The Creature Walks Among Us

Rating: 8/10 (4 March 2018)

Set in Baltimore in 1962, this entertaining, well-acted hokum might have been quickly dashed off in the fifties by Universal in black & white and with a more rugged music score, but here looks more like what might have resulted had it been assigned to Ross Hunter & Douglas Sirk. With 21st Century production values, eye-popping sex and eye-watering violence, an enigmatic title, some highfalutin dialogue usually delivered by Richard Jenkins, and knowing references to old Hollywood musicals (including a black & white duet recalling the 'Puttin' on the Ritz' sequence in 'Young Frankenstein' based on the Oscar-winning song, 'You'll Never Know', which actually first saw life in the Technicolor production 'Hello Frisco, Hello') it managed to collect the Golden Lion at Venice last summer and an incredible thirteen Oscar nominations.
It would have been inconceivable that in 1952 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' could have been Oscar-nominated for Best Picture along with Robert Wise & Michael Rennie for Direction and Best Actor (it lost out to 'An American in Paris'), or 'Things to Come', director William Cameron Menzies and lead actor Raymond Massey fifteen years before that (when Best Picture went to another musical, 'The Great Ziegfeld').