Having previously survived being riddled with bullets, the Gill-man is captured and sent to the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida, where he is studied by animal psychologist Professor Clete Ferguson (John Agar) andichthyology student Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson).
Helen and Clete quickly begin to fall in love, much to the chagrin of Joe Hayes (John Bromfield), the Gill-man's keeper. The Gill-man takes an instant liking to Helen, which severely hampers Professor Ferguson's efforts to communicate with him. Ultimately, the Gill-man escapes from his tank, killing Joe in the process, and flees to the open ocean.
Clint Eastwood briefly appears as a scientist
Unable to stop thinking about Helen, the Gill-man soon begins to stalk her and Ferguson, ultimately abducting her from a seaside restaurant where the two are at a party. Clete tries to give chase, but the Gill-man escapes to the water with his captive. Clete and police arrive and when the creature surfaces, police riddle his body with bullets and Clete saves Helen.[1]
Information
Look for a young, uncredited Clint Eastwood in his first screen appearance as the white-coated lab assistant who does the mouse gag in the lab scene with the monkey. [2]
One of the two young men who, near the end of the movie, see Helen lying unconscious on a riverbank, then go to investigate and get killed by the Gill Man is played by Brett Halsey, who had appeared as Bix Dugan in The Girl in Lovers Lane.
Makeup was by veteran artist Bud Westmore, who worked on several films that appeared on MST.
The film was originally released in 3D, so watch for things (a cardboard cutout of the creature, a trombone slide, a car rolling down a dune) gratuitously coming straight at the camera.
Actor/Stuntman Tom Hennesy almost drowned during filming. Playing The Creature, he grabs Helen Dobson (actually stuntwoman Ginger Stanley) on a pier and jumps with her into the water. The scene was shot at night, and when Hennesy and Stanley hit the water, they discovered it was full of jellyfish; in addition, a freak current started to pull them both down. Hennesy let go of Stanley, who swam to the surface, but Hennesy's inflexible Gill-Man costume had become waterlogged and too heavy to fight the current. He was rescued by two local boys who happened to be watching the filming from a nearby boat, and quickly raced over and pulled him in.
Much of Revenge Of The Creature was filmed on location at the Marineland of Florida oceanarium. The actors filmed in the water during the tank scenes, were required to swim with its real-life underwater inhabitants, including sharks, eels, barracudas, and more. Despite the close proximity to ocean predators, the only incident was that of a sea turtle biting off the prosthetic foot of Ricou Browning's Creature costume.
In the preceding film, Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), the creature suit was built to hold the air in so their were no bubble when the creature was under water. In order to save money and to provide air for the stuntman in underwater sequences, the suit design was changed to allow a hose to pump air to the actor. As a result, bubbles could be seen coming out of different parts of the suit.
Ricou Browning requested to be credited for playing the Creature. He was denied this by studio executives but did make an out-of-costume appearance as one of the lab technicians.
The Episode
Host Segments
First appearance of Professor Bobo
Prologue: After 500 (and 25) years of being pure energy at the edge of the universe, Mike, Tom, Gypsy, Cambot, and Magic Voice are forcibly teleported to the SOL. Crow is already there, stating that he was bored of being pure energy after the first 5 minutes. But he seems different and doesn't remember Mike. Suddenly, the SOL is about to crash into the Earth. Mike is able to avoid a collision, but horror awaits when Mike and the bots contact Earth and a talking ape answers.
Half man, Half Octopus
Segment One: After lots of screaming, Professor Bobo and Dr. Peanut explain that Earth is "a planet where apes evolved from men". Bobo then sends a bad movie to the SOL crew because, oddly enough, it's "Ape Law".
Segment Two: Tom and Mike try to repair the SOL’s engines with a little help from the Nanites. Crow still seems different somehow, and Mike can't let it go.
Segment Three: An angry Star Wars-esque alien demands to speak to Servo, who has been dealing contraband vanilla pudding.
Pearl returns as The Lawgiver
Segment Four: Crow may be different, but at least he knows how to make a nice cup of espresso.
