tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89903888931471257172024-03-05T23:12:19.473+11:00Stone Age CinemaA blog about every caveman movie ever made - updates Saturdays.Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-54599887932483967962012-04-25T15:30:00.000+10:002012-04-25T15:33:14.871+10:00LIST LOSTI did have a list of every caveman film ever made. Or most of them, anyway. But it's gone now, imprisoned for eternity within the frigid embrace of my old laptop's hard drive. So I guess, while I'm going to start posting again, this means that, rather than making a new list, I am instead just going to start doing whatever and hopefully things will work-out for the best.<br />
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In the meantime, while I get to work on a review, any one of the three people who are going to have this pop-up in their feeds may feel free to enjoy the following blog theme-appropriate rock songs:<br />
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<br />Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-57251293541861659732009-07-26T01:56:00.000+10:002009-07-26T03:11:54.187+10:008. The Ape Man (1943)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3590/3525555053_b94e1f7346.jpg?v=0"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3590/3525555053_b94e1f7346.jpg?v=0" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Director:</span> William Beaudine <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Cast:</span> Bela Lugosi, Louise Currie, Wallace Ford, Henry Hall<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Caveman Quotient: </span>Either 0% or 100%, depending upon your point of view<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Analysis: </span><br /><br />As I write this, I am looking out the window of my room in a flophouse by the East River. I can hear sirens in the distance, growing closer, and as the cars screech to a halt outside I type on, mad and uncaring, desperate to finish the last line of the review before the police burst in and tear me kicking and screaming from my Remington. But I deserve it all, you know. You see, I have broken my own rules. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ape Man</span> isn’t a caveman movie at all.<br /><br />It’s a question of genetics, really. While there’s nothing all that controversial about a caveman movie in which a person regresses to a proto-human state –<span style="font-style: italic;"> Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</span> did it, <span style="font-style: italic;">Altered States </span>did it, and I’m pretty sure I can argue that <span style="font-style: italic;">Howling II: Your Sister is A Werewolf </span>did it on a technicality, even if it does posit that Homo sapiens is descended from canines. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ape Man</span>, however, is not a tale of regression, but of transformation. Simply put, Bela Lugosi turns himself into an ape by injecting himself with the spinal fluid of a silverback gorilla. That’s not a caveman movie – that’s just weird.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Ape Man</span> is a product of the notorious Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures, Corp., and despite its seemingly exceptional insanity, it’s hardly atypical of their output. Monogram are infamous for having combining a total lack of resources with a complete disregard for quality, compensating with a heavy dose of crazy and former star/future Ed Wood, Jr. collaborator Bela Lugosi embarrassing himself in a series of increasingly ludicrous roles. You sort of have to feel sorry for Bela Lugosi. He started-out on top, changing the face of cinematic horror with his ground-breaking (albeit, not very good) role in <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula</span>, went on to star in a number of genuinely good films, including the stone-cold classic <span style="font-style: italic;">White Zombie</span>, and then set out on a long, slow decline that would see him closing-out his career as a broken-down morphine addict forced to lose a wrestling match against an inanimate rubber octopus. Even if he was partially to blame, going about doing silly things like turning down the role of Frankenstein's monster because it didn't have any lines, you can really sympathise with him a bit in this film when, after just having engaged in a battle of wits with his ape, he collapses into a chair and declares "I have messed everything up!". On the other hand, his loss was our gain, since while I certainly wouldn’t wish any ill on the man, I certainly do enjoy watching him make a fool of himself.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_T8KU1aiB5IkZQ42dNWsV6qkFkyVGSHU6y-y8vO5zb9SLR56c2G-bQM47jNqrSylpOh9oXd2sVWJ7bnItxqWMWOM-f11l4SGRriiDpT1oO6y1HPaHzHHypfu9MsilxEkrOn1H3n7eyTg/s1600-h/apeman16.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_T8KU1aiB5IkZQ42dNWsV6qkFkyVGSHU6y-y8vO5zb9SLR56c2G-bQM47jNqrSylpOh9oXd2sVWJ7bnItxqWMWOM-f11l4SGRriiDpT1oO6y1HPaHzHHypfu9MsilxEkrOn1H3n7eyTg/s320/apeman16.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362442982492353474" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgORuqEYIjuYz68MFiW6vgQzFjh_gxCGx7BAJzCgdSCXkw0ntKnMLYf-mYm6GD2DN9N5LsfsyfUMP86wBx_QED67vxUiz6pqPDh-i1ry8MibOhvWmKWQ-nWcq6Av8rH9duVOlYMri-rSbY/s1600-h/apeman15.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgORuqEYIjuYz68MFiW6vgQzFjh_gxCGx7BAJzCgdSCXkw0ntKnMLYf-mYm6GD2DN9N5LsfsyfUMP86wBx_QED67vxUiz6pqPDh-i1ry8MibOhvWmKWQ-nWcq6Av8rH9duVOlYMri-rSbY/s320/apeman15.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362442980713613138" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirlN6hyphenhyphent6a38UvXLXDzWv_UtuHMK37CqTpzH1Ab8-a1ISqbLkpAG9lAJ5VjAMx-5Fz4hCFNxp6_GNd3ECnuzESxIZA9hTXcwgkKaS7Zuk0w0FhpQ85VpCl_DAO2NysbLFqio3EIExojbI/s1600-h/apeman14.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirlN6hyphenhyphent6a38UvXLXDzWv_UtuHMK37CqTpzH1Ab8-a1ISqbLkpAG9lAJ5VjAMx-5Fz4hCFNxp6_GNd3ECnuzESxIZA9hTXcwgkKaS7Zuk0w0FhpQ85VpCl_DAO2NysbLFqio3EIExojbI/s320/apeman14.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362442975490015266" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJqSu4_LqLyHwFDTlsOg5tS36NDdB3PzxmZg6k2VeaISz5N7UfsgWSUck36Cq4rprIdU0q3nIlKeysAqlhmXT3pIXl9D0hyphenhyphenkyDXXNEzrgA1rFjyTyPiS0C6OzPePQB3lI5XjazKabvuTE/s1600-h/apeman13.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJqSu4_LqLyHwFDTlsOg5tS36NDdB3PzxmZg6k2VeaISz5N7UfsgWSUck36Cq4rprIdU0q3nIlKeysAqlhmXT3pIXl9D0hyphenhyphenkyDXXNEzrgA1rFjyTyPiS0C6OzPePQB3lI5XjazKabvuTE/s320/apeman13.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362442966466493698" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br />And boy! What a fool he does make. Indignity, thy name is <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ape Man</span>. Equal parts unfunny comedy and non-horrific horror film, the only things this film has going for it are Lugosi’s performance and a healthy dose of silliness. Lugosi is Dr. James Brewster, a “world-famous gland expert” with an unexplained Hungarian accent, who has suddenly up and vanished, out of the blue. The newspapers are going wild about it, but no-one can find a trace of him, and many people are starting to suspect that poor old Dr. Brewster may be dead.<br /><br />Enter Brewster’s sister, Agatha (Minerva Urecal). She’s just returned from a ghost-hunting trip in Europe, and is deeply shocked to learn of her brother’s disappearance. She goes to talk to Dr. George Caldwell (Henry Hall), Brewster’s long-time friend and colleague, hoping to get some sort of perspective on events. Caldwell, for his part, is quick to reassure Agatha that her brother is alive and safe. It turns-out that one of his experiments went awry, leaving him changed somehow, and rather than deal with the public outcry that would accompany revealing himself, Brewster has instead holed-up in the secret laboratory hidden beneath his house, where he is busily working on a cure. Only Agatha should brace herself. Her brother's appearance has undergone some rather drastic changes.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLbIKicEw9d3HTlxtAkLywbhyphenhyphenH7IBxlS7Dn2708tKiZqHCAmwI7U8knchR-nSumms3U05mzCGVY_pVrhtLa2sPsGnIL24Nz3pHYtAxVARKRApOoWvZgBRIfKj7e2qSEO7I6YegOeW_SBc/s1600-h/apeman3.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLbIKicEw9d3HTlxtAkLywbhyphenhyphenH7IBxlS7Dn2708tKiZqHCAmwI7U8knchR-nSumms3U05mzCGVY_pVrhtLa2sPsGnIL24Nz3pHYtAxVARKRApOoWvZgBRIfKj7e2qSEO7I6YegOeW_SBc/s320/apeman3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362440670370249218" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizT6vQMhYv3_dHZNGLBQLaFkMLkHYIc5lOMLzDGQf5HRUxtcf1tKZN56IVnq-tfayXgoCsUDCRpTatQZ0K3NxQ3clvukiqNaR2fNCIuBKwkh-EOML23RpGYBpCjF3SxIneuS_RKadHVQw/s1600-h/apeman2.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizT6vQMhYv3_dHZNGLBQLaFkMLkHYIc5lOMLzDGQf5HRUxtcf1tKZN56IVnq-tfayXgoCsUDCRpTatQZ0K3NxQ3clvukiqNaR2fNCIuBKwkh-EOML23RpGYBpCjF3SxIneuS_RKadHVQw/s320/apeman2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362440664827640082" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9CEqZLGFFptMUDSShFl5Et0Ew_le2tGhl1hUrUoucZK6FSqbmjvQ4BC0rtxISclHNy4SZUOefXtWNX-kRkhJTr-qt2QL4nBb41ZPf-5C4xd-6yP1-mvpXv5yPJVTDH5r09e7W_WPY2hM/s1600-h/apeman1.jpg"> </a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgng8ACbCuiT7f8MugTWsKTuubI1A74MUPyP7QHOO20JT1mGhL21nm239lIXFSBIhE8PiSvSeFQYK4NxuaSOxhe1RjmJFSyQCyhaPtI-hpHmMh9AGz_5hcm5W7zLmv7a3UTM5TAoUHDJuI/s1600-h/apeman9.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgng8ACbCuiT7f8MugTWsKTuubI1A74MUPyP7QHOO20JT1mGhL21nm239lIXFSBIhE8PiSvSeFQYK4NxuaSOxhe1RjmJFSyQCyhaPtI-hpHmMh9AGz_5hcm5W7zLmv7a3UTM5TAoUHDJuI/s320/apeman9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362441825824451298" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9CEqZLGFFptMUDSShFl5Et0Ew_le2tGhl1hUrUoucZK6FSqbmjvQ4BC0rtxISclHNy4SZUOefXtWNX-kRkhJTr-qt2QL4nBb41ZPf-5C4xd-6yP1-mvpXv5yPJVTDH5r09e7W_WPY2hM/s1600-h/apeman1.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9CEqZLGFFptMUDSShFl5Et0Ew_le2tGhl1hUrUoucZK6FSqbmjvQ4BC0rtxISclHNy4SZUOefXtWNX-kRkhJTr-qt2QL4nBb41ZPf-5C4xd-6yP1-mvpXv5yPJVTDH5r09e7W_WPY2hM/s320/apeman1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362440661262601682" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br />There’s really no way to explain in words the glorious nature of the scene in which Lugosi first appears. Agatha and Caldwell wind their way down along the staircase concealed behind Brewster’s living room fireplace. They cross the laboratory, and Caldwell trips a lever that exposes a hidden cage. In the cage, there squats a silverback gorilla, here portrayed via unconvincing man-in-suit. Beside the ape, all snuggled-up, is a figure in black. It stirs. It rises. Agatha looks on in shock -- and the thing turns towards her -- and it looks up at her -- and Caldwell brandishes his pistol as the thing falls against the cage. And what is this thing, you ask? What, this grotesquery? It looks like a man, yet it walks like an ape, and its pale and trembling fingers are cloaked in fur. And then it speaks. By God, it speaks! It is Bela Lugosi – <span style="font-style: italic;">and he hasn’t shaved in days</span>!