Diary of A Man Out of Time

Land of the Giants No. 7

amanoutoftime — Sat, 15 May 2010 15:44:46 GMT

Nadia Gray, in a promo shot for "Night Without Stars" (1951).

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amanoutoftime — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:24:11 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Those who are tardy do not get fruit cup."

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What Movie Am I Watching?

amanoutoftime — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:17:04 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "No matter how cleverly you sneak up on a mirror, your reflection always looks you straight in the eye."

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What Movie Am I Watching?

amanoutoftime — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:26:00 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Only an idiot could have won this war, and he did."

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Chicks My Dad Dug Cont'd

amanoutoftime — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:35:04 GMT

Jane Greer

Original caption: "HELICOPTER LURE: Rooftop sunbathing isn't as private as it used to be. RKO Radio's Jane Greer, soon appearing in 'Station West,' gets the most out of the sun while helicopter and blimp pilots try to stay on the beam." Photo by Ernest Bachrach, 1948.

Bevy of Beauties No. 60

amanoutoftime — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:30:26 GMT

Left to right: Raquel Welch, Peggy Jacobsen, Edy Williams, and Siv Aberg
promote an episode of NBC's "The Rogues," June 11, 1965. NBC-TV photo.

What Movie Am I Watching?

amanoutoftime — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:20:11 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "I should do something very extroverted and vengeful to you. Honestly, I'm too tired. So, I think I'll transfer you to the undergrowth department, brackens, more shrubs, that sort of thing ... with a 19% cut in salary, back-dated to the beginning of time."

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Smokin' Chicks Cont'd

amanoutoftime — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:44:48 GMT

Joanne Woodward

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amanoutoftime — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:42:24 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "That's right — the dove of peace was a pigeon. A dead pigeon."

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Smokin' Chicks Cont'd

amanoutoftime — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 14:45:12 GMT

Anne Baxter, Cannes, 1953.

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amanoutoftime — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 14:28:53 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Get your fokkin' tentacle out of my face!"

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What Movie Am I Watching?

amanoutoftime — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:12:04 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Robin is better than the girl of my dreams. She's real."

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amanoutoftime — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:14:01 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz? CHICKEN?"

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amanoutoftime — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:59:54 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing."

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Girls With Guns Cont'd

amanoutoftime — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:26:03 GMT

Diane Baker, in "Mirage" (1965).

The Anjanette Comer Files No. 13

amanoutoftime — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:10:09 GMT

Anjanette as Tiara Marshall in "Quick Before It Melts" (1964).

On the MooT's Turntable No. 32

amanoutoftime — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:58:05 GMT

Mon Cosmonaute, four cuts of "Lolita Pop," sung by Elsa,
and orchestrated by Michel Colombier.

Features a cover of "No Milk Today" (a Top Ten hit in the UK for Herman's Hermits).

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amanoutoftime — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:23:37 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Satin lives."

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Smokin' Chicks Cont'd

amanoutoftime — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:05:18 GMT

Anne Francis

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amanoutoftime — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:02:51 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Trivia: Natalie Wood worked as an assistant behind the scenes of this movie. She typed script revisions, shopped for wardrobe and props, and also appeared, well-disguised, as an extra in some crowd scenes.

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What Movie Am I Watching?

amanoutoftime — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:27:46 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "You have to be two people. The saint and the sinner. The librarian and the stripper."

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The Real Balloon Boy

amanoutoftime — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:59:36 GMT

Six-year-old Peter Michaels in a scene from "Moon Walk" (1963), in which
he plays a mischievous boy who gets loose in a Navy balloon rig.

The question is: what would such a rig be used for???? Astronaut training?

And how to get anyone down ... Hollywood! Sheesh.

The Beautiful Dead No. 80

amanoutoftime — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:02:09 GMT

Margarita Sierra

Nice maracas, right?

Born in Madrid in 1936, Mags was an accomplished tap dancer at the age of four.

At 20, she arrived in the U.S. on a nightclub tour, and caused quite a stir with a fiery dance on "The Jack Paar Show."

Her big break came when Warner Bros. executive Bill Orr caught her performance at the Persian Room in New York City. Orr signed her to a contract on the spot, and gave her the starring role of "Cha Cha O'Brien" in the series "Surfside 6" (1960). The show ran two seasons, after which Sierra returned to the club circuit.

Fast-forward to Spring 1963, when Sierra had to undergo open-heart surgery to correct a heart defect. After several months, with her condition worsening, she was hospitalized in Hollywood, where she died on September 6, 1963. She was 27.

What Movie Am I Watching?

amanoutoftime — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:14:05 GMT

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "If you deny what you know, or what you are, or where you are, you deny the simplest part of being alive, and then you die."

