‘The Shape of Water’: 1950s creature feature meets 2017 allegory Director Guillermo del Toro’s allegory bears his fetishes for monsters and surrealistic environments.

“The Shape of Water” is an endearing, even haunting film from an artist who manages to bend even the hoariest B-movie tropes to fit his idiosyncratic, deeply humanistic imagination.

The sea creature, played by Doug Jones, left, and Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins, in “The Shape of Water.” (Fox Searchlight Pictures) ...

I love 50s creature features.This is less an announcement and more a statement of the obvious. These flicks always found their way to AMC’s Monsterfest back in my youth — WAY back in my youth ...

Less a movie than a conjuring, "The Shape of Water" plunges viewers into a mossy, aquamarine world of dreams and taboo desires, its contours as a wistful fable adjusted more than slightly for very ...

The subject of today's column, suggested by a reader, has all the makings of a 1950s creature feature: “It Came From Beneath the St. Joseph: The Curse of the Slithering Serpent” or some such ...

1950s creature-feature clunker M y household watched the live version of Grease on TV recently (I can sing “Summer Nights” as off-key as the next joker), and it put me in a 1950s frame of mind. So I ...

Filmed in aqueous greens and blues, its design dripping with kitschy nostalgia, "The Shape of Water" takes its cues from Golden Age Hollywood musicals, Bible epics and 1950s creature features.