1/16/2008
Recently, I wrote about some of the films that I’d love to show on our program…and it occurred to me that, when I first appeared here at WCIU in 1995, we had some movies that we only had rights to for a very short time- that many of our current, newer fans never got to see! So, I thought I’d write about some of “the U’s” Sven movies that you might never have seen!
I always recall 1956 film “the Beast of Hollow Mountain”- which always reminded me of the later 1969 “Valley of the Gwangi”-since it was set in the Southwest, and the monster was a dinosaur. We had Guy Madison- who would be Disney’s famed “Zorro”-as a rancher who discovers that whatever’s eating his cattle is – a stop-motion dinosaur! The problem with this film was- you really didn’t see the monster until just about the end of the film (not an uncommon occurrence in some low-budget monster flicks.) We even did a song parody of “Mexican hat dance” about how we still hadn’t seen the beast, featuring a great trumpet solo by Doug Graves!
Another early offering we had was 1957’s “the Vampire!” Yes, we were expecting a cape-clad traditional vampire, but NOOO- instead we got a kindly doctor who suffers from migraines- and is working on a formula that will regress man to his primitive form. One day, he is accidentally given some pills to ease his headache- but they’re actually part of the experiment containing the miracle ingredient of- blood from a vampire bat!
This causes him to become a fierce, hirsute blood-craving savage- obviously not a tuxedo-wearing bloodsucker, as the title would suggest. One of the funny things we pointed out was, in one of his “transition” scenes, as he was becoming the “vampire”-he looked exactly like the late Morton Downey Jr. (who had a show on our station at the time!)
A similar sort of film we also had was 1953’s “the Neanderthal Man”- in which the Superman TV show’s “Inspector Henderson”-Robert Shayne- is yet another serum-developer, whose serum changes him into a cave man- with what appears to be one of those Johnson Smith Company cave man Halloween masks! The odd thing is- they actually did various stages of make-up in the “transformation” shots-leading up to the cheesy mask. Also created from the serum- a “saber-toothed tiger”- whose long tusk-like teeth are not exactly convincing!
I have to admit- I’ve gotten messages from some of you guys who actually would prefer this type of film to the Universal classics- and wish that we’d get back to them!
I always recall 1956 film “the Beast of Hollow Mountain”- which always reminded me of the later 1969 “Valley of the Gwangi”-since it was set in the Southwest, and the monster was a dinosaur. We had Guy Madison- who would be Disney’s famed “Zorro”-as a rancher who discovers that whatever’s eating his cattle is – a stop-motion dinosaur! The problem with this film was- you really didn’t see the monster until just about the end of the film (not an uncommon occurrence in some low-budget monster flicks.) We even did a song parody of “Mexican hat dance” about how we still hadn’t seen the beast, featuring a great trumpet solo by Doug Graves!
Another early offering we had was 1957’s “the Vampire!” Yes, we were expecting a cape-clad traditional vampire, but NOOO- instead we got a kindly doctor who suffers from migraines- and is working on a formula that will regress man to his primitive form. One day, he is accidentally given some pills to ease his headache- but they’re actually part of the experiment containing the miracle ingredient of- blood from a vampire bat!
This causes him to become a fierce, hirsute blood-craving savage- obviously not a tuxedo-wearing bloodsucker, as the title would suggest. One of the funny things we pointed out was, in one of his “transition” scenes, as he was becoming the “vampire”-he looked exactly like the late Morton Downey Jr. (who had a show on our station at the time!)
A similar sort of film we also had was 1953’s “the Neanderthal Man”- in which the Superman TV show’s “Inspector Henderson”-Robert Shayne- is yet another serum-developer, whose serum changes him into a cave man- with what appears to be one of those Johnson Smith Company cave man Halloween masks! The odd thing is- they actually did various stages of make-up in the “transformation” shots-leading up to the cheesy mask. Also created from the serum- a “saber-toothed tiger”- whose long tusk-like teeth are not exactly convincing!
I have to admit- I’ve gotten messages from some of you guys who actually would prefer this type of film to the Universal classics- and wish that we’d get back to them!
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