4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Since, as my sister has already pointed out, today is Dinosaur Day, it only makes it sense to continue to pay tribute to everyone’s favorite prehistoric marvels. It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Dinosaur Films
The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1918, dir by Willis O’Brien, DP: Willis O’Brien)
One Million Years B.C. (1966, dir by Don Chaffey, DP: Wilkie Cooper)
Planet of the Dinosaurs (1978, dir by James Shea, DP: Henning Schellerup)
Carnosaur (1993, dir by Adam Simon, DP: Keith Holland)
The folks who brought you KING KONG – producer Merian C. Cooper, director Ernest Shoedsack, writer Ruth Rose, animator Willis O’Brien – returned sixteen years later to the giant ape theme with MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, a classic fantasy that can stand on its own. Though the film usually gets lumped into the horror genre, it’s more a fable than a fright fest, a beautifully made flight of fancy for children of all ages, and one of my personal favorites.
In deepest darkest Africa, little Jill Young buys a cute baby gorilla from the natives. Twelve years later, impresario Max O’Hara, along with rodeo wrangler Gregg and his crew, travel to The Dark Continent in search of exotic animal acts for a new show he’s producing, when they come face to face with the now 12 foot tall, 2,000 pound gargantua, affectionately called Joe by a grown Jill. She’s the only…
Back in the glory days of local television, Boston’s WLVI-TV (Channel 56) ran a Saturday afternoon movie series titled “Creature Double Feature”. It was a huge ratings hit during the 1970’s, introducing young viewers to the BEM (bug-eyed monsters) movies of the past. Let’s return now to those halcyon days of yesterday with a look at two sci-fi flicks from the fabulous 50’s.
First up is THE BLACK SCORPION, a 1957 giant monster movie from Warner Brothers. This low-budget saga starts off with stock footage of volcanos erupting and earthquakes a-quaking, and a hyperbolic narrator expounding on natural disasters threatening Mexico. Two brawny geologists, Hank and Artur, investigate the devastation. While out scouting they run into beautiful rancher Teresa Alvarez, whose vaqueros have fled the hacienda in fear. After getting them back on the ranch, our scientists attend an autopsy of a dead Mexican cop (the doctor performing the autopsy looks like he…
Willis O’Brien was the pioneer stop-motion animation wizard who fathered the immortal KING KONG . For that alone, he will be remembered as one of Hollywood’s giants. O’Brien started at the dawn of film, working for the Thomas Edison Company. He created an early dinosaur movie THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN, which was cut down to eleven minutes by one Herbert Dowley, who took credit for O’Brien’s work. His crowning silent achievement was 1925’s THE LOST WORLD, an adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle adventure story that astounded filmgoers of the era.
That same year, O’Brien married Hazel Collette, who bore him two sons. The O’Brien’s marriage was not a happy one, and they divorced in 1930. Hazel was mentally unstable, and diagnosed with tuberculosis the following year. Willis, whose drinking and philandering contributed to the marriage’s deterioration, remained devoted to his boys, especially young Willis Jr., who was born tubercular, and eventually lost his eyesight. After…
Directed by special effects pioneer Willis O’Brien (who would later do the special effects for the original King Kong), The Ghost of Slumber Mountain tells the story of an explorer and writer named Holmes (Herbert M. Dawley). When his nephews ask him to tell them a story, Holmes tells them about the time that he explored Slumber Mountain and met the ghost a prospector named Mad Dick (played by O’Brien himself). The ghost instructs Holmes to look through a telescope. Upon doing so, Holmes finds himself starting into prehistoric times. He not only sees a fight between a Tyrannosaurus and a Triceratops but then apparently gets sent though time himself as he soon finds himself being chased by the surviving dinosaur.
Now, there are a few things that I should make clear about The Ghost of Slumber Mountain. It’s a silent film, which means that watching it requires modern audiences to adapt to a far different narrative experience than they may be used to. As well, the film originally ran 30 minute but the current print clocks in at 19 minutes. As a result, most of the film’s non-dinosaur plot is unknown.
With all that in mind, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain is still a fascinating and fun slice of cinematic history. This was the first film to show live actors and stop-motion creatures together on the screen. And while the special effects are primitive when compared to today’s CGI monsters, there’s also an undeniable charm to them.
Today, of course, we tend to take special effects for granted. One of the great things about watching a movie like The Ghost of Slumber Mountain is that it gives you a chance to travel back to a time when special effects truly were special and unexpected. There was once a time when film magic truly did seem to be like magic and sometimes, it’s fun to hop into a cinematic time machine and try to imagine being in that 1918 audience and being truly amazed by what we are seeing.
So, why not hop into that time machine and watch The Ghost of Slumber Mountain?
Over on Through the Shattered Lens Presents the Oscars, we are continuing to reimagine Oscar history, one year at a time! Today, we take a look at the year 1918. World War I ended, the Spanish Flu wiped out 5% of the world’s population, and the Academy embraced Tarzan of the Apes!
1918 was a year of dominated by war and pestilence. As the world seemed to be intent on destroying itself, both the Academy and American filmgoers embraced escapism.
Overseas, the Great War continued to drag on. With no end to the fighting in sight, there were fears that the American public would turn against the war and their elected leaders would withdraw American soldiers from the fighting. The British government, realizing the potential of film as a propaganda tool, contacted director D.W. Griffith and offered to help him make a film. The end result was Hearts of the World, an epic war film that starred Lillian Gish as a French girl who struggles to survive and find true love as the Germans raid her village.
Through the Shattered Lens 