Lizards and Lassos

This entry is in celebration of Legends of Western Cinema Week

The hosts of the event are: Along the Brandywine, Hamlette's Soliloquy and Meanwhile, in Rivendell.

 

A note: As usual, I am pushing the envelope here. Our hosts were looking for classic westerns, and I actually like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood and some other classic western actors. But I like to see just how far I can take the original theme and see if I can get a reaction. Thus, cowboys vs. dinosaurs. 

 

Dinosaurs crop up in the most unusual of circumstances.  The creatures dominated the landscape millions of years ago, but the pesky critters just seemed to be unwilling to let the past go.  

The first dinosaurs to appear on film were mostly set in prehistoric times, the actual dinosaur age. As near as I can tell, the first movie to have dinosaurs outside of their natural historic period was The Lost World, a 1925 silent film based on a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (yes, he did publish stuff other than his most famous work featuring Sherlock Holmes). And several years later, in 1948, a similar story was filmed featuring dinosaurs on an Unknown Island. Both involved finding a heretofore unknown modern area of the earth that still had dinosaurs living on it.

Most of the films that came out during the history of dinosaurs fell into one of the two categories, prehistoric features or modern areas that still had some remnants. A couple of my favorites from the 70's The Land That Time Forgot and The People That Time Forgot were set in the WWI era and featured a forgotten land under the icecaps, based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. You should check those out.

And we can't forget that Godzilla is basically a dinosaur that had been dormant for centuries but was resurrected by a nuclear bomb. And the Jurassic Park movies involved modern scientists using genetic material to recreate dinosaurs for a theme park.

Two movies that I watched way back in the 70's on UHF stations come to mind, though, which featured cowboys battling dinosaurs. Those more or less fit into that of the "modern times" category, despite the relative span of time between the movie release and the actual time period.  And they feature some rather "exotic" ways for the characters to deal with these historic anomalies.

 

 

 

Valley of the Gwangi  (1969):

   

In the pre-credits, the scene opens up with a group of people searching the desert for a lost friend. They find him, on the verge of dying, looking like he's been in some kind of monstrous fight.  The only thing he has is a bag with something in it squealing like the dickens, and his only word before dying is "Gwangi!" An old woman warns the leader of the search party to leave the bag and let whatever is in return to the valley from whence it came, but he just calls her a silly old fool and ignores her dire warning.

Wild West rodeo appearing in a town in Mexico. The star of the show is also the host of the show, one T. J. Breckenridge (Gila Golan). T. J. has a trick pony show where she rides it on a diving board and jumps into a big vat of water. (Entertaining people was pretty easy back in those days).

 

Onto the scene comes a former lover of T. J., Tuck Kirby (James Franciscus). Tuck still has the hots for T. J., but holy ego-deflation, she rejects him. As well as his offer to buy out T. J.'s circus. Or at least her prize wonder horse that she uses in her diving trick. But T. J. is not impressed with Tuck or his offer.

 

Run out of town, so to speak, Tuck meets up with a British scientist,  Professor Bromley (Laurence Naismith),  out in the desert looking for dinosaur bones.  The professor shows Tuck a fossil he found which includes a footprint (or hoof print) of a creature Bromley refers to as an eohippus, an ancestor of the modern day horse, only the eohippus was much smaller. He relates to Tuck that his finances have grown slim in his quest to search for more proof that the eohippus existed alongside prehistoric man.

 

Meanwhile back at the circus a fellow circus hand, Carlos (Gustavo Rojo), {the same guy who told the old woman to go fly a kite in the opening} approaches T. J. and tries to convince her that this new exhibit he has brought her, referred to as "El Diablo" is the ticket to bigger fame and fortune. Tuck has come back, along with a young boy he has befriended, Lope (Curtis Arden). T. J. is still not receptive to Tuck's offer, but when Lope jumps into the bull ring to try to become an impromptu matador and finds himself in danger, Tuck jumps in to rescue him.  This act of heroism, of course, causes T. J. to immediately become re-enamored with Tuck. Enough so she decides to let Tuck see her new exhibit, "El Diablo" which turns out to be a real live eohippus!

 

Of course, Tuck sneaks in Bromley to have a look and leading to  visions of fame, fortune and a knighthood for Bromley. But other plans are in the works.  Professor Bromley meets the old foolish woman and her gypsy clan, who concoct a plan to steal the eohippus and return it to it's home. Of course, the old woman is only doing it to prevent a curse from falling upon her people, but Bromley is trying also the trick her in showing him the valley in which the eohippus was found.

 

Carlos, who tried to stop the act, is knocked out, but tells T. J. that Tuck was involved in the kidnapping. She and her partner give chase after Tuck, who is not involved, really, but is following Bromley and the clan. He catches up with Bromley who uses all his charms to convince Tuck to come in on his side; fame and fortune for Tuck and scientific notoriety for Bromley for a discovery of a hidden cache of prehistoric creatures that are bound to be in this hidden valley.

The gypsies release the eohippus and let him find his way home, but Tuck and the rest of the crew find it went into a hidden passage. On inspection they find it comes out in the hidden valley.  On coming into the valley they are attacked by a pterodactyl (flying dinosaur) . It looks like they have found a lost world of prehistorical creatures. But that's not the only creature. They also find an ornithominus, which is eventually attacked by an allosaurus (our titular "Gwangi").