Segment Five: The Bots have tracked down information about Mike’s descendants, and they learn that virtually all of them intermarried with apes. Then they learn who The Lawgiver is - Pearl Forrester! She reveals that she never got around to raising Clayton Forrester (who transformed into a baby in the previous episode) better than last time, so she smothered him with a pillow and had herself cryogenically frozen.
Stinger: John Agar swims softly and carries a big bull prod.
Bobo and company's headquarters went unnamed on-screen, but was called "Deep Ape" by the crew.
First episode of the Sci-Fi channel era.
For the first time in the series, a Mad (in this case Pearl) joins in singing part of the theme song. This would be the case for the rest of the Sci-Fi Channel era, and would continue in the Netflix reboot when Kinga sings part of the theme.
Callbacks
During segment one, Tom says, “jerking around must have cause a flameout,” a line from This Island Earth.
When the "music supervision" credit comes up and some familiar-sounding organ music is heard:
Servo: "Pfft...yeah, great supervision: Gimme a needle-drop on some This Island Earth music."
Running Jokes
The Creature feels the need to snap an alligator in half to impress people.
Clete's repeated declarations of his own handsomeness.
The Long List of celebrities supposedly appearing in "A Tributary to the Upper Amazon".
Crow: "...with Edna St. Vincent Millay and Topo Gi-"
Mike: "It's over."
Quotes & References
"Heir to the legacy of Godo, Bogo, and Chim-Chim."
Godo was the name of a character from the third season episode Time of the Apes, which would seem to fit the reference, but was one of the human protagonists. Chim-Chim was the name of Speed Racer's pet chimpanzee.
"¿Qué? Is difficult."
The catchphrase of Andrew Sachs's character Manuel, on the show Fawlty Towers.
"Yes, the gloves are off and the benches are clear! He's got Magnuson's jersey over his head!!"
Keith Magnuson was defenceman for the Chicago Black Hawks hockey team. The riff here plays off the tussle between Clete and The Creature and how it looks like one of the many fights Magnuson would get into during his career.
"One of the Kingston Trio!"
The Kingston Trio is an American folk/pop music group that gained popularity in the '50s and '60s with tunes such as "Tom Dooley" and "Charlie on the M.T.A.".
"And the John Birch Society meeting comes to an abrupt end!"
The John Birch Society is an extreme right-wing American political organization.
"Now at Sears, Jeanne Kirkpatrick lingerie."
Jeane Kirkpatrick was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the first term of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
Soyuz 7 was a 1969 Soviet space mission that ended (like most USSR missions) with a dry landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan. The reference might have actually been meant for "Liberty Bell 7", Gus Grissom's 1961 Mercury program flight that experienced a spacecraft hatch malfunction upon splashdown off the coast of Florida. Although Grissom survived, the prematurely blown hatch allowed water to flood the spacecraft, which sank and was not recovered until 1999 (thus it was still missing at the time this episode first aired).
"Show me the way to go home..."
In Jaws, this is the song the three men sing while sitting around the table on the boat.
"Esther Williams didn't age too well."
Esther Williams was an Olympic swimmer who went on to star in a series of surprisingly popular swimming-themed movies (known as "aquamusicals").
"Luca Brasi sleeps with us!"
Luca Brasi is a fictional character in both the novel The Godfather and the film of the same name. In the story, Brasi is murdered by a rival crime family who then dump his body in the ocean. Don Corleone learns of Brasi's death when he receives two dead fish wrapped in a bulletproof vest - a message to Corleone that "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes".
"This is NOT Greg Norman."
Greg Norman is an Australian professional golfer who spent 331 weeks at the top of the Official World Golf Rankings during the 1980s and 1990s. He acquired the nickname "The Great White Shark" (often shortened to simply "The Shark") due to his height, blonde hair and aggressive play style.
"Dammit Jim, I'm a milkman, not a doctor!"
Servo references a phrase (albeit in reverse) often used by Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy from the TV series Star Trek. The specific reference to a "milkman" was also used in the parody song Star Trekkin'.
