Its rare that you find a movie from the 50s that has a reboot that is somehow MORE racist than the original. I dont know how they managed that

This musical tripped and fell down a flight of stairs so that The Shape of Water could run.

I LOVE the sequence of Kae swimming in the air over the audience, genuine shame that idea is so wasted on this musical.

THAT DREADLOCK WIG ON HER IS A FASHION FELONY. these are art crimes fam

The weirdest thing about the Romani stereotype is how out of place it is on The Creature of the Black Lagoon. Did the Universal monters films had Romani characters on them? Yes, but they appeared in the films set in Europe like Dracula or The Wolfman, not in a film set in the Brazilian rainforest (I mean, there are Romani communities in Brazil, but not in the jungle)

The Gillman does have a motivation, he’s mad that humans are invading his natural habitat. He’s a nice guy, but if you came home and found 6 guys having a big party in your living room, how would you feel? Also, the effects are incredible.

I’m part Romany and first of all, no part of the heritage is rooted in Spain, so idk why she speaks Spanish?? Second, voodoo is also in no way related to Romany culture!!!

why does this modern woman dress entirely in fifties clothing and talk in a halfway there transatlantic accent. and why is she SLAYING those belts as she pretend swims seriously i’m glad she won a tony she puts the darn work in

if your wondering, at 7:20 the flash of text says:

"If you comment something along the lines of
"the Monster Mash isn't a party it's a dance,"
I want you to know that I think you are objectively wrong. It is both, and it's also song, album, and film.
Monster Mash as a term is much more inclusive than you are allowing it to be. This isn't the kind of discourse Bobby Boris Pickett would want, be better!!
You are enabling the Transylvanian Twist to resurge, don't let it"

How. is a 2009 adaptation. of a 1954 film. MORE racist.
That is some mindbending shit.

til all five famous Monster High Parental Figures™️ were popularized by Universal

To think that Broadway legend Katrina Lenk was in a short-lived cheesy horror musical at a theme park...we all gotta start somewhere I guess

that being Katrina Lenk is insane to me

if you want a really enjoyable horror musical, look at Starkid's The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals or Black Friday it's sequel

Happy to see you're actually doing more theme park musicals. I'd love to see you talk about "Rogers: The Musical", which was made for Disney California Adventure as a full 30 minute stage musical

If I was allowed to make a creature of the black lagoon musical it mostly be a lot screaming and gurgling followed by automatic refunds to the whole audience

“annoyingly in depth review”? this is exactly the content we wanted my friend

Fun fact: John Carpenter almost remade Creature From The Black Lagoon back in the 80's, but the project never got off the ground. However, you can find the movie's screenplay online, I've read it and it's really confusing.

I'm sorry... Why is Kay played by TONY AWARD WINNING ACTRESS, Katrina Lenk!?!?!?!?!

Edit: Turns out this was discussed later in the video. I should wait to finish the video before commenting.

That pre-show warning feels like a callout to Floridians.

Bad Florida joke aside: this whole musical feels like a mess & is VERY tasteless. My brain just has so many questions & I know things are bad with a story when I have try fill so many plotholes in with my imagination.

The whole thing feels like it was originally meant to be set in the Everglades or some other swampy section of the southern US then somebody reminded the writing staff that the story takes place in the Amazon & they only copy-pasted the location change without any edits to the rest of the script.

Like, why does the crew of the boat speak Spanish instead of Portuguese (the main language spoken in Brazil)? Are they from a neighboring country? Are they in Peruvian section of the river?

The writers' decision to sanitize the plot this way, by implying that Kay is 100% down to "get some fish", is just so weird. Why is Kay automatically thirsty for Gill? Hypnosis? A love of abs no matter who or what they're on? There are so many better ways that they could have gone about empowering Kay & creating a sympathetic monster at the same time, no romance between them necessary.

What is even going on with Captain Miranda? It's clear that this character's ethnicity was an afterthought, just like this entire musical. I can believe a Romani character speaking Spanish because there are some pretty decent sized populations currently living in Latin America (most notably Argentina) but Voodoo is a massive stretch due to Romani cultural taboos. It's also not just that: Voodoo is primarily practiced by the descendants of Africans in the Caribbean. Where would she even have learned it from? My hypothesis for what happened is that she was originally meant to be black but the suits saw what was going on in the media at the time with Disney's "Princess & the Frog" and they wanted to distance themselves from that backlash...by being completely offensive to a different minority with less of a media presence. It's also interesting to note that on Wikipedia, she's listed as being an "Amazonian woman" (which means that whoever wrote the page was just as confused as the rest of us).

The "modern" references were also really jarring because they made me keep questioning what time period this was even set in. It's like they weren't even confident that they could keep people's attentions for longer than a minute & expected that to entertain the kids for a bit as a running gag but like most jokes from this musical, they fell painfully flat.

Can't really say much about the rest of the characters because they're just there, being sexist towards Kay sometimes & being painfully bland/unfunny. Then again, this was a 25 minute show - there's only so much you can do in that amount of time. Could it have worked with more time & some rewrites? Who knows?

According to Wikipedia, the theater caught fire before they could transfer the musical back so, that's why they opted to reconsider their business (& hopefully life) choices by not continuing it all on a different stage.

Though speaking of curious things: there's a Neocities page dedicated to the Creature from the Black Lagoon that has the entire musical cast list + replacements. As your videos have shown, being a theater performer inside of a theme park is really not an easy job so, I do hope that they all went on to work on things that they enjoy.

P.S. Can't wait to see whatever mess the Spiderman Musical was. Has there ever been a good Spiderman Musical?