The Beast of Hollow Mountain

This cowboy and dinosaur movie is better than it's reputation. Though moving slowly in places, it is capably acted and has enough action and plot development to keep both me and my 7 year old son interested. (It did lose the 4 year old periodically)

My only addition to other's previous comments are that I do feel the film holds up fairly well considering it's age. The female lead is surprisingly liberated, being no-one's useless sex object. She manages to make independent decisions, shows that she is quite capable of taking care of herself, and does not panic in the face of danger. When the beast of the title appears she does not scream and panic or fall helplessly to the ground as so many 50's heroines would do, instead her reaction is one of realistic shock and brief fear, followed by quick and decisive action. She even manages to evade the monster for an extended period without tripping or twisting her ankle. during this whole movie she does not do anything stupid or anything contrived to serve as a plot device.

The hero is also fairly realistic. He is neither a chauvinist nor a stereotype. We see that while he is determined to fight for his own rights, he will concede and consider a course of action that will benefit those people he cares for. He is strong and confident without being overly macho, and he is intelligent and thoughtful.

I found the other characters were treated with respect, also. There is no odious comedy relief. Even the drunken father is handled with care and not a caricature. The little boy is likeable, not annoying as is often the case in this sort of vehicle.

I found the wedding festival, which annoyed one reviewer, to be colorful and entertaining. A welcome surprise in a movie of this type.

Finally, although we are forced to wait a long time for the appearance of our monster, and the first appearance is much too abrupt, once it appears it is almost never off the screen and is certainly entertaining. Nit pickers will of course have a field day with the effects. They are, after all, none too realistic. However, the effects do have a unique sort of charm.

The true nature of all of these effect sequences is clouded in rumour and innuendo. It is my understanding from various interviews and articles that when the producers bought the story outline from Willis O'Brien that they also purchased some test sequences which he had created. The rest of the scenes were then produced by the method described in other reviews whereas static sculptures in various positions were substituted frame by frame. If you watch closely it does seem that there may be more than one dinosaur which do not quite match each other, and a few scenes stand out in their fluidity. The running sequences mentioned by another reviewer are obviously much smoother of motion than most of the jerkier scenes. Of course the big rubber-boot feet are obvious.

As for the tongue. Both of my kids loved it! Kids know fun when they see it!

Just a little south of the Texas border, the cattle ranchers are having trouble with an unusual rustler -- a Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is one of the few non-Harryhausen stop-motion films produced during the 1950s. The original concept was bought from Willis O'Brien by Edward and William Nassour, but they reneged on their promise to hire O'Brien to do the animation. The Nassours did it themselves. The animation is extremely rough, but the model of the tyrannosaurus is pretty good (except for its excessively long tongue -- it looks like a long red tentacle!)

Be prepared for a long wait before the dinosaur shows up; the first two thirds of the film is pure Western soap opera and endless filler scenes of a Mexican fiesta. The dinosaur doesn't actually make an appearance until the last twenty minutes of the film. The climax, however, is action packed -- a running battle on the open range between a hungry dinosaur and the cowboy hero, Guy Madison (star of TV's `Wild Bill Hickok' from 1954 to 1957). Patricia Medina is the lovely heroine.

Watch for a scene in which the tyrannosaurus runs after a galloping horse; the animation was done with a series of plaster models, each one posed at a different point in the running reptiles stride. Special effects processing was handled by Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt (`Kronos' and `Atomic Submarine').

TRIVIA NOTE FOR TRUE SCI-FI FANS: The T-Rex in this movie is just one of many sci-fi monsters that were defeated by actors who achieved fame in cowboy roles. In `Tarantula' the spider is destroyed by a bomb dropped by pilot Clint Eastwood. The Martians in `War of the Worlds' are pitted against Gene Barry, star of TV's `Bat Materson'. The ants in `Them' are gunned down by James Arness of `Gunsmoke'. `The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' dies from a radioactive bullet fired by Lee Van Cleef, star of `The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' (among others). `The Blob' proves to me no match for Steve McQueen, star of `Wanted: Dead or Alive'.