<br /><br />Bela Lugosi, transformed into a man-ape and shacking-up with a gorilla. Really, could <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> concoct a more lurid scenario?<br /><br />This, then, is the extent of Dr. Brewster’s transformation: he slouches somewhat, he swings his arms a little, and he has facial hair that bears an equal resemblance to the beard of a Mennonite and the helmet of Juggernaut. Looking at all this, there is really no reason why he couldn’t just apply some Nair and go topside. But then I suppose there’d be no film. I mean, I guess they could have made Lugosi wear the gorilla suit, but then they would have lost the face recognition of their “star”. On the other hand, they would have gained an intelligent mad scientist gorilla who spoke with a Hungarian accent, and that is worth more than all the Bela Lugosi in the world.<br /><br />As I may have alluded to once or twice in the introduction, Brewster found himself in this state after injecting himself with the spinal fluid of a gorilla. Why I do not know. I suppose he and Caldwell were trying to test the viability of gorillas as spinal fluid donors, which would have taken about twenty seconds of dialogue to establish but which is instead glossed over in favour of scenes of Bela Lugosi engaging in chest-beating displays of alpha-male superiority with his pal the preternaturally intelligent test-ape. So I suppose the film-makers made the right call on that one. Anyway, Brewster is naturally upset about the unexpected side-effects of his course of ape-juice, and is eager to return himself to the ranks of humanity. He figures (perhaps reasonably) that since injecting himself with simian spinal fluid transformed him into an ape, injecting himself with human spinal fluid will transform him back into a man. Like I said, fairly reasonable.<br /><br />Less reasonable is Brewster’s determination to go through with this plan. You see, for the spinal fluid to take effect, it has to be fresh – which means that any donors for the fluid have to still be living when the stuff is removed. And needless to say, the removal of a significant quantity of spinal fluid from a living human is hardly about to do wonders for their health. If Brewster wants his humanity back, then he’s going to have to kill for it.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDpdakRb0_UqaRNN6zcdUlim5u1IZMJzgjX9u4CGK3-BQpf6fr6pED1i7Y48DPKPooWEb30-eBEVHIMXsOnpV9yjW0YWJXcMmUknDjwvZoOILxZ1To_K2w6N_TqjjaQDzdU95_qfPU1uo/s1600-h/apeman4.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDpdakRb0_UqaRNN6zcdUlim5u1IZMJzgjX9u4CGK3-BQpf6fr6pED1i7Y48DPKPooWEb30-eBEVHIMXsOnpV9yjW0YWJXcMmUknDjwvZoOILxZ1To_K2w6N_TqjjaQDzdU95_qfPU1uo/s320/apeman4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362440668115782850" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH5x0s8j3j7D9mRfjjq6pjp3ne5SY02Wk4mbSzvKNw9hMsMFg9aRdTQcb-m6woICtOO0Ziyp3hln4tQxgqR88GjjNBylLjWOpgLZGuSEwXjGVTwqtVJbpYsvefSyPHxrj8ZlNXnEQDmTU/s1600-h/apeman8.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH5x0s8j3j7D9mRfjjq6pjp3ne5SY02Wk4mbSzvKNw9hMsMFg9aRdTQcb-m6woICtOO0Ziyp3hln4tQxgqR88GjjNBylLjWOpgLZGuSEwXjGVTwqtVJbpYsvefSyPHxrj8ZlNXnEQDmTU/s320/apeman8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362441810342339778" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZtnJ4p2e00GPxmR6u3fgPXQzeEWVNjKKfXy1JCBCAy5ujVOojtW_HPiScrSENhYS7xs8eK1-nxcbZ6FhOOQ2X4YoJEaR6XL9tR0YzE4IcAu9PZYwyd-I5hJHC4_BdJMRzfy4paEA-nM/s1600-h/apeman7.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZtnJ4p2e00GPxmR6u3fgPXQzeEWVNjKKfXy1JCBCAy5ujVOojtW_HPiScrSENhYS7xs8eK1-nxcbZ6FhOOQ2X4YoJEaR6XL9tR0YzE4IcAu9PZYwyd-I5hJHC4_BdJMRzfy4paEA-nM/s320/apeman7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362441806600903074" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-gZzLXElrEGuw6Ydm9AoTNohoJQTN3V66F-jtBBDecRPR8MOaOUEVas1eqwkbzIsMX1_HUmRQMkA-uAyNrDxJXuOCkKUulDYhdeoQKbyWJ292oBG2J9hOto7QFA-uggqMUIQSJi-m9T4/s1600-h/apeman5.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-gZzLXElrEGuw6Ydm9AoTNohoJQTN3V66F-jtBBDecRPR8MOaOUEVas1eqwkbzIsMX1_HUmRQMkA-uAyNrDxJXuOCkKUulDYhdeoQKbyWJ292oBG2J9hOto7QFA-uggqMUIQSJi-m9T4/s320/apeman5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362441796957038354" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br />Of course, from here you can pretty much write the film itself. Caldwell refuses to help Brewster with his scheme. Agatha sides with Brewster out of misplaced affection, and the brother and sister strong-arm Caldwell into helping them, having Caldwell inject Brewster with the spinal fluid of Caldwell’s butler. The first treatment doesn’t work, so Brewster ups the ante and starts staging murderous night raids to amass more fluids, sicking his pet gorilla on helpless citizens and then draining them with a syringe. In the end, it all goes pear-shaped when Caldwell throws self-preservation to the wind and takes a stand against his crazed partner, meeting his end but striking a blow for common decency in the process. In the final moments of the film Brewster is cornered in his laboratory, and murdered by his gorilla in the course of a fight over an attractive girl. Moments later, the police arrive, rescue the girl and shoot the gorilla, putting an end to the nasty business once and for all.<br /><br />Really, there is the germ of a good idea in there somewhere. Granted, it’s probably a good idea that was stolen from an earlier film that I’ve never heard of, and I <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> it would crop-up again in a bunch of films that I can’t remember, but being derivative doesn’t necessarily preclude being good. The idea of a scientist accidentally mutating himself into a vampire is a simple but effective one, giving an element of ethical and psychological complexity (not to mention a nice Elizabeth Bathory-style twist) to the hoary old R.L. Stevenson-inspired “Man turns himself into a monster” premise. Probably the film that it reminds me of the most in this regard is <span style="font-style: italic;">The Little Shop of Horrors</span>, where a loser feeds people to a carnivorous plant out of a belief that his popularity hinges on the plant’s survival. Except, you know, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Little Shop of Horrors</span> actually did something with the idea. And, despite being just as cheap and rushed as The Ape Man, it didn’t suck.<br /><br />Putting aside my obsession with selfishly-motivated vampirism as a plot point in horror stories, I suppose I should say something about the rest of the film. It doesn’t really bear thinking about, to be honest. Did you know that, in describing the film, I completely avoided mentioning the two reporter characters which take-up half the running time snooping, trying to dig-up dirt on Brewster? There’s reporter Jeff Carter, who’s a wise guy, and the female photographer, who’s named “Billie Mason”- and who as a consequence keeps getting mistaken for a man. They do the fairly typical low-rent Grant/Russell hard-boiled banter shtick, largely fail in their goal of providing a source of legitimate comedy, and wind-up almost entirely superfluous to the plot. Mostly they just keep showing-up at Brewster’s house, padding-out the running time by bothering Agatha with questions about her missing brother. It’s only in the last few minutes of the film that they do anything of significance, and really this just consists of Billie wandering into Brewster’s house while everyone’s out, getting nabbed by the Mad Doctor after he returns home from visiting with Caldwell, and serving as the requisite beauty for Carter to rescue at the end, thus proving to both himself and the audience that, strong-headed and capable or no, a woman is still a woman and she will always need a man – if only to serve as protection against murderous apes.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibtjx0_pxzTbiHke9gmG3zGe9FrzBOzVlQ266hTY3Hfy2nQfN_KjNsEt3trhzPl3UX4QlVKPEy8zGYDLP2SyAsn4YC0_FOBviOGI1cNPE4bg2NQLdbRvRp9bH3LegcoN4VyJiWJWREM24/s1600-h/apeman8.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibtjx0_pxzTbiHke9gmG3zGe9FrzBOzVlQ266hTY3Hfy2nQfN_KjNsEt3trhzPl3UX4QlVKPEy8zGYDLP2SyAsn4YC0_FOBviOGI1cNPE4bg2NQLdbRvRp9bH3LegcoN4VyJiWJWREM24/s320/apeman8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362442620515029106" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijx62qArMbxdVI0A9Fc8SapcPa0AB0cZOlRTxQ-tmkN5TgphE1QyZsGIHAH8dlry24yB2jIJEMB1UgBegYuP6ow5k-c0Kn6kFWmWPFK27xQCZCEv5s56IfxruQBDjutOrhta-71E8QKHI/s1600-h/apeman12.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijx62qArMbxdVI0A9Fc8SapcPa0AB0cZOlRTxQ-tmkN5TgphE1QyZsGIHAH8dlry24yB2jIJEMB1UgBegYuP6ow5k-c0Kn6kFWmWPFK27xQCZCEv5s56IfxruQBDjutOrhta-71E8QKHI/s320/apeman12.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362442298093826674" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOtbDDO_0uDkG6TnRNHUDOPYXSKgX-NqpjDW_uk0EBLHP245zAiOntcFMzDmvQABY2IHJwLjKVckB5wZ4v5YzR1_x0B2nowryn8IuGzeN2WamTji4K-zDTI-N5IGOrIQgq_TOjB-hVZSQ/s1600-h/apeman11.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOtbDDO_0uDkG6TnRNHUDOPYXSKgX-NqpjDW_uk0EBLHP245zAiOntcFMzDmvQABY2IHJwLjKVckB5wZ4v5YzR1_x0B2nowryn8IuGzeN2WamTji4K-zDTI-N5IGOrIQgq_TOjB-hVZSQ/s320/apeman11.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362442294215556770" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1eXu32a69yqAp73jgIu7l33uDn00CxYqHQUZmEGm_KLh5LKKAb58_g1a2h8sodCkOD867frpbHNSp4s88Lm_LTpey3DQAKa6zJVxpOi8yb0RFCggamUuUSBJhQ35wyPSg9CZyRtB4GRY/s1600-h/apeman10.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1eXu32a69yqAp73jgIu7l33uDn00CxYqHQUZmEGm_KLh5LKKAb58_g1a2h8sodCkOD867frpbHNSp4s88Lm_LTpey3DQAKa6zJVxpOi8yb0RFCggamUuUSBJhQ35wyPSg9CZyRtB4GRY/s320/apeman10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362442286080975378" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br />At the same time as I loathe the superfluousness of this sub-plot, I must admit that the two actors playing Billie and Jeff are reasonably likeable. I mean, Wallace Ford keeps flubbing his lines, and his character is a chauvinist jerk, but in the end he at least has a trustworthy face. Louise Currie, on the other hand, despite having almost nothing to work with, gives something close to an actual performance, and with a director who gave a damn she might even have been good. I mean, yes the dialogue is leaden and the pair’s sense of comic timing is severely impaired, but you take what you can get in these sorts of films. At least they don't read their lines off of the back off props like the guy who plays their editor. The duo’s presence also facilitates one of the film’s most interesting moments, a completely ludicrous climactic plot-twist involving a man who has been popping-up throughout the film and prompting characters on how they should respond to certain situations. It’s not at all a good twist, and the set-up is long and painful, but it really is something to see in action.