Despite coming along 19 years after the Bride of Frankenstein and 13 years after Wolf Man, the Creature From The Black Lagoon still manages to hold its place amongst the iconic Universal classic monsters canon. Without the source material (admittedly, Wolf Man didn't have a direct literary source either) or the gothic stylings of a Frankenstein or Invisible Man, what the Creature From The Black Lagoon gave us was a new benchmark for costume design and a style that defined post-war monster movies - but while the cult of B-movies is seen as a badge of honour these days, to call Creature From The Black Lagoon anything other than an A-movie of it's time would be to sell it a long way short.