Other famous cowboys featured in 1950s sci-fi movies include Eric Fleming (`Rawhide') in `The Conquest of Space' and `Queen of Outer Space', Michael Landon (`Bonanza') in `I was a Teenaged Werewolf', and Ken Curtis (`Gunsmoke') in `The Killer Shrews'. Sci-fi veteran Richard Carlson never achieved fame as a cowboy star, but he did get to play a cowboy in Ray Harryhausen's faithful 1968 version of the ORIGINAL cowboy-versus-dinosaur idea -- which was first thought up my Willis O'Brien back in the 1930s; `Valley of Gwangi', twenty years before `Beast of Hollow Mountain'!

This movie is scripted by Willis O'Brien ,who obviously thought so much of it ,that he used it again in 1969 for the superior The Valley of Gwangi It is a curiosity among movies, being a science fiction and Western hybrid .Mexican based rancher Jimmy -woodenly played by Guy Madison -believes that his dead cattle are the result of predators .He is thinking "Mountain lion " or "coyote " maybe .Wrong!Its a T-Rex and the pattern then follows the standard monster movie template -capture and escape ,rampage and eventually happy ever after resolution . The monster effects are okay for the era but completely overshadowed by the genius of Ray Harryhausen ,employed in the remake .Add somewhat muddy colour and you have a movie whose technical side is deficient by today's standards It still remains worth watching however if only for its being such a rare commodity in combining monster movie and Western

Back in the 1950s, the big family weekend outing would be the drive-in movies. "It came from beneath the Sea", "The Alligator People", "Earth vs the Flyimg Saucers", "1984", "The Dam Busters", "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake", "Love Slaves of the Amazons", etc. and (when I was 8 or 9) "The Beast from Hollow Mountain". I finally caught it again on DVR on TCM Thur 27 Jun 2013. For what is billed as the first Cinemascope and Color dinosaur movie, "Beast" has rough goodness.

And it is better than I remember. Surprised me. The dinosaur effects are some what better than "Dinosaurus!" 1960 (apparently the reviewers panning the FX have not seen "Dinosaurus!"), but it is not as good as what Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen did together in Irwin Allen's "Animal World" 1956. I think the "Beast..." FX were billed as RegiScope animation in depth.

I have read that Willis O'Brien's "cowboys and dinosaurs" idea had been kicking around since before his "Mighty Joe Young" another movie where O'Brien and Harryhausen worked together. And after O'Brien's death, Harryhausen decided to make his mentor's unmade pet project as "The Valley of Gwangi".

The dinosaur in "Beast..." appears late and the conflict between the gringo rancher Ryan from Texas and the Mexican rancher Enrique, and the growing romance between Ryan and Sarita, Enrique's betrothed, occupies the first two thirds or three fourths of the movie. Mysterious deaths of cattle are attributed to rustlers and the ranchers' rivalry. But after the steer-chomping Beast makes his appearance, he has lotsa screen time in the last part of the film. (OK, I concede the tongue gets to be a bit much in some scenes. Looks to me like the tongue was rotoscoped onto the sequences shot with replacement animation.)

What has stayed with me from seeing this film over fifty years ago, is the scene where Sarita and the kid Panchito are besieged in a cabin by the Beast. That was scary then, and is still is a moment (or that may be my nostalgia acting up again).

When looking through a book of film reviews you would (as I've found) not always find this film. It's minor, old and unacclaimed, and as a result largely unknown. It's worth a look, though. While most reviews would not rank it at all highly, and while it's hardly 'Godzilla' or 'King Kong', it's not that bad. The build up and Mexican scenery promise much, and the story (about a strange beast eating ranchers' sheep in a small Mexican town) does have its fair share of suspense. However, the climax, marred by awful special effects (due to the low budget) lets the whole thing down. This film has its good points, so watch it, but don't expect to be overwhelmed.