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The Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy began with Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), starring Richard Carlson and Richard Denning. It was directed by Jack Arnold, who was responsible for some of the best of the inexpensive horror movies of the 1950s, starting with It Came from Outer Space (1953), and including Tarantula (1956) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). The most interesting and effective of his productions was the The Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy, which concerns a team of scientists and entrepreneurs that travels up the Amazon and discovers the gill-man, a prehistoric hominid with gills who can also live for at least brief periods out of the water.

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Although the plot was straightforward—successive attempts to capture the creature fail, sometimes with disastrous consequences—there was considerable sympathy for the gill-man. The creature itself is not a routine monster but rather is attempting to preserve its own life and freedom, and it does not turn aggressive until it is being hunted. The costume is surprisingly realistic, the attacks on the riverboat are nicely done, and the underwater sequences are well photographed and almost mesmeric at times. The gill-man became one of Universal Studios' more-famous characters, but the novelization by John Russell Fearn gained little attention and never had a U.S. edition.

The first sequel, Revenge of the Creature (1955), starring John Agar and Lori Nelson, was also directed by Arnold. The creature is captured and imprisoned this time, but a young woman behaves sympathetically and becomes his only friend. When he escapes, he—having misunderstood her motives—kidnaps her. Pursued across Florida, the creature finally escapes after relinquishing his prize. The movie is also noteworthy for the brief appearance of a young Clint Eastwood, playing the comic relief as a disorganized lab technician.

The trilogy ended with The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), directed by John Sherwood, starring Rex Reason, and featuring Don Megowan as the creature. Captured again, the gill-man is subjected to a surgical technique that transforms him into an air-breather. The plans of a wealthy but ruthless man go awry when the creature breaks free once again and resolves to return to the ocean rather than adapt, even if that means suffocation. The third film added little that was new and lacks the rapid pacing of its predecessors, but the portrayal of the human characters as the villains and the monster as the wronged victim was quite unusual for that time. Unlike other Universal monsters, there have been no subsequent remakes, but there are currently plans to launch a series of original novels based on the creature.

A novelization was released under the name of Carl Dreadstone, but it differed considerably from the movie version. The creature was more obviously intelligent. Ramsay Campbell has written some novels under that name, but it a house name, and Campbell states that he did not write this one and does not know who did.