<br /><br />In the end, there’s not much one can say about <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ape Man</span>. Well, not much that’s all that constructive, anyway. With a good script, better actors, a budget and a competent director, it might have been quite good, in a screwball sort of way. But then, that goes for pretty much every crappy movie. As it stands, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ape Man</span> is really only worth it for the outlandishness of its premise, and the<span style="font-style: italic;"> schadenfreude</span> that arises from watching Bela Lugosi done-up with false mutton-chops, palling around with a gorilla and ooking and ahhing like a monkey. But on the other hand, that’s already more than anyone could ever reasonably ask.<br /><br />Looking over the above paragraphs, it is self-evident that <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ape Man</span> is not a caveman film. A gorilla never is, was or will be a primitive human, and so transforming oneself into one of our simian brethren can hardly be considered the same as regressing into a Neanderthal state. At the same time, however, it should be clear why I decided to cover such a fundamentally ridiculous film. And so I hope that anyone reading this will forgive me, for – much like Bela Lugosi agreeing to star in this crummy, crummy film – I have forfeited what's left of my honour for the greater good.<br /><br />Or something like that.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1jW2APGz2C3SLpT-F5cyp844xnTt0AzVZatCDOJZb78i8NMxUaX9zipUATA2OnCss1AyIMOE1gXQ7JatpNnysb4JGWcxzMJweyt3bOiXY4dp3cQAKOvy7R-o-Iq58NxQGvMokFNUgaPU/s1600-h/apemanend.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1jW2APGz2C3SLpT-F5cyp844xnTt0AzVZatCDOJZb78i8NMxUaX9zipUATA2OnCss1AyIMOE1gXQ7JatpNnysb4JGWcxzMJweyt3bOiXY4dp3cQAKOvy7R-o-Iq58NxQGvMokFNUgaPU/s320/apemanend.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362443407604817202" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Rating:</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Fm8NL3Rlv0gbohqMZKb9uW_TQ5ctLwvBG-HDH0njwSCNiFzL0XGWH8b18qSj5b5MhQ0QbEdAAUX6_lJ8pFdXgIp5zL6agQ39L3iNUYWHMUi5JQbsqLcs4_tqoMHpMqgjiIrDtL2puGQ/s400/onemillion5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Fm8NL3Rlv0gbohqMZKb9uW_TQ5ctLwvBG-HDH0njwSCNiFzL0XGWH8b18qSj5b5MhQ0QbEdAAUX6_lJ8pFdXgIp5zL6agQ39L3iNUYWHMUi5JQbsqLcs4_tqoMHpMqgjiIrDtL2puGQ/s400/onemillion5.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />Special Consideration – The One-Horned Armadillo of Unconventional AppealRod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-53163361257951584842009-03-30T03:40:00.000+11:002009-03-30T04:27:32.095+11:007. One Million Years B.C. (1940<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/1081/onemillionbcposterob4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 210px; height: 325px;" src="http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/1081/onemillionbcposterob4.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB">Director: Hal Roach</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Starring: Conrad Nagel, Carol Landis, Victor Mature, Lon Chaney, Jr.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Caveman Quotient: Whole tribes! Two of them even! It’s a veritable Caveman Calgary Rodeo!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Analysis:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Ah, yes. Finally the day has arrived. Granted, it took me a while to get to it, what with restarting University and supposedly working on my thesis, but it's finally here... Enough with you phoney cavefolk – you Piltdown men of the Pleistocene Picture. Seven films in, and we hit the mother load. It doesn’t get much cavemanlier than this.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">First things first: <i style="">One Million BC</i> is<i style=""> not</i> the movie where Martine Beswick and Raquel Welsh get in a catfight while wearing fur bikinis. That much-vaunted entry is still a few years on. But <i style="">One Million BC</i>, in its own special way, is perhaps more enticing a cinematic spectacle. It’s certainly not as <i style="">good</i> as <i style="">One Million Years BC</i>, mind, and I’d argue that it also fails to succeed on the more visceral level of being as much <i style="">fun</i>, but at the same time it does manage to lay-down almost all the rules of the “proper” caveman film, while simultaneously juggling ridiculous science, hammy performances, weighty themes of the civilisation of man and special effects techniques which are by turns preposterous, inspired, and utterly despicable. In short, it constitutes a must-see proposition for anybody who loves completely ridiculous crap.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The best part of <i style="">One Million BC</i> may actually be the framing narrative, which manages a delicate melding of narrative superfluousness, didacticism, over-acting and tin-eared dialogue that seems almost calculated in its idiocy. During a thunderstorm, a bunch of lederhosen-wearing Tyrolean mountain-climbers take refuge in a cave and just happen to stumble upon a palaeontologist (Conrad Nagel). This guy is really a sight, I must say. With his wild eyes, beard and enormous pipe, he could just as easily pass for either Captain Nemo or Moses, and he speaks every word with such earnest and overblown enthusiasm that you’d think he’s just uncovered the latter’s alternative draft of the Ten Commandments. The palaeontologist is in the process of documenting a section of primitive rock art, which he believes can actually be interpreted to tell the saga of an ancient people. Fascinated, the mountaineers beg him to share his interpretation, and the palaeontologist just about jumps for joy at the chance. And so, Conrad Nagel launches into the tale of two peoples – the savage and near-bestial Rock tribe, who ruled by force alone, the strongest amongst them leader and the weak left to fend for themselves; and the lovable and enlightened Shell tribe, who had little things like agriculture and good manners, and who despite their name did not live anywhere even remotely near the sea. Of course, Nagel’s narration vanishes about ten minutes into the film and never tells us anything we couldn’t have figured-out for ourselves, but then I guess that’s a small price to pay for the following screencap:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTOu-lU99PdlPe3BUQXEJbeCHYBT4qA4ltTU6saIFQ_z2ibHeGo4F1mTz6p6rWLW_NxAUyf4iUe_SvgdlFy75HDXyJ2_xocq0XEGrPIFHwajFyC51cknr6rxu2EApr_99dMK0FlqK-jh8/s1600-h/onemillion12.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 352px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTOu-lU99PdlPe3BUQXEJbeCHYBT4qA4ltTU6saIFQ_z2ibHeGo4F1mTz6p6rWLW_NxAUyf4iUe_SvgdlFy75HDXyJ2_xocq0XEGrPIFHwajFyC51cknr6rxu2EApr_99dMK0FlqK-jh8/s400/onemillion12.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318658792301205650" border="0" /></a></p><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p style="text-align: center; font-style: italic;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:85%;"><strike>Robert Mitchum</strike> Conrad Nagel with pipe.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Anyway, we begin with the Rock tribe, who are just about the most savage savages you could ever care to meet. Their language consists of about four words, their concept of compassion is non-existent (when an old dude falls of a cliff they just sort of roll with it), and the pinnacle of their technological evolution is the realisation that, if you hit an animal many times with a large stick, eventually that animal will stop biting you and you will be able to bite it instead. The chief of the Rock tribe is Akoba (an unrecognisable pre-stardom Lon Chaney, Jr.) and he’s a big mean bastard at that. He yells; he screams; he tapes-over the VHS cassettes of others; and when dinner time comes around he takes a lump of triceratops ten times larger than anyone else’s. When that doesn’t satisfy him, he then tries to steal the food of his only son Tumak (Victor Mature). Tumak is having none of that, mind, and things soon escalate into a full-blown battle for alpha male status. Tumak is a tough one but Akoba has some bite in him yet, and the old guy kicks his son’s butt right out the cave mouth and into the waiting arms of homelessness. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Exiled, Tumak is left to fend for himself, and must wander out alone into the harsh, monster-haunted wilderness of the Hollywood Dreamtime. He somehow ends-up drifting down a river in a tangle of branches, and before long he washes-up asleep at the feet of Loana (Carole Landis), daughter of the chief of the aforementioned Shell tribe. The Shell tribe are a magnanimous lot, and despite the fact that Tumak is clearly bad news they agree to take the young man under their wing. Things go along a bit rough for a while, what with Tumak’s homicidal rage and complete lack of social graces, but slowly a process of cultural exchange occurs. The Shell tribe gradually acquaint Tumak with such concepts as individual property ownership, comedy, and the right to freedom from oppression, while Tumak in turn uses his great strength to shake apples from a tree and beat-up a truly ridiculous man-sized marauding theropod (in a movie chock full of goofy things, this may well be the goofiest – so silly is it, in fact, that the film makers never even show it in full profile, which is a pity as it makes it impossible for me to get screen caps of the thing). Aided by Loana, who has taken a quasi-romantic interest in him, Tumak begins to soften gradually, and becomes valued member of the tribe.</span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiru33eQbHK9E3aI5ZphZ9d3apgy0fc394G3UBRPuI88tVDWRyYhK4PHIUkucm2ebaCivDlKSECUsyX73zzCxu_wR9Im3LALoIJXLTxrDOr_ZmF3iCWzYHlraw0fRmrJ-mvfoVJRQAH0-k/s1600-h/onemillion6.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiru33eQbHK9E3aI5ZphZ9d3apgy0fc394G3UBRPuI88tVDWRyYhK4PHIUkucm2ebaCivDlKSECUsyX73zzCxu_wR9Im3LALoIJXLTxrDOr_ZmF3iCWzYHlraw0fRmrJ-mvfoVJRQAH0-k/s400/onemillion6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318659292800407106" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjInx-YpWkRfdCf8zP3ZxWgPpEzwDBS5ccnSvXb_5tk59f4KGv2jkK62a_ECw_kFn4BnxNnXOmG8i5O29rgTJKlSozoBjy4G1ggOtRp8ZfOyqdaWbpTvBVYXLDbiKR8GepvJgbxz5Hj0Ok/s1600-h/onemillion8.