The Legend of Blood Mountain

I remember seeing this film in 1965, I was a young girl. I had nightmares for months from this film. I think this was the first horror film I ever saw. I grew up in GA near stone mountain. I have told my children of this movie for years. I would love to see it again. Funny thing I have turned into quite a horror movie watcher. Stephen King is my favorite author. Maybe this movie had a bigger impact than I thought.

Bestoink Dooley (George Ellis) was the host of The Friday Night Big Movie Shocker! shown at 11:00 PM on the Atlanta area CBS Affiliate WAGA.Later it was also shown on Saturday mornings at the end of the "kiddie" line up. George and his brother later purchased and managed the Ansley Mall Film Forum in Atlanta. As bad as "Blood Mountain" might have been, his taste in films was excellent. I saw numerous cult films, such as "A Boy and His Dog", and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the Forum, along with other great movies like Zefferelli's "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" and "Ballad of Narayama". I'd love to get a video of "Blood Mountain", are there any out there?

This is a rarely seen movie and that is a shame. It's very regional, having been made in the SouthEast for primarily an audience in the area, but it does deserve to have wider recognition for the mid 1960s B Movie classic it is. Atlanta area TV Horror Host Bestoink Dooley plays a copyboy out on the biggest story of his life. The mountain is bleeding and people are being killed up there. What follows is one of the wildest movies since Ed Wood. The "Monster" looks like a guy in a brown leotard with a hornet's nest stuck on his head, cottonballs glued everywhere on his body and two tails on either side of his hips. We are talking garage-made monster here. Bestoink is shown as a bumbler who eventually does good despite himself. Words really can't do this movie justice, had Michael Medved seen this movie, it would be 1000 times more famous than it is and would be on the top five of any list of worst movies ever made. Highly recommended, if you can find it.

My first wife and I were dancers in the beach party scene with Marriane Gordon. I worked with George Ellis who played Bestoink Dooley at Dimension Incorporated in Atlanta, GA and he offered me and my wife the bit parts in the movie. The beach party scene which lasted just a few minutes took all night to film. BTW This movie was one of the top 10 grossing movies of 1965, by grossing over a Million dollars. I assume it played at a lot of drive-ins. I have a DVD copy of the movie that I have shown to my family until they were sick of it. George Ellis also starred in "Moonrunners" that movie was a prequel to "The Dukes of Hazzard" TV show.

"Blood Mountain is bleeding again," according to a TV news report, and middle-aged copy boy Bestoink Dooley sees his chance for a promotion. Poking around the mountain woods, he runs into geologist Dr. Stinson, who dismisses the phenomenon as "rock rust." When a hunter turns up dead with a torn-out heart and his "blood sucked dry out," Dooley correctly assumes the Blood Mountain monster is responsible. It finally shows up and kills a few people.

If you see one camp/cult/crap movie this year, go out of your way to rent or buy this jaw-dropping schlock, filmed in 1965 but released on video in the 1990s under the title DEMON HUNTER by Camp Video, and made to look like just another routine horror quickie.

As most of the monster stuff unreels in the last ten minutes, we must wade through a lot of inept, low-ball comedy shtick for about an hour. The opening third of the movie introduces Dooley (George Ellis, who looks kinda like an Italian Joe Besser) and shows him, well, doing things. We watch as he prepares for bed, goes to sleep, has a dream, wakes up. . . Performed in the manner of a backwoods high school play.

All the dialog is dubbed and the soundtrack consists of laughable "library music" (you can even hear someone dropping a needle on an LP before the opening scene). The monster suit is hilariously tacky -- the actor wears what looks like a wasp's nest on his head, lambskin chaps, cotton balls glued to his navel and chest, and two big rat-tails on the thighs! Everyone says "Bestoink" with a straight face, the women have classic 60s coifs, and there are footstep sounds on the soundtrack even though no one is walking around. Decatur University of Cosmetology gets credit for the great hair.

THE LEGEND OF BLOOD MOUNTAIN, filmed at Stone Mountain Memorial Park, near Atlanta, Georgia, was probably the first Bigfoot movie. See it.