Now that spring’s in the air, the thoughts of horror fans turn to summer. Jaws might put us in the mood for the beach, but perhaps the most disturbing part of the movie is that women serve primarily as victims. Shark bait. Men solve the problem and men wrote, directed, and produced the movie. Why can’t women get a break with water monsters?
Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017) challenged many conventions, making a woman the hero (and “Christ figure” as the resurrected redemptrix), but to get a sense of why it took so long for this to happen we have to cast our eyes back to what is generally considered the nadir of American horror—the black-and-white 1950s. This was the era of irradiated monsters that were often clearly men in rubber suits, wreaking havoc on civilization, or at least beachfront property. There are a couple of unsung women behind the scenes in at least two of these films, beginning with one of the classics from that era, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954).
Yes, Black Lagoon has a woman victim in the form of Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), although she’s a scientist and is plucky enough to do field work in the remote South American jungle. Her role is mainly to be captured by the creature. Behind the scenes, however, it was a woman who designed the Gill-man’s iconic look. Milicent Patrick was a Disney animator and her role in designing the monster was largely hushed up by Bud Westmore, the make-up artist on the film. Patrick’s story is widely known now, thanks to the efforts of Mallory O’Meara’s 2019 book, The Lady from the Black Lagoon. Patrick was a woman who loved her monster, credited or not.
Patrick wasn’t the only uncredited woman in the film. Granted, not everyone was credited in those days, but women are noticeably absent. Ginger Stanley, for example, was the stunt double for Julie Adams’ underwater scenes. Stanley would have uncredited roles in other films also, while making a career as a swimmer and model as well. The Creature from the Black Lagoon was ahead of its time in many respects. It did have a woman scientist, and if you follow the sequels through to the end, a message of accepting those who are different. Del Toro, of course, made The Shape of Water as an homage to Black Lagoon.
Kay (played by stunt double Ginger Stanley) swimming in Creature from the Black Lagoon
The second, lesser known movie from the era followed the year after Black Lagoon. There seems little doubt that The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (Dan Milner, 1955) stole its title from the 1953 feature The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (Eugène Lourié). The Beast, featuring a monster by Ray Harryhausen and based on a story by Ray Bradbury, was a landmark film, rumored to have inspired Godzilla. The Phantom, on the other hand, was a much lesser effort. Problems start with the title: why the monster is called a phantom is unclear, beyond its being a local legend. A ‘league’ was typically used to measure linear distance rather than depth (the 20,000 Leagues under the sea is the distance the Nautilus travels, not how far down it is), and the creature is right off shore. Not only that, but 10,000 leagues would be over 150 million feet while the deepest point in the oceans is about 36,000 feet. Some basic math might’ve saved the title, but not the rest of the film.
When mysterious radiation deaths occur just off shore in The Phantom, the government sends a single man to investigate—not even a Scully for this Mulder. Falling in love with the daughter of a local scientist, the investigator learns her father is a prototypical mad scientist who irradiates animals. For some reason he planted a radioactive rock in the ocean that shoots a dangerous beam, capable of igniting ships. “The phantom” is one of his creatures set to guard the rock. Realizing his misguided ways, the scientist kills the phantom and himself with dynamite, destroying the radioactive source. This is not a great film. Apart from spy chief Wanda, all the women are completely subservient to the men, even when they have the motivation to bring the police in to stop the mayhem. So why bother discussing it?
The phantom was played by an uncredited Norma Hanson. Although she doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry, Hanson was an accomplished diver, holding a women’s depth record for air diving. She was a performer as well as a commercial diver and she was even foreman on jobs involving harbor maintenance. She also appeared in the 1958 film Danger Is My Business. Her truncated biography is available under “trivia” on IMDb. She was a woman water monster.
The “Phantom” from Phantom from 10,000 Leagues
This span of three years in the mid-fifties is instructive. Sandwiched between The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, The Creature from the Black Lagoon may hold some clues as to why these remarkable women were uncredited.
Black Lagoon deals, in a subtle way, with the conflict between science and religion. The story involves a creature that followed a divergent evolutionary path. In fact, it’s from the Devonian period, long before dinosaurs or mammals, when life existed only in the waters. The scientists are studying lungfish, creatures whose breathing apparatus allowed for eventual land colonization. Yet for all this, the movie begins with an authoritative voice reading a creation narrative from the book of Genesis. In the fifties nobody would dream of publicly challenging the word of God, even when the entire plot is based on the premise of evolution.
That biblical narrative, however, subordinates women to men. As is clear even today from the anti-feminist rhetoric of “Bible-believing” Christians and politicians, such a view maintains a following, even as it’s contradicted by the very society that supports it. To many of this ilk, the fifties were an ideal time. The Second World War was over, women didn’t have to work. One salary supported a family presided over by the patriarch. The women who made monsters—the Milicent Patricks and Norma Hansons—went uncredited and unrecognized. Even the stunt swimmer Ginger Stanley doesn’t get named.
Guillermo del Toro recognized that women are central to the water monster story. They should, and in his film do, finally receive star billing. And they serve as more than shark (or monster) bait.
Steve A. Wiggins is an independent scholar who has taught at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Carroll College, and Rutgers and Montclair State Universities. He is the author of Holy Horror: The Bible and Fear in Movies (McFarland, 2018) and has a book forthcoming from the Devil’s Advocates series at Liverpool University Press on The Wicker Man. Check out his website. Steve has also written for Horror Homeroom on “What To Do When the Exorcist is Absent,” “The Golem as the Perfect Monster,” sex and death in The Lighthouse and The Witch. and “Reclaiming Jewish Monsters in The Offering.”