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Guilty Pleasures No. 109

amanoutoftime — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:01:51 GMT

My second-favorite, unintentionally funny, sci-fi horror western of all time is "The Beast of Hollow Mountain" (1956), starring long-time MooT fave Patricia Medina as Sarita, the sultry love-interest of an ex-pat American cowpoke, Jimmy Ryan (Guy Madison).

The story (written by Willis O'Brien, the man who designed and animated the original "King Kong") concerns Ryan's discovery that the cattle that keep goin' missing from his Mexican ranch are actually hors d'oeuvres for a local T Rex (actually, a cranky Allosaurus).

Turns out the surly dino shacks up inside a hollow mountain (aptly named Hollow Mountain), and local legend has it that the creature emerges only during times of drought to forage for water, a few tons of steak tartar, and unlucky Mexicans. Is this where the term "peasant food" comes from?

Holy Human Chalupas, Batman!

To make matters worse, the village has been set up right next to a treacherous swamp, said to be cursed and full of deadly pools of quicksand, from which no one dumb enough to enter ever returns. Someone obviously missed the real estate seminar on location, location, location!

Sound like the cinematic equivalent of a hot, steaming cow-pie?

You might think so, but I encourage all MooT followers to give "Beast" a chance, It's not that bad, yet is cheesy enough to inspire the full MST3K treatment.

Hell, it was filmed in "Nassour Regiscope." So, it's got that going for it. Now, if only I knew who Nassour Regiscope was.

Regiscope was actually a fancy name for replacement animation, essentially animation created by filming multiple, rigid models instead of one super-articulated puppet.

In this case, the models were all hollow clay figurines (fired in a kiln just like the kind you may have used in elementary school, if you went to elementary school before the Eighties), sculpted in various poses and painted to match a larger version, as well as a rubber suit some actor wore if closeups were needed.

I wonder if Art Clokey saw this, and Eureka'd "Claymation!"

Nassour refers to stop-motion guru Edward Nassour, who co-directed "Beast" with live-action director Ismael Rodríguez. It was he who supervised the painstaking process of shooting some 20 different clay miniatures of the Allosaurus to create the illusion of a running and jumping monster (these apparently sold for $20,000 just last month). Many scenes in "Beast" are combos of traditional stop-action and Regiscope footage of the clay minis. The result is a monster that looks like it's doing "The Jerk" — when it's not pulling a muscle, that is. Makes me wish story writer O'Brien had had more to do with animating the beast, since he did a far better job with the creature in "The Black Scorpion" (1957).

Early on, Nassour did try to lure investors by describing Regiscope as a "computer-controlled" process whereby "actuating impulses" were fed to a mechanical figure, thus "bringing it to life for the cameras." (So that's how they coaxed a performances out of Tab Hunter!) This *was* Hollywood, remember, and that was probably the 380th lie told in that town at a particular quarter-second during the Spring of '56.

"The Beast of Hollow Mountain" is actually a quite charming and colorful example of post-Korean War kiddie matinee fodder made for undemanding eight-year olds. It packs a lot of cheesy action into just 78 minutes, along with a lot of treacly exposition to get you to care about the characters.

Yet, oddly, it's superior in a dozen ways to the recent "Land of the Lost," mostly because of its way higher cute factor and blazing retro-cool color palette — if you're lucky enough to find a version that's not washed out, that is. The costumes and locations are the stuff widescreen Technicolor was made for, but most of the versions available on the Internet are dogged by poor focus and exaggerated color shifts caused by sloppy conversions. The original had its problems in both areas as well, since the composite process used was not sophisticated, and merging live and process shots in color — in CinemaScope no less — required extra care, which its budget and schedule wouldn't allow.

"Beast" has a good-natured self-awareness at its core, under the candy coating so to speak, that reminds me of the unpretentiously lovable "Son of Godzilla."

And every so often, scene after scene sans a beast, the camera pulls back and shows ... the mountain!

Hey, maybe this thing was supposed to be called "Mountain of the Hollow Beast"?

Madison — our hero — is as charismatic a piece of man-cake as you'll find in Fifties B's. Along with the voloptuous Medina, he carries this thing as "story" — for what that's worth.

Okay, so he does look a little *too* handsome and campy-debonair in his brightly colored Roy Rogers shirts. Just how did he recruit the troupe of muscular cow-hunks that comprise his fun-lovin', ass-slappin' team of ranch-hands? There's not a Wishbone, soup-in-the-beard-type in the lot. They all look like varnished extras in a Cyd Charisse number in an Old West musical.

Amazingly, Madison's out-ponced on "Beast's" virtual cock-walk by a band of dandy Mexican Vaqueros, whose elegant charro suits, hallucinatorily bright silk neckerchiefs, and exquisitely detailed sombreros evoke regalia designed during an all-night tequila jag with Mr. Blackwell and Liberace. (Maybe they shoulda called it "The Beast of Brokeback Mountain" based on all the male plumage on display.)