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjInx-YpWkRfdCf8zP3ZxWgPpEzwDBS5ccnSvXb_5tk59f4KGv2jkK62a_ECw_kFn4BnxNnXOmG8i5O29rgTJKlSozoBjy4G1ggOtRp8ZfOyqdaWbpTvBVYXLDbiKR8GepvJgbxz5Hj0Ok/s400/onemillion8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318659296233955970" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9HDRnSr1ozXGFhCfa5kRu95COS1qbWJi8i534EUtwOhb7QAoNFk6CMbBZktp5-_3U5R18YuAZl79bkJ622S27-n-GAY2JsLhFOjod-g2tg_oWDZ9PcJ48s1W3mYDiG3YjYlgdXM-Dqcg/s1600-h/onemillion7.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9HDRnSr1ozXGFhCfa5kRu95COS1qbWJi8i534EUtwOhb7QAoNFk6CMbBZktp5-_3U5R18YuAZl79bkJ622S27-n-GAY2JsLhFOjod-g2tg_oWDZ9PcJ48s1W3mYDiG3YjYlgdXM-Dqcg/s400/onemillion7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318659295156909794" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7iXK60k-MBb5S1FS1H2ojWET-JLX7wWbAfTy8sw03AdTTGQGWboPLInNIr9N-tJPaIXzqcBFagOKQGRJMeVwowlKmptSwKcy8KyaLPN1H08oyYpAM0aPvWJA1khK8kkK1sLWWauIlCIw/s1600-h/PDVD_071.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7iXK60k-MBb5S1FS1H2ojWET-JLX7wWbAfTy8sw03AdTTGQGWboPLInNIr9N-tJPaIXzqcBFagOKQGRJMeVwowlKmptSwKcy8KyaLPN1H08oyYpAM0aPvWJA1khK8kkK1sLWWauIlCIw/s400/PDVD_071.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318659296229979410" border="0" /></a><br /><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Unfortunately, not all of Tumak’s old habits can be broken. When Loana’s former beau Ohtao (who, interestingly, shows no ill will towards Tumak at all), shows the newcomer one of his fancy newfangled shell-tipped spears, Tumak is naturally enthralled. But try as he might, he can’t quite get his head around the idea that, instead of just stealing Ohtao’s spear, he should get off his arse and make one himself. What’s worse, when Ohtao tries to reclaim his spear Tumak just about makes to kill him, and he’s only stopped by the timely intervention of the rest of the tribe. The chief, deciding that enough is enough, kicks Tumak out. Luckily for Tumak, Loana has by this point more or less fallen for him, and she decides to follow him (for whatever sick, twisted reason) out into the wilderness, braving ferocious dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals in the hopes of making it back to Tumak’s old tribe. I’m not sure what Tumak hoped to achieve by this, honestly – I guess he just planned to try and beat Akoba up again (because it worked-out so well for him the first time, after all). In any case, the question has been rendered moot by events back at Rock City during the course of Tumak’s absence. You see, Akoba got himself messed-up pretty bad during a dangle with a bison one afternoon, and now that he’s a sickly old cripple a new guy has taken-over as king of the Rock tribe. Which might seem to pose just as big a problem, except that muscling-out a crippled old man is a hell of a lot easier than facing-off against a battle-hardened young Turk and his hot, frizzy-haired, spear-savvy new girlfriend. Pretty soon, Tumak is chief, and Loana is busily at work inventing the White Woman’s Burden and bringing civilisation to his brutish, furrier-frequenting new subjects. Things are just grand for all concerned, although that volcano in back of shot sure has an ominous cast...</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I’m tempted to give <i style="">One Million BC </i>much more than its due. Released as it was in 1940, its proclamations about the savagery of the Rock tribe appear, almost unavoidably, to be a loud and angry cry against the evils of Global Fascism. That Hal Roach would decide to couch his parable on the evils of the “Might is Right” philosophy within a caveman movie where Victor Mature fights a giant armadillo is, needless to say, both a peculiar and an admirable choice of strategy, and his broad-strokes prehistoric morality play would have a strong impact on later films like <i style="">Teenage Caveman</i> and, God help us all, <i style="">Yor, The Hunter from the Future</i>. In addition to this, the movie looks great. The film obviously wasn’t a mega-budget affair, but the prehistoric world it portrays is, for all its inaccuracies, really cool to look at. The Rock tribe cave is dripping with Gothic menace, the desert landscapes are blasted and gigantean, and the jungles are impossibly lush and bestrewn with great tangles of vines and weird-looking pot plants. The acting, on the other hand, is never especially good, and in the opening prologue is actually outright ludicrous; but the actors playing cavemen all rise to meet the minimal challenge of this sort of old-timey matinee fair, and Carol Landis even manages to be good. Not<i style=""> good</i> good, but caveman movie good, and certainly gives a better show than Raquel Welch would twenty-seven years later.<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxsa1pPPsOIB1Oum9PrKKOC5r9LkokpMiFfL2OpPk-rxsnPVHb4rog_J6KzfdoPotsR-Bkkdl5sFlw9DoCt-0UMb11UjJJwPfi8lw8QFPZMuQY3qKyDro_t0RyJrpTPoBYkXZ5_lsL8yI/s1600-h/onemillion11.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxsa1pPPsOIB1Oum9PrKKOC5r9LkokpMiFfL2OpPk-rxsnPVHb4rog_J6KzfdoPotsR-Bkkdl5sFlw9DoCt-0UMb11UjJJwPfi8lw8QFPZMuQY3qKyDro_t0RyJrpTPoBYkXZ5_lsL8yI/s400/onemillion11.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318659850512819282" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiriZMW1OdVjYl1z_hbBj9s6ZC-KP4Buihyphenhyphen1tZqq6wV96WjV_bhpiXQPycj4-fu7Gs9G7lNT3i-cuDpkE1qlOUTgsLLIuyDfo-MeYr4HMCTm7C_amqYvnIA1Ppta66cFjRd2dDDYCvBd4g/s1600-h/onemillion9.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiriZMW1OdVjYl1z_hbBj9s6ZC-KP4Buihyphenhyphen1tZqq6wV96WjV_bhpiXQPycj4-fu7Gs9G7lNT3i-cuDpkE1qlOUTgsLLIuyDfo-MeYr4HMCTm7C_amqYvnIA1Ppta66cFjRd2dDDYCvBd4g/s400/onemillion9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318659848983954770" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuf-Q9MkYP66x5N2Xn9OUhkbgkwKKEoda9JiN2Fc3XK-yXHhus8CPvYNkbiroZUPQX_Hikvup-4fb4w0GK9SzOC_pksUPelkzwrwrBUdKHHd5rTKIcO6nUnZfsLi5J8U565CJJm4EnkVQ/s1600-h/onemillion10.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuf-Q9MkYP66x5N2Xn9OUhkbgkwKKEoda9JiN2Fc3XK-yXHhus8CPvYNkbiroZUPQX_Hikvup-4fb4w0GK9SzOC_pksUPelkzwrwrBUdKHHd5rTKIcO6nUnZfsLi5J8U565CJJm4EnkVQ/s400/onemillion10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318659853104714162" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrI5s5eXCsbVf6_SmDF_uKCPLyFHBsWvYt4jbL8zMPbNSbZwXCEKmm9FieJofyltBFbnJ5y5GlnFOE2W2-3yuEOHB6dPOT_aDJDnvtwHthqDgC4Z3tnHdG22gGy192i5oR1N-cvwsLO68/s1600-h/onemillion15.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrI5s5eXCsbVf6_SmDF_uKCPLyFHBsWvYt4jbL8zMPbNSbZwXCEKmm9FieJofyltBFbnJ5y5GlnFOE2W2-3yuEOHB6dPOT_aDJDnvtwHthqDgC4Z3tnHdG22gGy192i5oR1N-cvwsLO68/s400/onemillion15.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318659853088827746" border="0" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The jewels in the film’s crown, however, are its action scenes. Admittedly, Tumak’s fight with the man-in-suit theropod is pretty goofy, but the rest of the dinosaur fights in the film are much more convincingly portrayed. With stop-motion obviously beyond the production’s means, Roach decided instead to employ the somewhat more crude technique of using trick photography to allow real animals to stand-in for his dinosaurs – the special effects technicians dinosauring-up the baby alligators and goannas by gluing fins to their backs and horns onto their heads. Sometimes this looks silly, such as when a giant armadillo attacks Tumak and Loana as they hide in a tree, but the monitors look damned convincing, if not as dinosaurs, then as giant monitor lizards wandering around in the jungle (which, honestly, is just as scary a thought). The optical work in this film is truly beyond reproach. In the climatic scene, where the Shell tribe must be rescued from a marauding giant iguana, the animal really does look as though it’s moving through the landscape, and the characters’ interactions with it are perfectly convincing to boot. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Unfortunately (and I bet you knew this was coming) the use of real animals has a downside. It didn’t have to, mind, but that’s never stopped anyone before. You see, this is a dinosaur movie as much as a caveman movie, and in dinosaur movies the dinosaurs always fight. And what’s the easiest way to show a battle between a goanna and a crocodile? How about having them fight for real? As impressive and powerful as it is to consider in the abstract, watching a giant goanna have its throat torn-out becomes positively horrifying once you realise that it’s happening for real. And what’s worse, it’s not even an isolated incident. In this film, snakes get eaten alive by bears... iguanas are buried under rock piles... <i style="">One Million BC</i> is one of those films that make you realise just how long sixty years actually is. That the makers of this films stage such scenes without pausing to consider that, rather than being horrified by the carnage and savagery of the animals on display, the audience might instead be horrified by the production itself, is bizarre. Then again, <i style="">Cannibal Holocaust</i> was only <i style="">thirty</i> years ago, after all... Although perhaps the most bizarre thing is just how often the battling dinosaur footage got recycled in later, cheaper films. We’ll be meeting that poor old goanna a fair few times again before this blog is out. In any case, it’s a real pity that the producers took the path they did, since while the rest of film is nothing special it at least has a sort of goofy charm. It certainly problematises any positive opinion I may have of the film as a whole.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI2TDe15ETldINgu7yMrAQl4L0-Bcqk8TtXUZszrlNK84rfyLQFusI_gt3LcPViuOYRta8riXVNRZcVhjSe4AGD9d297AQMOhNZiQPyAMaf8POmVbGU8vFSIs5bvvoE6kPkByM-cGKorY/s1600-h/onemillion4.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 352px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI2TDe15ETldINgu7yMrAQl4L0-Bcqk8TtXUZszrlNK84rfyLQFusI_gt3LcPViuOYRta8riXVNRZcVhjSe4AGD9d297AQMOhNZiQPyAMaf8POmVbGU8vFSIs5bvvoE6kPkByM-cGKorY/s400/onemillion4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318657750722063778" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1lpHgQAo4otXDOXQyU7QFFDQtcFZENHRAmPppwxGmokjD0COT-KM0yDUs_XTOjsF8bPNsRZgIpymTFbz7fYTAAElqhfX26ln7YptStw56BgEcF2D8m05YyA2lPDvpO5uHAd-lez8o6OM/s1600-h/onemillion3.