In our Classic Review Series here Read review of Creature From the Black Lagoon below, which was originally headlined, "Black Lagoon Diverting Science-Fiction Meller."

A "good piece of science-fiction of the beauty and the beast school, the beast in this case being a monstrous combination of man and fish"

On Feb. 9, 1954, a month before hitting theaters, The Hollywood Reporter met Universal's latest big screen monster. 

Creature From the Black Lagoon is a good piece of science-fiction of the beauty and the beast school, the beast in this case being a monstrous combination of man and fish. It makes for solid horror-thrill entertainment.

Story starts when scientist Antonio Moreno discovers a huge web-fingered skeleton hand along the Amazon River. When he reports his find an expedition is organized to locate the rest of the skeleton. Among the scientists are Julia Adams, the beauty of the yarn, Richard Carlson, Whit Bissell and Richard Denning, the latter a publicity seeking character who, when he sees the fishman after it has killed several of the helpers, is determined to bring it back. 

They capture it once, but it escapes after almost killing Bissell. Over Denning's objections the others decide to return for help, but the monster has blocked the exit from the lagoon, seeking revenge for the attack upon him and having designs on Miss Adams. It kills Denning and grabs the girl, being tracked down to its eerie hiding place where it is fatally wounded. 

Screenplay by Harry Essex and Arthur Ross, from a story by Maurice Zimm, is soundly developed, leading to an exciting climax. Jack Arnold's megging is briskly competent, although too much time is wasted on underwater shots which are neither novel or dramatic enough to hold interest for the entire footage. Pruning here would help. 

Lovely Julia Adams, finally out of the crinoline costumes, reveals a gorgeous pair of gams in a swimming sequence and turns in her customary fine performance. Richard Carlson, who seems to appear in most of the good science-fiction pictures, is convincing as the male lead, and Richard Denning is strong as the commercial-minded head of the expedition. Nestor Paiva contributes an excellent stint as the skipper of the river boat, and Antonio Moreno and Whit Bissell handle their roles capably. 

The William Alland production was shot in black-and-white 3-D, the process adding some small value to the underwater shots which don't make up for the eyestrain. William E. Snyder's photography is good. Underwater sequences were ably directed by James C. Havens. —Milton Luban

After the travelling through Tamil, Hindi Now ‘Kick’ reached in Kannada, a great full thanks to Sadhu Kokila, in true Uppi style and is a treat for extreme fans.

‘Kick’ has traveled a long way. It’s indeed great to see that in Kannada the film, a crowd-puller formula film, gets re-made with an actor who can do 100% justice to his role.

Yes, it’s a must-see for die hard fans of Uppi Upendra, the singing, fighting, dancing star who has his own style of dialogue delivery, one that endears him to the masses.

Ranga (Upendra) is someone who wishes to derive a ‘kick’ (thrill) out of whatever he does; for this he sometimes causes great risk to himself and to those close to him. He never sticks on to one thing. He happens to come across a young, beautiful girl

Swathi (Kriti Kharbanda), who first dislikes him for this trait of his, but later starts loving him. But later, the ‘kick’ loving nature of Ranga causes a split and they get separated. Later, Swathi happens to come across a daring cop (Raghu Mukherjee), who is out to hunt down none other than Ranga.

Well, ‘Super Ranga’ remains faithful to the original story and at the same time makes sure the real spirit of the original story, the thrills and the frills are not lost in re-making.

Producer K Manju and director Sadhu Kokila makes sure the film gives you real great ‘kick’.

As expected, it’s Uppi Upendra all the way. He just thrills you and performs wonderfully well. Kriti Kharbanda is amazing and looks great too. Raghu Mukherjee shines in his role. Everyone in the cast performs well. Ashok Kashyap delivers the kind of cinematography that’s demanded by the subject and Arjun Janya delivers entertaining music.

‘Super Ranga’ is a treat for the masses and real film-festival for Uppi fans...entertainment guaranteed!!!