The others are committed to get out of Dodge, but the professor, ever the scientist refuses to leave, at least until he comes face to face with Gwangi... In the mix also comes a stegosaurus. (It seems the producers and Ray Harryhausen (the stop motion animator of these creatures) decided to go all out on this endeavor.

 

 Despite the fact that Gwangi seems to be a destructive force to be reckoned with, the crew eventually captures it and takes it back to the circus, with visions of dollar signs dancing in their eyes. Obviously these people have never seen any of the previous films or even future films that pit a prehistoric behemoth against a public spectacle.  But, you know how all this is going to end don't you?

 

 

Ray Harryhausen was behind the stop motion in this endeavor. As usual, his work is pretty spectacular, taken in the context of the time it was made. Cinema goers today might be apt to laugh, since it doesn't compare to what can be done with CGI. 

 

 

The Beast from Hollow Mountain (1956): 

 In the beginning of the film we see three cowboys following a trail. Just in case you need to know what this movie is about, we get a voice over from the narrator:

"Deep in the back country of Mexico, there rises a grim and mysterious mountain, which is said to be hollow. It's interior has never been explored because, at it's base, lies an impassable swamp. The superstitious link of the hollow mountain and the swamp and their folk legends as places of evil... great evil. They tell of a strange animal from the dawn of creation that inhabits the area, coming forth to prowl and pillage only in time of drought. They tell of man and cattle disappearing without trace. But perhaps these are only tales.. tales told by simple people."

 

The three cowboys consist of Jimmy (Guy Madison) and Felipe (Carlos Rivas), co-owners of a cattle ranch, and Manuel (Jose Chavez). Manuel serves as the superstitious native in this piece.  He spouts the typical "we can't go there, we need to turn back, no one has ever come back alive" narrative we come to expect from the uneducated masses in these films.

 

Just after rescuing Felipe from a quicksand trap, Jimmy and Felipe find a dead cow, drowned in the swamp. Hot headed Felipe is convinced that rustlers are responsible for luring their cattle into the swamp, specifically Enrique Rios (Eduardo Noriega). Jimmy tells Felipe to stay calm and not use his gun instead of his brains.  Jimmy is going to town to visit the top dog, or alcalde, Don Pedro (Julio Villareal). 

While there, Enrique comes on the scene and we almost get our first fight but Don Pedro breaks it up. It seems that Enrique has it in for Jimmy not only because he is in competition for cattle sales, but Enrique's girlfriend / future wife is showing an interest in this American. Sarita (Patricia Medina) is showing way too much interest in Jimmy and Enrique thinks Jimmy is trying to move in on his woman.

 

In his effort to get Jimmy to throw in the towel Enrique has convinced Jimmy's farm hands to quit, ostensibly because of their superstitions about the haunted mountain nearby. But Jimmy gets Pancho (Pascual Garcia Pena) and his son, Panchito (Mario Navarro) to come on board. Jimmy and Felipe are still investigating the disappearance of cattle and are absolutely convinced that Enrique is behind all of the bad things that are happening.

 

 

But the truth of the matter is that there is another culprit. It takes  a full hour of the film for it's appearance in the film, but the real culprit behind the disappearances is an allosaurus, a remnant from prehistoric times. 

 

In terms of the concept of being believable, this creature, I have to note, is not the quality stop-motion animation that Ray Harryhausen  brought to the previous film in this blog entry. For one thing, this dinosaur can move like the wind. You might find yourself laughing at the chase scenes, and the closeups of just the feet of the creature are obviously some guy in dinosaur feet walkingaround. The creature makes it's way into the ranch and stampedes the cattle. Which helps Enrique's plan since he had actually planned a stampede anyway to cause Jimmy to lose his cattle.

Jimmy rides out to try to battle with the allosaurus and Enrique ends up showing up too, although not necessarily to help; he is still looking for a way to drive Jimmy out of Dodge. And of course our hero helps out Enrique when he gets in trouble and is on the verge of becoming the allosaurus' next meal. (Gotta wonder about this dinosaur... it seems to have an appetite that is never sated....)   

For the first hour of this movie it gradually plays out like a typical two reeler from the early cowboy pictures days. You get the good guy rancher, Jimmy, who just wants to make a decent go in the cattle business. You get the sneaky bad guy, Enrique, who just doesn't like the competition. You get a love interest and some sneaky goings on behind the scenes.  In fact, without the injection of a dinosaur into the mix, this could easily be mistaken for one of those generic westerns that the low-rent studios like Monogram and Mascot and Republic studios put out in the 30's and 40's.

The film was originally conceived as an idea by Willis O'Brien of King Kong fame, but was shelved for years. When it finally got a green light, O'Brien, who was still alive at the time, was considered for the job of special effects, but it eventually went to another team of artists. 

Beast will never be mistaken for a truly high quality film. The monster itself is pretty shoddy and the acting of the humans never really gets above a level of adequate. But if you like those old poverty ow westerns, the western part of the movie is decent enough. My only issue is that, as mentioned above, that dinosaur seems to be pretty damn quick. I kept waiting for it to roar "Epa! Epa! Epa! Andale! Andale! Andale! Arriba! Arriba! Arriba!" like the cartoon character Speedy Gonzalez. Which wouldn't have necessarily been out of place since this movie was an American and Mexican co-production, and filmed in Mexico to boot.

Well, folks, the old Plymouth is warmed up and ready to make the run home. Gotta detour a little south to avoid that swamp, but I think I might make it.  Drive safely.

Quiggy