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 352px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1lpHgQAo4otXDOXQyU7QFFDQtcFZENHRAmPppwxGmokjD0COT-KM0yDUs_XTOjsF8bPNsRZgIpymTFbz7fYTAAElqhfX26ln7YptStw56BgEcF2D8m05YyA2lPDvpO5uHAd-lez8o6OM/s400/onemillion3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318657746049173778" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ_7pKoA0n7ZalSviatP3Yg0lLQN9FI7qniDniaxVfB8oC9qIukE5mAnDZEN5S4Cc0GIYs6nA3H5cirmBghHhRc9FuRSFke0Oy45oWn5iRZzmb5uIkmhroQVAco2VtsQhth42IOnyZVH0/s1600-h/onemillion2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 352px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ_7pKoA0n7ZalSviatP3Yg0lLQN9FI7qniDniaxVfB8oC9qIukE5mAnDZEN5S4Cc0GIYs6nA3H5cirmBghHhRc9FuRSFke0Oy45oWn5iRZzmb5uIkmhroQVAco2VtsQhth42IOnyZVH0/s400/onemillion2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318657746490503170" border="0" /></a><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi351CwxNRqK47t04sGlPzuJBLOrxIi_Jb3XFDgDGAhWCUfM9SZNVtUQ0D1DWoG7TfWmO9Vhc5W31picTlVdjAonafiW5Hf7oCWRHYNOFJrtYrGDUD0DnAf74dqxeCZQY8B3RoQDqWM_PA/s1600-h/onemillion1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 352px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi351CwxNRqK47t04sGlPzuJBLOrxIi_Jb3XFDgDGAhWCUfM9SZNVtUQ0D1DWoG7TfWmO9Vhc5W31picTlVdjAonafiW5Hf7oCWRHYNOFJrtYrGDUD0DnAf74dqxeCZQY8B3RoQDqWM_PA/s400/onemillion1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318657744450539154" border="0" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnJ0jI32AxOqaC7447NlN-wiuRISDMi93WoqW0xq4903QWmZYU1sL874au0GIKOkvknMzAeqZ5Wrel5WDOpNoRVYexk334C89BZ5VrHXt6AjYRpSXC8QnDLl3Dsa6jw2mcaIqH1jSJk-I/s1600-h/onemillion19.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 352px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnJ0jI32AxOqaC7447NlN-wiuRISDMi93WoqW0xq4903QWmZYU1sL874au0GIKOkvknMzAeqZ5Wrel5WDOpNoRVYexk334C89BZ5VrHXt6AjYRpSXC8QnDLl3Dsa6jw2mcaIqH1jSJk-I/s400/onemillion19.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318658203471549138" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Before I finish-up, I suppose I should also tackle a couple of the “firsts” posed by this here film. After all, One Million BC may not be the first serious caveman movie (it apparently rips-off those old D.W. Griffith ones pretty heavily, which I can well believe given its rampant moralising), but it does seem to be the only one much available, and as a consequence it’s responsible for a lot of the clichés, does and don’ts of the genre. For example, here the film presents a typical good tribe/bad tribe scenario, except that here for once not all the good cave people are bottle-blondes. As another example, here we get another prominent example of that damned volcano that’s always just about to erupt. The interesting thing here, however, is that the volcano doesn’t erupt at the climax of the picture, but instead blows its top at the <i style="">beginning</i> of the last act. There’s a whole dang iguana attack waiting back of that thing. It makes sense, I suppose, since in this film the volcanic eruption causes fissures that sort of swallow-up all the dinosaurs, and then humanity has to move-on in a spirit of comradeship into a brighter, dinosaur-free tomorrow. However, in the opposite direction, the film is relatively free of sexploitative elements. Granted, Victor Mature shows a lot of skin, but only by the standards of 1940s mainstream cinema could this film ever be billed as deliberately titillative.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I’m No Scientist, But...</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Three words: Giant Freaking Iguanas. When you’re dealing with shit like this rationalisation goes out the window. Observe:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Wag – Good sir! Mr Roach, old man! You do know, old bean, that human beings never cohabited with dinosaurs don’t you, wot wot?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Hal Roach – Yes, but what about giant freaking iguanas?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">See? Pointless to argue.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">What is funny, however, is the lengths to which the makers have gone to try and disguise the fact that they were making a fantasy film. They aren’t quite so brazen as Hammer were with the remake, the wonderful poster of which involved bikini-clad cave girls, dinosaurs and a volcano all brought together beneath the characteristically bombastic tagline “THIS IS THE WAY IT WAS!”, but having a guy in lederhosen receive a lecture of questionable accuracy from a beardy in a cavern runs a close second. I’m actually confused as to why this section was included, honestly. Maybe in 1940 audiences just weren’t ready to leap forth into a dialogue-free caveman fantasy without a bit of easing.<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Fm8NL3Rlv0gbohqMZKb9uW_TQ5ctLwvBG-HDH0njwSCNiFzL0XGWH8b18qSj5b5MhQ0QbEdAAUX6_lJ8pFdXgIp5zL6agQ39L3iNUYWHMUi5JQbsqLcs4_tqoMHpMqgjiIrDtL2puGQ/s1600-h/onemillion5.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Fm8NL3Rlv0gbohqMZKb9uW_TQ5ctLwvBG-HDH0njwSCNiFzL0XGWH8b18qSj5b5MhQ0QbEdAAUX6_lJ8pFdXgIp5zL6agQ39L3iNUYWHMUi5JQbsqLcs4_tqoMHpMqgjiIrDtL2puGQ/s400/onemillion5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318657751401267682" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVdzth03plbBai_0a9Ty0VHCEOZ5SjfqLPdYN2HH5_6-Qndlk41IAJ6gsnLYIwEheRaU-KiRlXLUxcE-da3KBnmhL7n_kHLIyY_AHu1ed1H3WyVSI67vBzVaUT4kGn2m-wIyx5plqjI3s/s1600-h/onemillion16.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVdzth03plbBai_0a9Ty0VHCEOZ5SjfqLPdYN2HH5_6-Qndlk41IAJ6gsnLYIwEheRaU-KiRlXLUxcE-da3KBnmhL7n_kHLIyY_AHu1ed1H3WyVSI67vBzVaUT4kGn2m-wIyx5plqjI3s/s400/onemillion16.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318660314972783122" border="0" /> </a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn3PPTipfar1O5P-JLNqaL8B78EwDUWWtIn4NqQiDtb9MZeocMjpq-kdved-63bXO6s6Gdn4tvw4rXMMuTxX_A6srfVB1kFsnXkCtC9vbUhTy07lZ4tX_f1oIAvXOEMAEvJKOX0yxploQ/s1600-h/onemillion18.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn3PPTipfar1O5P-JLNqaL8B78EwDUWWtIn4NqQiDtb9MZeocMjpq-kdved-63bXO6s6Gdn4tvw4rXMMuTxX_A6srfVB1kFsnXkCtC9vbUhTy07lZ4tX_f1oIAvXOEMAEvJKOX0yxploQ/s400/onemillion18.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318660315183793538" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD-yY491Sy3WIghOb61lyxT0xeyFz6_DOzJ8oNJpYFjIG1_eCDrvtIFd861QJvapOFE1QXmmnBFGmWcnag9YZ0c3Av9ZJJBH6ay3xaBxGqxQLjqQpv2wrebX5tLOdHkZm5woPRWySFs_U/s1600-h/onemillion17.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD-yY491Sy3WIghOb61lyxT0xeyFz6_DOzJ8oNJpYFjIG1_eCDrvtIFd861QJvapOFE1QXmmnBFGmWcnag9YZ0c3Av9ZJJBH6ay3xaBxGqxQLjqQpv2wrebX5tLOdHkZm5woPRWySFs_U/s400/onemillion17.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318660316218826530" border="0" /></a><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Anyway, leaving aside the obviously fantastical nature of the film, I do still take issue with the representation of the caveman language. All the humans in this film are just that – thoroughly modern Homo sapiens sapiens. Given that one expects that language would have developed to a fair degree of sophistication with the early species such as the cro magnons, Neanderthals, and other, earlier species of human, the fact that the caveman languages in this film consist of about ten words each is inexplicable and irritating. There isn’t even any sort of explanation behind why “misha” is a monster, or “akita!” means help. Given that the cavemen don’t even appear to have a grammar, expressing everything as they do in concrete, single-word statements, I’m not sure why they aren’t just communicating with a series of grunts and gestures. Why yell “Akita!” when a loud, panicked shout would suffice? Yes, I realise I’m complaining about a language not being dumb enough, but I don’t care. The laziness of the film makers, in cooking-up a few catch-cries so that their somewhat limited actors wouldn’t have to struggle with complex dialogue, is infuriating. Why the hell not just have them speak in English, anyway! Were they trying to be faithful to original text? Did they not want to loose poetic intricacies of such cavemanese statements as “Tumak! Loana Tumak! Loana Tumak grishu!” delivered with a thick American accent. Well, I personally consider Robert Fagles’ translation perfectly suitable for non-native speakers, even if some prefer Pope or E.V. Rieu, and I’m sure that Carol Landis was up to the challenger of delivering dialogue such as </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB">“O valorous Tumak! You of the stern-wooded staff; <o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB">I, Loana, of the thick-ferned vale, do kneel to you<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span>In the sweet slavery of my love. Now, Tumak, let us <o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB">Voyage this valley, let us brave the mighty serpents <o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB">Of the veldt, and in the bourn of your distant homeland <o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB">Shall we suckle the coming bounty of our young</span></i><span lang="EN-GB">”. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span>(Fagles, R. 1986 – <i style="">The Saga of Tumak, Prince of Rockland</i>,[l. 2372-2373]).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">In any case, the “mumbo jumbo” convention is a very peculiar one, and something that I’m not entirely sure I’m in favour of. I am, however, looking forward to the monkey-man language that Anthony Burgess cooked-up for <i style="">Quest for Fire</i> (which I intend to watch this week, if I remember to buy it); and I’ll also admit that it’s a great deal of fun, when alarmed by something, to be able to raise your arms in the air and shout “AKEEEEEEE-<i style="">TA!</i>” to the complete bemusement of your family and friends.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Over all:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqvroJbtMUGLV0OBLaEdzJSjcWLJKJsC15r6aODqJ7klbdsZ3enxP2w6QDArhbwwOTU_WHzwvn9N8FXkF9_FWkdI5wSURWE-uRmVT_XBTkf26rK-csY3yN_JXFNaxapfvn-C0xkkavgdI/s1600-h/2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 140px; height: 65px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqvroJbtMUGLV0OBLaEdzJSjcWLJKJsC15r6aODqJ7klbdsZ3enxP2w6QDArhbwwOTU_WHzwvn9N8FXkF9_FWkdI5wSURWE-uRmVT_XBTkf26rK-csY3yN_JXFNaxapfvn-C0xkkavgdI/s400/2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318661778981762082" border="0" /></a></p><br />Two McClures out of Five.Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-65699330633785606342009-03-13T22:11:00.000+11:002009-03-14T05:21:33.340+11:006. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnoystRJqdByziKX1oAa07azk1_Br3SBC15qwBnT1OLz-jRT17GRbfEKg7D_dM_P_ZvI3tDytqybqRZsjoBu2DcG3ZBoCdRSz8C3Qy_oSAuqyt6rBUmClAhfYbQXyMTku6jMRhUBz_dNQ/s1600-h/12729.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 328px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnoystRJqdByziKX1oAa07azk1_Br3SBC15qwBnT1OLz-jRT17GRbfEKg7D_dM_P_ZvI3tDytqybqRZsjoBu2DcG3ZBoCdRSz8C3Qy_oSAuqyt6rBUmClAhfYbQXyMTku6jMRhUBz_dNQ/s400/12729.