Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

This is the last posting which disrupts my strictly chronological logging of viewed films. This film, I saw it in 1988, and wrote its plot summary then.

A scientist finds in the Amazon the fossilized hand of a strange reptile. He decides to conduct an investigation with the goal of finding the remainder of the corresponding fossil. He encounters David and his girlfriend, a couple of ichthyologists who decide to accompany him. Along with them goes also Mark, an ambitious young man who is the head of the research institution for which they work. They begin research, which at first is infructuous. Through a conversation with the captain of the boat they are traveling on, they get word of the existence of the "Black Lagoon", where legends say there is a fish-man. They head towards there. Mark and David dive and spot the strange creature. Mark hits it with the harpoon, and David takes a photograph, which, once revealed, does not contain anything. The woman goes for a swim and the monster follows her, falling in love with her and grabbing at her foot. The monster climbs on the boat and kills one of the crew members. The captain suggests that they poison the lagoon water with a substance he uses for fishing. The monster invades the boat and is imprisoned. The older scientist keeps a watch over it, but is distracted, thus letting the monster escape, not without first seriously injuring the scientist. The team decides to leave, but the monster has blocked the exit of the boat with a log. They attempt to remove the log, but the monster hinders their efforts. David has the idea of filling the oxygen tubes with the poison used earlier and then spraying it on the monster in order to scare it away, which would enable them to remove the log. But Mark has not given up the idea of capturing the monster and dives too; the monster kills him. The log is removed, but the monster invades the boat and kidnaps the woman. There is a chase on the monster, in which he is hit by the boat crew's gunshots and dies.