‘Ambareesha’ Darshan starrer movie extended its release date. The movie was scheduled to release on Nov 14th,

but due to some theater issues the movie postponed to November 21st. This awaiting movie of Darshan is 

directed and produced by Mahesh Suhadhare. The film also features Rachita Ram, Priyamani and Ambareesh

in other prominent roles. It is hearing that, Ambareesh will play the character ‘Kempe Gowda’.

The budjet of the movie is around 21 crore before its release by Satellite rights and distribution

rights, which is a record. Darshan fans are disappointed due the postponement of ‘Ambareesha’ but they 

are confident that it will be one of the blockbusters of this year.

Tamil cinema celebrated it's Silver Jubilee in recent days.That days all gone now. There was a time when movies ran for 100 days or even more than that. In those days, not so long ago though, people used to make a movie in 50 days and its theatrical run at times went beyond 175 days. It is probably the vice verse now with the makers taking close to 175 days to complete a movie and only a blockbuster movie is able to achieve the coveted 50 day mark in theaters.

In such a competitive scenario, Ilayathalapathy Vijay’s Kaththi has managed to cross its victorious 25 days run today (15th November) in notable number of screens. As we all know the movie is already a blockbuster and it is fascinating to know that it attracts the audience even after a solid 4 week run at the theaters.

Congrats to Vijay, ARM and team.

Barbie Handa is Priyanka Chopra’s first cousin, who is now all set to make her silver screen debut in Anubhav Sinha’s Barbie, in order to be walking with the times, has now rechristened herself as Manaara, courtesy, Anubhav Sinha. Speaking about the name change, Sinha reasoned that Barbie was too childish a name for a grown-up girl. He added that Manaara also happens to be her nickname. Seconding his thoughts was Barbie herself… we mean… Manaara herself, who said that she liked the very name Manaara, which means a Greek word for ‘something that shines’.

Manaara is making news for multiple reasons and one of them being the film’s dare-bare posters which features her. Explaining which she says, since we are in 2014, she can’t be in a veil (‘ghoonghat’). When asked for her sister Priyanka’s reaction to the posters, Manaara was quick to reply that prior to the poster shoot, she had called up Priyanka Chopra (who was in Barcelona at that time) and she gave her nod for the same, but with a condition that she had to ensure that it’s done aesthetically and didn’t look sleazy.

Zid is slated for a release on 28th November and is creating quite a buzz amongst the who’s who of B-Town.

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas have spent $7 million on a new mansion in Bedford, New York to celebrate their reunion ahead of their 14th wedding anniversary.

The Hollywood A-listers who have sold their 6,000 sq ft Guard Hill Road home in New York for $11.2 million, had issued a statement about their temporary split just 14 months back, the Mirror reported. The new home of the Oscar winners boasts of an exquisite kitchen, greenhouse and a garage said to be "worthy of a car collector".

Other features of their new address include a spa, two indoor pools, a gym, sauna and steam room. The breathtaking, stately mansion has been improvised with addition of new appliances, woodwork and historic mouldings.

The couple is rumoured to be set to renew their wedding vows to celebrate their reunion.

Hot heroine Surveen Chawla who came to Tollywood with the film "Raju Maharaju" has now revealed that she was indirectly asked to sleep with a director. This lady was known for her high level exposing sequence in Bollywood. Speaking on her South Indian film career, Surveen Chawla came up with an interesting statement.


She mentioned that she was striving hard at that time for film offers and she got an offer from South Indian film industry. It seems that the agency person mentioned that the director is interested to have relationship with her to make her understand the role better. Speaking on this Surveen stated that she fired on that guy for directly asking her to sleep with the director.


Surveen has few flicks in Tamil as well and hence the exact industry from which she got this offer is not yet known to the media. This is a tough situation for any actress and speaking about it boldly with the media is a daring move by Surveen.