And the camera pans the desolation of the landscape, revealing ... the mountain!

Medina is a walking dream that mixes Jane Russell with Faith Domerogue. I do so like my English-Spanish spitfires in bullet bras. More notable, though, is the fact that her character has more resourcefulness and independence than most period monster-movie eye candy we're used to. She's resilient, sassy, brassy, and tough. When she falls and twists her ankle when running from the beast (a given occurrence), she hisses at the beast. She's no whiner! No stock tape-loop screaming for her.

Plus she calls Ryan "Señor Cheemy." How cute is that?

And then the shot widens, and we see ... "The Mountain."

The rather formulaic plot furnishes a vintage red herring in the form of evil Enrique Rios (Eduardo Noriega), a rival rancher-racketeer who is engaged to Medina. The jealous and possessive Rios has an ... ahem, a beef ... with Ryan over the fact that his wife-to-be is in deep smit with the fancy-pantsed gringo. Ryan, whose competitive male dander is instantly up, accuses Rios of poaching his cows. The two adversaries hitch up their chaps and snarl at each other, in a bizarre dueling male camel-toe moment that never explodes into proper Western fisticuffs.

Did I mention that there's an annoying brat too? I mean really annoying. I mean he makes Short Round from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" seem like a well-behaved delight.

Panchito is his name (I told you he was little). He's the son of the village drunk, Pancho, who ventures into the swamp and is never seen again. When you get a dose of the whiny Panchito, you'll chalk up his Dad's disappearance as suicide. Damn! There goes the comic relief.

They search high and low for Pancho (I've already signed Artie Lange for the part in the remake), which brings them to the edge of the swamp. The camera lingers on all that's left of him, his sombrero, floating atop a pool of quicksand, then tilts up to show ... the mountain!

The Jurassic rustler — who doesn't appear on screen until the film's final 20 minutes — has the longest, reddest tongue I've ever seen on film (except for footage of KISS in concert). Did it swallow a live octopus? But that's not the fakest-looking aspect of what is a pretty striking stop-motion creation (you must consider that the great Ray Harryhausen didn't have a hand in the production). That award goes to the obvious painted rubber boot feet used by an actor in an Allosaurus costume for certain shots.

Oddly, those goofy feet are the focus of numerous closeups — it's one of the few times the production values really veer into the cheesy Godzilla-Gumby end of the rubber creature scale. In those herky-jerky moments, I feel like we're watching a Groinpullasaurus with back spasms doing the Macarena.

The SFX team of Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt ("Kronos" and "Atomic Submarine") aren't close to being in Harryhausen's league, but they give us a serviceable if unsophisticated monstrosity most of the time. If you're in the 3rd grade, that is.

"Hey, this Mexican McNugget is as tough as plastic ...
and the serape is utterly flavorless."

I do love this beast of the empty hillock regardless of all of my sarcastic comments. And I think it's a boy, actually. A young monster, just like the beast in "Cloverfield." He's just so mischievous. He's feisty. He causes a cattle stampede (actually, speeding up the camera does) — to, what, tenderize his meal? And each cow he catches is devoured with uncommon joy. He (thankfully) terrorizes little Panchito for shits and giggles. Smelling a trap, he clumsily moonwalks backwards out of a some swamp goo. He just doesn't like the feeling of mud between his toes.

When Sarita and Panchito hole up in a house, he runs around it woo-wooing like a dopey dervish before sticking his snout through the roof — just to drive them batty, I think. He slides down a dirt embankment on his prodigious butt and chases after a horse. He fights like a mental patient. Through it all he wiggles that tongue crazily and brays like a cross between a cougar and a hyena.

Turns out it's the shortest reign of terror of any movie beast ever, clocking in at around 14 minutes.

"TBoHM" certainly inspired Harryhausen's "The Valley of Gwangi" (1969), which turns out to be my favorite — and perhaps the best — Western monster movie ever made (and the full realization of O'Brien's tale). D'ya think Gila Golan, "Gwangi's" version of Sarita as I call her, has something to do with that?

Best line? When Ryan opines "You know, I've always believed that sombreros were the goofiest-looking hats ever invented."

Watch "Beast" here, in its entirety, as it resides in the public domain.

In the meantime, a few more pix of funky cool Medina might help explain my gushing ...

That hunk of man up there with Patty is Lex Barker; the still is from "Duel on the Mississippi" (1955), in which she played a man-eater named Lili Scarlet.

And where was this hot tamale born? Why, where else but Liverpool, England!

P.S. Patty turned 90 this past July.