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312645132646521314" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Director:</span> Rouben Mamoulian<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cast: </span>Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins and Rose Hobart.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Caveman Quotient:</span> A solitary specimen of uncharacteristic tenacity.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Analysis:</span><br /><br />I’d like to apologise for my lateness. I really would. You see, I’d been looking forward to discussing today’s film for an awfully long time, and yet when its turn came around it caught me dragging feet and going off to do heinous things like reading novels. I guess sustaining interest in anything can be a trial, especially when one is compelled to remain riveted by an endless parade of mediocre caveman comedies. Thankfully, however, today’s film is not only largely a-comedic, but it manages to avoid being mediocre, too. In fact, I’d even go so far as to declare Paramount’s 1931 version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</span> to be one of the finest horror films ever made.<br /><br />Now, there’s a problem there. “Thomas,” you might well ask, “what the hell does The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde have to do with cavemen?” The answer is of course “absolutely nothing”, but the film adaptation is a very different matter. In bringing R L Stevenson’s novella to the screen, Rouben Mamoulian and his team made some very bold changes to what was, even in 1931, becoming rather shop-worn material. Discarding Stevenson’s idea of a man trying to slough-off the evil in his soul, the film instead latches onto the modern perception of the Victorian condition and presents a Henry Jekyll who is seeking to escape the physical yearnings and selfish impulses of his base, animal nature. As a consequence, rather than Dr Jekyll’s exploration of the dual nature of man leading to a separation of the “evil” and the “good”, there instead occurs a separation of the “civilised” and the “primitive”, with Jekyll’s imbibing of his transformative potion causing him to degenerate into a hideous Neanderthal.<br /><br /><br />The choices made by Mamoulian’s film may, on the surface, appear sensationalist and exploitatively lurid. Not only are the spectacularly simian make-up effects and transformation scenes about as far from Stevenson’s novella as you could care to travel, but the entire film is centred around a theme of sexual repression that has almost no basis in the original book. In the novella, Jekyll is described as a bit of a stuffed-shirt, who was wild in his younger days, and who is now obviously trying to grapple with his desire for freedom of action in conflict against the buttoned-down nature of Victorian high society. As Stevenson himself pointed-out, the theme is hypocrisy, in that Jekyll desperately wants to appear a good person while at the same time being able to do every nasty thing he ever wanted. In the film, however, Dr. Jekyll is never really a hypocrite. Instead, he is a victim of his society – an idealist and philanthropist bordering on a saint who devotes a great deal of time to treating the poor in a free clinic that he runs, yet at the same time finds himself driven to distraction by the intense physical desire he feels for his betrothed, Muriel Carew. The crux of the problem is this – Muriel’ father the General is a self-absorbed prig, and insists that the couple must take each others hands on the same date that he and Muriel’ mother wed. The only problem being that doing so requires an agonising wait of eight long months. Given the battle between propriety and human nature that must be raging back and forth within Jekyll’s soul, it only makes sense that the poor guy would start to entertain notions about the duality of man (that he would be attempting to separate the base and civilised portions using a potion of his own devising in the hope of perhaps nullifying it is, admittedly, somewhat more peculiar - but then I guess it does make for a pretty cool story).<br /><br />Matters are made worse when Jekyll, walking home one night, rescues a pretty young prostitute from a dispute with a John. The minute young Ivy gets a look at him, with his top-hat and cape and gentlemanly manner, she immediately realises that she could be on to a very good thing. She puts the charm on something extraordinary (the seduction scene displays frank sexuality and an erotic charge that must have had quite a few people worried even in those pre-Code times), and it looks as though Jekyll might even succumb, only being “rescued” at the last minute by his friend the prudish Dr. Lanyon. The two men depart as Ivy’s bear leg sways back and forth in Jekyll’s mind like a pendulum, and Henry explains to his friend that repeats of this sort of business are exactly what he hopes to avoid by means of his “experiments”.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuNoIfGWjQMTmeGxrQ9AJKP7m-OrNDDTvN1Vr850M2FnZCWAteXdunXlD9qHxsgYEtHqALUEZQKUpXa3bvCnckUMCEKglfhXAshWVdbyHfH4OmQqHzRwKwtirZXMb-UHJBRnIeVl9Bbeo/s1600-h/jekyll6.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuNoIfGWjQMTmeGxrQ9AJKP7m-OrNDDTvN1Vr850M2FnZCWAteXdunXlD9qHxsgYEtHqALUEZQKUpXa3bvCnckUMCEKglfhXAshWVdbyHfH4OmQqHzRwKwtirZXMb-UHJBRnIeVl9Bbeo/s400/jekyll6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312648881940734258" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />The final straw comes when Jekyll gets a little too caught-up in his experiements one night and temporarily transforms himself into a Neanderthal. As a consequence, he manages to almost miss a dinner-date with the Carews, and the General is so flustered that he decides to take Muriel away from Jekyll on a tour of France. She protests, but to no avail, and Jekyll is left alone and bored and thinking about a lot of things, sex chief among them. In the end he figures consequences be damned and decides to give his potion another try. He’s realised by this point that it won’t allow him to escape his baser impulses, but perhaps, with a little finesse, it might allow the good doctor to indulge them. And so once more he swallows his potion, clutches at his throat, and gasps in horror as his teeth lengthen, his skin grows dark and hairy, and he transforms into this:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsy8QSlCxSM6Aub_aHTq-weZ-cQBMHEtqA9PcihC-lx8ytp4U-6YMRC7E3ZPm_WY3Q6ur5LH5aIkuZEEI4uvay9WFdQE0c7l20LUWeb6DkirIc5DxBj-n92t8Ljc7AHGHdyS50029rS4k/s1600-h/jekyll1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsy8QSlCxSM6Aub_aHTq-weZ-cQBMHEtqA9PcihC-lx8ytp4U-6YMRC7E3ZPm_WY3Q6ur5LH5aIkuZEEI4uvay9WFdQE0c7l20LUWeb6DkirIc5DxBj-n92t8Ljc7AHGHdyS50029rS4k/s320/jekyll1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312642113627927666" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Needless to say, this probably wasn’t what he had in mind when he started the project.<br /><br />The Hyde in this version is a fascinating character. Rather than being a figure of pure evil, he is something far more sophisticated and psychologically intriguing – a bundle of atavistic impulse completely shorn of civilised convention. He does things not because he’s evil, but because he doesn’t know any better; it’s only gradually that Hyde grows more sophisticated in himself, developing the necessary emotional equipment to blossom into a heartless, vindictive savage. And so his first action upon transforming is not to go out and beat people up for no real reason, but to finally cut through all the societal red tape and get himself a little tail.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4sLXU_xyJScmhFvwvAXYJhumUAmv4Ku09Yml_JkfD0ffSrJKg8pUQdFHvDXbrMtN_Y-aIVGOgsHAX72kln1NL_G6ZneY2oIvqjGFKI8C5a2G-tyEONYFVFLFu5eQjFmKzmSZm14y1Rac/s1600-h/jekyll9.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4sLXU_xyJScmhFvwvAXYJhumUAmv4Ku09Yml_JkfD0ffSrJKg8pUQdFHvDXbrMtN_Y-aIVGOgsHAX72kln1NL_G6ZneY2oIvqjGFKI8C5a2G-tyEONYFVFLFu5eQjFmKzmSZm14y1Rac/s400/jekyll9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312649449396570386" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />Obviously privy to Dr. Jekyll’s memories, Hyde tracks down Ivy, who is plying her trade in a sort of cabaret deal that suggests The Blue Angel crossed with an Old West saloon. A woman of the world, she sings the number “Anytime Ivy”, which could be considered her theme song of sorts, and when Hyde asks someone to bring her to him she comes without hesitation, secure in the woefully misguided belief that she can handle anything. Hyde - who is self-professedly no gentleman - paws her, makes a show of courting her with some champagne, and then proceeds to threaten her into accepting the unenviable position of his kept woman.<br /><br />From here the film plays-out as you’d expect it too, with the noble Dr. Jekyll attempting to juggle the demands of his public life alongside Hyde’s relationship with poor old Ivy. Hyde’s relationship with Ivy is one of twisted sadism that is truly painful to behold. In these scenes, Frederic March’s performance is so convincing that it’s very, very difficult not to squirm. Ivy Pearson’s life is, in effect, a living hell. She can’t escape Hyde, for fear that if she goes to the police he’ll track her down and kill her, and there is every sign that her fears are fully justified. What this leaves her too, in the meantime, is a life in which she is kept caged-up like a performing animal which Hyde tortures for his amusement. The most painful of these scenes occurs when Hyde, alerted by a newspaper article that Muriel is returning to London, tells Ivy that he’ll be going away for a while – though he knows not how long. Unfortunately, Ivy makes the mistake of showing a barely discernible hint of relief at this news. Unfortunately, because Hyde, as a living personification of all that Jekyll has repressed, is as much a creature of self-loathing as of desire; and his actions are motivated as much by a yearning to lash-out at a world which he hates, and which hates him in return. And so Hyde proceeds to wheedle Ivy... Do you hate me? No? Then you must love me! If you love me, you must be happy! Why don’t you show it? Why don’t you dance, and sing! Sing for me, damn you! And so he forces her to sing, and so Ivy sings. “Anytime Ivy”, to be exact. And only then, as Ivy lies broken and weeping on the bed, does Hyde proceed to rape her.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghUKyzo__LGZ-52gL_0BlaaNlbIGSJ8eOxRMgnxVXefafk25xKizfzZ9tR296G8KuGx_EG1mmW-4662XcAEdAouyMbpHehd63_VHMfkMhhrouIzAgH1H4A_P2eSFJdjH52q7Ei_GUlcw0/s1600-h/jekyll8.