THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN (1956)

THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN (1956)

Tagline: A horror beyond belief...breathing hate, death, and destruction!

(Sci-Fi, Drama, Who Ate Our Cows?) [G]

Note: This movie was not given an MPAA rating, but it definitely would have been a [G]. This was the first feature film to combine stop-motion animation with anamorphic Cinemascope and color.

Oh, I make it a rule never to be offended at a pretty girl.

In this one, a cowboy named Jimmy is living in Mexico and has quite a few cattle with his partner Felipe Sanchez. Jimmy starts to win the affection of Sarita who is promised to marry a man named Enrique Rios. Enrique makes efforts to buy Jimmy’s land and cattle or force him out of town. Meanwhile, an ominous sequence of events starts to unfold as cattle start disappearing and a giant dinosaur is discovered to be the cause. Can everyone put their differences aside to save the town?

First off, no, this is not a Ray Harryhausen effects film, but the stop motion is actually pretty good. There is a scene where a dinosaur has a cow in its mouth. The dinosaur runs after a horse at full speed. It’s not the usual “stop motion” stuff we get it. In fact, I am pretty sure this is the only 1950’s movie that I have seen where we have a dinosaur running fast enough to keep up with a horse. I kind of loved that about this movie, but it is not without its issues. 

My first major issue is that this movie is only 79 minutes long. We don’t see the dinosaur that everyone is terrified of till 59 minutes into the movie. Because of that, most of this film is a story about a guy pissing off another guy because he’s kind of turning on a woman that is promised to marry someone else. I guess you could say this is a “romance” as well, but it struck me more as just a lot of unnecessary drama. Another problem I have with this movie is that it really only qualifies as sci-fi because it has a dinosaur in it. No explanation is given for the dinosaur being there. I will say this still qualifies as 1950s sci-fi because almost every dinosaur movie did, but damn, at least tell us why this dinosaur is here eating cattle all of a sudden. 

Acting-wise, Guy Madison is outstanding as Jimmy Ryan. He is probably one of my favorite male leads of the 1950s just for this movie alone. Guy unfortunately was not in any other movies or TV shows that I have seen. Patricia Medina is also pretty good in this. She plays Sarita and was in some cool flicks like PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE and ALADDIN AND HIS LAMP. I also have to give some credit to Carlos Rivas who played Felipe Sanchez. He doesn’t get a ton of lines, but I thought the was pretty good in this. 

What I liked about this movie is that the close-ups of the dinosaur walking are pretty great. It’s just a guy walking in rubber dinosaur feet. I love that they even tried that. I also like that we get kind of a lion's roar sound for this dinosaur. It kind of helps with the feeling of dread, which is welcomed because in most of this movie we don’t even the dinosaur. I also thought it was kind of cool that the dinosaur was considered “bulletproof”. We do see the dinosaur bleed, but for the most part, bullets had no effect. That was good for this story because otherwise, you could just take “the beast” out with a gun. Not being able to do that makes it a more menacing foe. I also liked the dialog for the most part and the backstory isn’t totally terrible. It is enough to at least keep this one watchable when we are seeing cows getting eaten. 

Overall this is a fun one. It is hard to find a good copy unless you want to buy it.  THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN gets a solid 5 out of 7, just don’t go in expecting much dinosaur till the final 20 minutes or so. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF PELICULAS RODRIGUEZ AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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