The Creature dies because that’s what happens to monsters in movies.
#7 YEAR ITCH PART 1 CODE#
The censorship of the Production Code had something to do with thwarting these characters’ wishes, but audiences of the time would have had reason to accept the conventional approach anyway. Sherman, as per the movie’s title, has been married for seven years and has grown restless and bored with his stable family life. The Creature has been described as an adolescent, bewildered by his body’s new power and inarticulate about his drives. They represent two somewhat different categories of male lust. The Creature and Tom Ewell’s Richard Sherman are both leering, awkward, and ultimately doomed suitors. The primary similarity is that these films are both about buried desires, in classic 1950s Hollywood fashion. But I submit that there’s at least a little more to link these films than meets the eye. In considering Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Seven Year Itch for a “Double Feature” post, I honestly wondered how much I would have to say.
#7 YEAR ITCH PART 1 MOVIE#
The reference is just a tossed-off gag in a movie that also contains of-the-moment references to Riot in Cell Block 11 and From Here to Eternity. A latter-day Universal creature feature released the previous year, the film might have attracted Wilder with its mellifluous, pulpy title alone.
Even easier to forget is how this scene begins: with Monroe and Ewell exiting an air-conditioned movie theater showing Creature from the Black Lagoon. It’s easy to forget that this scene is just the most memorable example of a running theme in Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch: the diligent efforts of Monroe’s character to keep cool in a sweltering New York July, careless of the effect her body has on middle-aged married man Tom Ewell. The career-defining image of Marilyn Monroe standing on the subway grate, her dress billowing upward from the rush of a passing train, is the rare kind of iconic moment that swallows its surrounding movie whole.
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