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghUKyzo__LGZ-52gL_0BlaaNlbIGSJ8eOxRMgnxVXefafk25xKizfzZ9tR296G8KuGx_EG1mmW-4662XcAEdAouyMbpHehd63_VHMfkMhhrouIzAgH1H4A_P2eSFJdjH52q7Ei_GUlcw0/s400/jekyll8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312649446026433842" border="0" /></a></div><br />It is from this point that Jekyll attempts to reassert himself, swearing-off of Hyde and attempting to make amends with Ivy by sending her some cash. Of course, it’s all woefully inadequate and largely ineffectual. What Hyde fails to realise is that, by this point, he is no longer merely indulging his impulses and has now become a slave to them. That it was Hyde doing all those horrible things to Ivy doesn’t change the fact that Jekyll is the one who knowingly and willingly let Hyde out. In the end, Hyde reasserts himself again and again, potion be damned, and the results are just as disastrous and one would expect.<br /><br />There are a lot of very good things about this film, but the two most obvious are Rouben Mamoulian’s direction and Fredric March’s captivating performance. The transfer to talking pictures from silent films was not a smooth one, and many directors were plainly baffled by how to balance things like fluid camera work and interesting visual story-telling against the demands of dialogue and sound recording. Many played it safe and let the actors do the work, and as a result many early talkies wind-up looking like nothing but nicely-lit stage plays. Mamoulian, however, had twin backgrounds in both stage direction and silent films, and as a consequence he had a much better idea of how to merge the elaborate direction and cinematography of the silent era with effect utilisation of sound. (He also appears to have been a bit of an arty tinkerer, and that never hurts either). For this film, he went all-out, employing everything from split-screens and double exposures to overlapping dialogue and elaborately-constructed hallucination sequences, all aimed at heightening the apparent subjectivity of the film. He announces his intentions in bombastic fashion in the very first moments of the film, opening with a first person tracking shot that follows Jekyll from his organ, where he is playing the “Toccata & Fugue in D Minor”, past the mirror where he checks his tie, and on a carriage ride all the way to the local institute where a lecture hall of medical students await him. The whole thing plays-out with no cuts, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more audacious opening for a film of this vintage. It’s also brilliant in that it sets a precedent which allows Mamoulian to cut back to shots from various characters’ perspective throughout the film without the audience being jarred by the transition. Equally attention-getting are the special effects - during Hyde's transformation scenes, a series of coloured filters were removed from the studio lights, the absence of each allowing a new layer of Fredric March's makeup to show on camera. The result is that Jekyll appears to transform into Hyde before your very eyes.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0wgtEMbHhQfYnGyfJ2IdWLbxTTmrgebYW3gWhRR88I-GCp92ll5Q3qL3Z1y-_eLwMV86abPED-U4oLLJVwtUndUODwWQQY4JkemD8vasLb9KHrTGcnssk5ggl0Ok3Li1e28JSOjo1f1E/s1600-h/jekyll2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0wgtEMbHhQfYnGyfJ2IdWLbxTTmrgebYW3gWhRR88I-GCp92ll5Q3qL3Z1y-_eLwMV86abPED-U4oLLJVwtUndUODwWQQY4JkemD8vasLb9KHrTGcnssk5ggl0Ok3Li1e28JSOjo1f1E/s400/jekyll2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312648871202199042" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8RfNlxUOSPd_MctItXpKVOig9e__QehpDpl-SASBEbj7xEgL2FYI03K_B-QuSpirPhLoom7fPli_EFqKmmZwgX_6qz4BqKKhAHczjiypQCG3gd3Hzs6rbSdweQkD_1dqPGwWzQVGze4s/s1600-h/jekyll5.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8RfNlxUOSPd_MctItXpKVOig9e__QehpDpl-SASBEbj7xEgL2FYI03K_B-QuSpirPhLoom7fPli_EFqKmmZwgX_6qz4BqKKhAHczjiypQCG3gd3Hzs6rbSdweQkD_1dqPGwWzQVGze4s/s400/jekyll5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312648877908442482" border="0" /></a><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk1aEtaYc4CCWHeo288nr4ZmPH8jyYZQhsEWnLsSD0xavVP_E5pGo8oIAkoVlkUOecPBsT_qe-Bt8ClQ5mgmXOsQ6085yFRq2noISyihD2wKNbh2WzRfrGZGO4aG0sSgzA0a9-DzIBN2g/s1600-h/jekyll4.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk1aEtaYc4CCWHeo288nr4ZmPH8jyYZQhsEWnLsSD0xavVP_E5pGo8oIAkoVlkUOecPBsT_qe-Bt8ClQ5mgmXOsQ6085yFRq2noISyihD2wKNbh2WzRfrGZGO4aG0sSgzA0a9-DzIBN2g/s400/jekyll4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312648876907484386" border="0" /></a></div><br />March, for his part, is every bit the match of his director. While a bit stiff in the guise of Jekyll, this is obviously a deliberate strategy on the film’s part. Once transformed into Hyde March is not only physically unrecognisable, but his voice, actions and mannerisms are all so perfectly peculiar and inhuman that it really does seem as though he were being played by a different actor. Everything, from facial twitches and his strange, jerky way of moving to the fact that he carries himself so as to actually appear to have diminished in size, is perfect. And the joy he takes in his role. From his first appearance, staring into a mirror and crying out "Free at last!", Hyde looks like just about the happiest man to have ever walked the Earth. Watching the film, it doesn’t seem possible that it could have worked with anyone else in the role – which probably explains why it didn’t work when MGM decided to produce its pointless and slavish remake ten years later. Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner? It sounds like a good cast, true, but aside from a typically good performance by Bergman nothing ever really seems to gel.<br /><br />Before wrapping-up this confused and painful overview, I should probably also mention the female leads. Rose Hobart doesn’t get all that much to do, but she manages a fine job of selling Muriel Carew as a considerate young woman torn between duty to her father and her own desires for independence and romantic love. It also helps that she has fine chemistry with March, and that they are always believable as lovers (there’s also a nice touch, in that both Jekyll and Muriel are shown to vent their passions for one another through thoroughly melodramatic displays of piano-playing). It’s a rare pleasure to see a “good girl” role that actually generates sympathy and interest.<br /><br />However, the real honour here goes to Miriam Hopkins who, as “bad girl” Ivy, does excellent service to a wonderfully meaty part. An interesting thing about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that the film doesn’t really have any villains, only victims of unfortunate circumstance. True, Jekyll does unleash Hyde, ut at first he has no real knowledge of what will occur, and his gradual complicity is ofset by his genuine attempt to make amends. Similarly, Ivy, despite being a prostitute, is never real punished for her sensuality. It’s true that she does meet an unfortunate end, but it’s clear throughout that we are merely supposed to pity the poor girl for having attracted the attention of Hyde - and it is the combination of pitifulness and maturity that Hopkins brings to the role which really makes it work. The scene in which she first attempts to seduce Jekyll is played without a hint of condemnation, and Lanyon, who interrupts the two, is presented throughout the film as a pompous, condescending, overly moralistic prig. The only element of complicity that Ivy could be said to have in her demise is that she overestimates herself considerably in accepting Hyde’s invitation to come drink with her. And, given that she probably didn’t expect to meet a sociopathic ape-man, she can be forgiven this.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTLZk46lz8DZwjrbg3kcPXMzV5Ql9YWxYyH2u6VWHz6UpCL1GevJbbKznJURAmL-vBLtS3jaFznG9-5DxHP_r_gdAMAsVox-mcERQqHNl_Tl5aY4hxOfjYTWtDFd28rdBpydBDEH8NVnw/s1600-h/jekyll7.jpg"><br /></a><br />In the end, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not a subtle film; but it is a complex and beautifully-made one. There is a genuinely tragic element, and while it may rob to novella of some of its potent vagueness it does manage to provide a highly effective narrative and thematic framework in return. And what’s more, it serves-up scenes of skin-crawling horror and a compelling human drama while at the same time managing to provide a lucid commentary on a topic which, regrettably, remains relevant even in an age when naked chicks appear regularly on network television. It's also rather comforting to find a film about a scientist tampering in God's domain in which the film is explicitly on the side of the tamperers, even as it admits that we may not be able to cope with what we find there.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTLZk46lz8DZwjrbg3kcPXMzV5Ql9YWxYyH2u6VWHz6UpCL1GevJbbKznJURAmL-vBLtS3jaFznG9-5DxHP_r_gdAMAsVox-mcERQqHNl_Tl5aY4hxOfjYTWtDFd28rdBpydBDEH8NVnw/s1600-h/jekyll7.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTLZk46lz8DZwjrbg3kcPXMzV5Ql9YWxYyH2u6VWHz6UpCL1GevJbbKznJURAmL-vBLtS3jaFznG9-5DxHP_r_gdAMAsVox-mcERQqHNl_Tl5aY4hxOfjYTWtDFd28rdBpydBDEH8NVnw/s400/jekyll7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312649447777372338" border="0" /></a></div><br /><br />Overall:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnVOfWQyknKvM_Kese-r3_zPmNxUs2l_HHCY-MLF9cDq-AJfHjkvXVXtXQW3GF6tsDq-yM1cPsr5oNE0k32Xa3-4CEb2M-7MX5aZnXWoYg775NLONG5MnNvb6w5GJQb7lxtxj38GB4-mU/s1600-h/4half.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 303px; height: 67px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnVOfWQyknKvM_Kese-r3_zPmNxUs2l_HHCY-MLF9cDq-AJfHjkvXVXtXQW3GF6tsDq-yM1cPsr5oNE0k32Xa3-4CEb2M-7MX5aZnXWoYg775NLONG5MnNvb6w5GJQb7lxtxj38GB4-mU/s320/4half.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312642916338275170" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Four and a half cavemen out of five.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGhuRBVIKWuSqZD5Jora-yYxe_7llf0vGgZlPBz-Wt5eowBTYGtChRRmSBoP6On0K6OIlE2iJlznzabZxI-DoZelQaFn4pYHB3mIO44HIkvf_ZOcw3EyYPN8T2fGh3kTGn-WkKjFz8kWI/s1600-h/jekyll3.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 293px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGhuRBVIKWuSqZD5Jora-yYxe_7llf0vGgZlPBz-Wt5eowBTYGtChRRmSBoP6On0K6OIlE2iJlznzabZxI-DoZelQaFn4pYHB3mIO44HIkvf_ZOcw3EyYPN8T2fGh3kTGn-WkKjFz8kWI/s400/jekyll3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312648873862321330" border="0" /></a><br /></div>Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-87206690438297681332009-02-26T21:04:00.000+11:002009-02-26T22:45:00.892+11:005. Flying Elephants (1928)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e2/L&H_Flying_Elelphants_1928.jpg/200px-L&H_Flying_Elelphants_1928.