Frankenstein Monster out of the water.
In the original Creature from the Black Lagoon film, the Creature was able to swim downward with enough force to nearly capsize the Rita ferry boat. The Rita is an old Steam Drifter style ship which weighs anywhere from 40-50 tons, yet just the force of him swimming nearly flipped it.
In Revenge of The Creature, this same individual was able to casually flip over a car. This car was from the 1950’s and thus was made of Steel, and weighs much more than a car in the modern day of similar size, roughly 4,400 lbs. In the Novel, other members of his species are said to have tossed a modern Police Car through the air, and flipped a FireTruck on its side, which can weigh over 14,000 lbs.
Creature’s are far stronger than any land animal and have repeatedly overpowered and Thrown full grown human beings around like rag dolls. They are cited as being able to overpower 10 humans at once, and rip Black Caimans in two.
Can can and regularly do smash through solid wood furniture and Heavy barricades without any effort.
In The Creature Walks Among Us, the monster casually bent and compressed a steel cage door with his bare hands and toppled over a 4 foot thick solid brick support beam like it was nothing.
Durability:
Creature’s are covered in thick durable scales that can tank most attacks with little difficulty.
The 1950’s Creature could take repeated stabbings with blades, clubbings from police officers, being set on fire, and being shot with Spearguns without them getting beyond his scales and damaging him underneath.
In the Novel, one of the Creatures was able to tank the undersea water pressure after diving down deep enough to find Hydrothermal Vents. Given the depth these are typically found at, The Creature would have been exposed to a force of 4,477 PSI, the equivalent of supporting 6.579 tons, and being hit by 140 pounds of TNT.
The Creature from the 50s could tank being shot multiple times by Pistols and Rifles without notable damage.
Although their greatest feat of Durability was tanking a large underwater explosion that erupted blasts of water across Black Lagoon without injury. The blasts covered an area of similar size to a city block to ensure that the creature would be hit by the underwater concussive wave.
Speed:
In both the films and Novel alike, Gillmen are portrayed at having incredible swimming speed, able to keep up with motorized boats and outpace any natural species of fish, which logically would include Billfish which are capable of swimming at speeds of over 80 Mph.
In Time’s Black Lagoon, the elderly Mudshaper was able to swim ocean-spanning distances in less than a day while dragging two people as passengers, which would be a similar speed to Billfish, but performed by a frail and weighed down member, suggesting they are much faster in their prime.
General:
Can be stealthy enough to sneak onto small boats full of people looking for them without being spotted or heard a hilarious number of times.
Can outmaneuver humans that attempt to track them using Sonar devices.
Weaknesses:
While The Creatures are incredibly nimble in the water, on land their mobility is hindered, and most able bodied humans are able to outrun them on foot, while they aren’t slow they clearly have a lower average land speed than people. Beyond the speed disparity, Gill-Men have had their senses overrun on multiple occasions, they are sensitive to bright light and disorienting drugs, especially Rotenone which can quickly render them unconscious in high doses. Although their biggest weakness is being dried out, as Creatures lose their energy and tire out much more quickly when dry, similar to Aquaman. Things like Fire and smoke can accelerate this process rapidly.
Summary:
Advantages:
Large Building Level.
Subsonic Swimming Speed.
Great Endurance.
Mind Reading.
Energy Manipulation.
Telepathy.
Psychic Barriers.
Limited Time Manipulation.
Biological Manipulation.
Decay Manipulation.
Mind Control.
Power Over Animals.
Psychic Super Senses.
Geokinesis.
Aerokinesis.
Hydrokinesis.
Storm Creation.
High Stealth.
Armor & Healing Factor Combo.
Disadvantages:
Can be Drugged.
Can be Dried Out given enough time.
Slow on Land.
Sensitive to Light.
Recommended Opponent:
The Predator:
So in my original blog I suggested Creature to fight against either Bruce from the Jaws films or Frankenstein, but I really don’t support either of those matchups anymore due to being one sided, especially Bruce as the Creature could simply take over his mind. The Predator on the other hand would be Really cool to see. Both Creature and Preddy are alien movie monsters who have very similar feats of Strength and Speed, had to deal with hunting and being hunted by more monstrous members of their species, and can have wildly different arsenals depending on how peak a member of their species you want to go with. Gillmen have vastly superior powers to Yautja, but Yautja have far better equipment so you’d have a real nature vs hunter fight on your hands.
Next Time:
