Creature From the Black Lagoonbecame a sensational hit for Universal for introducing a new monster to stand alongside their older icons. Arnold once again explored the complexities in his monsters, imbuing the title creature with a sense of mystery and menace, romance and tragedy. In 1955, Arnold directed a sequel, Revenge of the Creature, as well as Tarantula!, both of which have the unfortunate legacies of being co-penned by notorious McCarthyist sympathizer and Hollywood blacklister Martin Berkeley. Sci-fi writers imagined spectacularly advanced futures or dystopian nightmares, while movie theaters showed space opera serials like Flash Gordon alongside Universal's monster pictures that often featured mad scientists. However, it wasn't until the Atomic Age that hard sci-fi became popular and widely accepted, first in literature and then in film, as filmmakers combined technological pondering with social commentary to form the modern conception of what makes a science fiction movie.Īrnold proved that he could craft contemplative parables with It Came From Outer Space, but the following year provided evidence that he could handle big-budget blockbuster material, as well.
Arnold encapsulated the hopes and anxieties of the era, and although he is not as well-known as his contemporaries, Arnold helped establish the most significant trends in American sci-fi and defined the genre for years to come.īefore the 1950s and the start of the Cold War, science fiction was mostly intertwined with the world of fantasy and horror.
Science fiction as a storytelling genre spans decades, but Jack Arnold's films in the 1950s truly modernized and popularized sci-fi cinema for American audiences.
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