March 5, 2018 marks the sixty-fourth anniversary of the release of the Universal classic THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, which makes it all the more wonderful that a dark fantasy film heavily inspired by THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON won Best Picture at the Academy Awards just as the day was getting started.
I've been saying that January 23, 2018 was the biggest day for horror since THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS won Best Picture in 1992, as that was the day when it was announced that Guillermo del Toro's CREATURE homage THE SHAPE OF WATER was up for 13 awards at this year's Oscars ceremony and Jordan Peele's social thriller GET OUT was up for 4 awards.
January 23rd has already been surpassed, because at the Oscars last night THE SHAPE OF WATER and GET OUT both won some major awards.
While GET OUT came up short in the Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Daniel Kaluuya) categories, it did win in one very important category: Peele took home an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
There would have been a lot of controversy if the Screenplay award had gone to THE SHAPE OF WATER, which has been struck with a plagiarism lawsuit. There is no controversy in a win for GET OUT, and it warms my heart to see the Academy acknowledge a genre script as the best of the year.
The Oscars went to other films in most of the categories THE SHAPE OF WATER was nominated in, but it did win for Production Design and Set Decoration (Paul Denham Austerberry, Shane Vieau, Jeff Melvin) and Score (Alexandre Desplat) along the way to winning the last awards of the night.
Screenplay controversy avoided, the Academy awarded Guillermo del Toro for the excellent work he did in bringing THE SHAPE OF WATER to life on the screen, giving our fellow monster kid the Best Director award and naming THE SHAPE OF WATER Best Picture.
A movie in which a woman falls in love with a cat-eating fish man from the Amazon won Best Picture. I don't know what to say other than… hooray for Hollywood! And hooray for horror.