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 297px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e2/L&H_Flying_Elelphants_1928.jpg/200px-L&H_Flying_Elelphants_1928.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Director:</span> Frank Butler<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cast:</span> Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Finlayson</span>, Viola Richard<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Caveman Quotient: </span>100%<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">When confronted with a film like <i style="">Flying Elephants</i>, I have difficulty thinking of anything new to say. The film is, in its essentials, basically just a rehash of the early comedies we’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ve</span> seen here, with it’s only real distinguishing features being, firstly, that it stars Laurel and Hardy (about whom I know nothing) and, secondly, that it boasts a noticeably higher quality of T ‘n’ A (about which I pretend to know nothing). Still, it’s not without merit, and in any case I'm obliged by my pedantry to review it. However due both to it's slightness of plot and it's slim running time (barely 20 minutes, and shorter in some cuts) I've decided that<span style="font-style: italic;"> Flying Elephants</span> will not, despite the dictates of tradition, be the only film which I review this week.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">The story takes place in the distant past of the Stone Age – so called because the king has for some reason declared that all men between the ages of 13 and 95 must marry, and if they refuse then they will be sentenced to labour on the rock pile (or be banished and executed, or both – look it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">doesn</span>’t really bear thinking about). The plot, such as it is, concerns Hardy the Mighty Giant wandering into the kingdom and being told of his marital obligations, and then setting about trying and failing to woo various women. The joke here being that while numerous highly attractive women inexplicably find Hardy something of a catch, they’re all already married, and as a consequence poor old Ollie can’t get more than two words in without having some irate spouse appear from behind a boulder and conk him one on the head with an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">oversized</span> cudgel.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihlC7x-5fCcMO4NDUidXMx7g2fKYwibigCU6-eMvEjnAVzSjdvcUBiPaazd9KrujA6dFSESt89UGDqTG8Xf7NPc3GlSq-S62uhSn3IybfWWUwP2tTkec_kmJwlEPj9NzF7KAFTSDmAabE/s1600-h/PDVD_02n.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihlC7x-5fCcMO4NDUidXMx7g2fKYwibigCU6-eMvEjnAVzSjdvcUBiPaazd9KrujA6dFSESt89UGDqTG8Xf7NPc3GlSq-S62uhSn3IybfWWUwP2tTkec_kmJwlEPj9NzF7KAFTSDmAabE/s200/PDVD_02n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307065076436494402" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeRE3B4imSujWUjQ3BFWWlXG9nh9LF25oS9c-pTvBalNSSdpe3lV8zbGo0-daleb0BWcOa01uKzV5k6RFtDbOmX6Weh8TQ5-kc2d-kw8eM69dfe7u1QAU0aeJMVLyvly8Pc4IpW4tqYt8/s1600-h/PDVD_018.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeRE3B4imSujWUjQ3BFWWlXG9nh9LF25oS9c-pTvBalNSSdpe3lV8zbGo0-daleb0BWcOa01uKzV5k6RFtDbOmX6Weh8TQ5-kc2d-kw8eM69dfe7u1QAU0aeJMVLyvly8Pc4IpW4tqYt8/s200/PDVD_018.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307065079643509746" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTm03m0SYKJ-B37Vq6vF0VOxfsF_-RWGS9ZUAEQEzHm84SnZHm_uw0L5sGxh4oRSfiYcdnLV-Lduw_Nj0WWAp96_UNAxbu9G7Ju1GEiBCo4HG1poaepyHpJoOlNDIiY5pT9ngzgNb8YNY/s1600-h/PDVD_0n4.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; ;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTm03m0SYKJ-B37Vq6vF0VOxfsF_-RWGS9ZUAEQEzHm84SnZHm_uw0L5sGxh4oRSfiYcdnLV-Lduw_Nj0WWAp96_UNAxbu9G7Ju1GEiBCo4HG1poaepyHpJoOlNDIiY5pT9ngzgNb8YNY/s200/PDVD_0n4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307065084319921282" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTmsS-4pJ0gJTvfU3o-BiYlkKpWMRBJkX94MlH41xDDANdpXcTOfOje1QknTJHpo8jpGnzF1c1Al5CBo4jc4NkvYFOQGz1pyZ_d2lVcHdMmW5v09EfddReI6-X9GgGpWG_8bKC-AsLKiU/s1600-h/PDVD_016.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTmsS-4pJ0gJTvfU3o-BiYlkKpWMRBJkX94MlH41xDDANdpXcTOfOje1QknTJHpo8jpGnzF1c1Al5CBo4jc4NkvYFOQGz1pyZ_d2lVcHdMmW5v09EfddReI6-X9GgGpWG_8bKC-AsLKiU/s200/PDVD_016.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307065083792790018" border="0" /></a></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">At the same time two other parties have entered the kingdom from opposite ends. The Wizard <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Saxophonus</span> (James <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Finlayson</span>) and his daughter Blushing Rose (Viola Richard), arrive via Ford motor-ox and set-up camp down by the stream. Meanwhile, Little Twinkle Star (Laurel, who looks weirdly like my grandfather) has just pranced up over a ridge top, and upon being informed of <i style="">his</i> marital obligations by the conveniently-positioned plot-contrivance celebrant, reacts in more or less exactly the manner you’d expect of someone bearing his particular sobriquet. This leads to a lot of shenanigans in the same vein as the “Stone Age” segment of Three Ages, as Little Twinkle Star tries and fails to win-over a variety of women by shows of manliness, until he finally happens upon Blushing Rose – who, against all odds, reciprocates Little Twinkle Star’s feelings. Of course the father objects to his daughter marrying a Nancy, Little Twinkle Star must prove himself worthy by clubbing a brace of trout, and then at the end Hardy shows-up and fights Little Twinkle Star for Blushing Rose’s hand. Everything is put right by the intervention of a vengeful mountain goat, and the happy couple are free to go off on their merry way - - <i style="">or are they?</i></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZDZ2GLWLhAfl5ItNSp7TCghpJBzFxrVXn7KMsc2aImnVq3kxDiPSbTDb4c7ZdM5eLJ2qo8RaVpRBJfDheZd2fiNijGlj1xQLWUSyaDnm6Hk8x_ZyEL_-P-ziInhj_j1xHXsq8-vLaDc4/s1600-h/PDVD_022.jpg"> </a><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZDZ2GLWLhAfl5ItNSp7TCghpJBzFxrVXn7KMsc2aImnVq3kxDiPSbTDb4c7ZdM5eLJ2qo8RaVpRBJfDheZd2fiNijGlj1xQLWUSyaDnm6Hk8x_ZyEL_-P-ziInhj_j1xHXsq8-vLaDc4/s1600-h/PDVD_022.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZDZ2GLWLhAfl5ItNSp7TCghpJBzFxrVXn7KMsc2aImnVq3kxDiPSbTDb4c7ZdM5eLJ2qo8RaVpRBJfDheZd2fiNijGlj1xQLWUSyaDnm6Hk8x_ZyEL_-P-ziInhj_j1xHXsq8-vLaDc4/s200/PDVD_022.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307066812763770882" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyItd4KqtUWoVpp1CbnBtM9N3Gmp0JZbICXxEmbdif20NEJbRNqTTxl6fFQd6SkTzKzbodKEep7Kofdu0BOXx3qDMdSMjZzYMY0tib_zoQdBbMJC7RJN49eBq9PyrCiFkEbFMr8DPKE5U/s1600-h/PDVD_032.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyItd4KqtUWoVpp1CbnBtM9N3Gmp0JZbICXxEmbdif20NEJbRNqTTxl6fFQd6SkTzKzbodKEep7Kofdu0BOXx3qDMdSMjZzYMY0tib_zoQdBbMJC7RJN49eBq9PyrCiFkEbFMr8DPKE5U/s200/PDVD_032.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307067353452296898" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAEE04v7RnWYyHCFP8lq2q1NY96drtdMRs9AYsVz2n62KxMVFZQDZzcbObDuzTpB3fgoUELk6bpjwzvrt4u_fF288mkRXzpDPzFU1HzMYXX9h0fY7TStM-wnAdUtnmbCAqCWpU-NbPVY/s1600-h/PDVD_011.jpg"> </a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAEE04v7RnWYyHCFP8lq2q1NY96drtdMRs9AYsVz2n62KxMVFZQDZzcbObDuzTpB3fgoUELk6bpjwzvrt4u_fF288mkRXzpDPzFU1HzMYXX9h0fY7TStM-wnAdUtnmbCAqCWpU-NbPVY/s1600-h/PDVD_011.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAEE04v7RnWYyHCFP8lq2q1NY96drtdMRs9AYsVz2n62KxMVFZQDZzcbObDuzTpB3fgoUELk6bpjwzvrt4u_fF288mkRXzpDPzFU1HzMYXX9h0fY7TStM-wnAdUtnmbCAqCWpU-NbPVY/s200/PDVD_011.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307067351299095810" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgafks-deinKt6ZZaLzP757Ki3BzQPQXfkt4gfqFEKjAufwzkAD5EQbq4s51xNNPbBbmau8b56cWTEmSu3UQCUa2GvvMJV52izW4vJVwgK104pVE6qRfsbzu99WdLU1_8g0yUpX3IVOOEA/s1600-h/PDVD_033.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgafks-deinKt6ZZaLzP757Ki3BzQPQXfkt4gfqFEKjAufwzkAD5EQbq4s51xNNPbBbmau8b56cWTEmSu3UQCUa2GvvMJV52izW4vJVwgK104pVE6qRfsbzu99WdLU1_8g0yUpX3IVOOEA/s200/PDVD_033.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307067353662106386" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">By the time credits roll on <i style="">Flying Elephants</i>, it has come to resemble <i style="">Three Ages</i> to an alarming extent. The main difference lies in the contrasting tones of the two films. Whereas Keaton’s comedy tends to be focused fairly strongly on characters and narrative, here Laurel and Hardy display an episodic, gag-focused approach that has more in common with a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. The result of all this is that <i style="">Flying Elephants </i>is very much a film which lives and dies by its individual jokes. Thankfully, while the film is for the most part fairly pedestrian silliness, it does boast a number of genuinely good gags. For example, there’s the fish-clubbing scene, which is at the same time very stupid and very funny – one of the few times the film manages to be just as ridiculous as it thinks its being. Then there’s the instance alluded to in the title, which has no bearing in anything but which is pretty entertaining if you don’t know it’s coming. My favourite gag, however, consists of Laurel attempting to pick a girl up and carrying her away over his shoulder, only to have her leap off, laugh at him, and then beat the crap out of him with some well-rehearsed judo. It’s a cheap joke, granted, and owes more than a little to a number of similar scenes in Three Ages, but at the same time I am far too much of a Johnny Bravo fan not to be amused by the sight of an effete Stan Laurel being beaten-up by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">starlette</span> and occasional stunt woman Dorothy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Coburn</span> while he cries-out “Don’t you know the rules!”. It’s funny, damn it! Now if you don’t mind I’m going to go chuckle heartily at <i style=""><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Allo</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Allo</span></i>.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijRkcbzUE-pCCUPZDC3XWwun4u31w59BYVCxgOkQHApvDEROrhX4Gqyq0mFcp6mHoyOChW-qTS0aDCx4bCVKHEXNRzJv43CgqpDohQZdcQCkbJ9NWkcNQc5zd10YzijKuIhz_6Hm6ReEc/s1600-h/PDVD_021.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijRkcbzUE-pCCUPZDC3XWwun4u31w59BYVCxgOkQHApvDEROrhX4Gqyq0mFcp6mHoyOChW-qTS0aDCx4bCVKHEXNRzJv43CgqpDohQZdcQCkbJ9NWkcNQc5zd10YzijKuIhz_6Hm6ReEc/s200/PDVD_021.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307068235706548482" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidfWw3eoljwvv8u1VUob3WpCw7kaAwzaKBqPcxCm2l-AsMXbQs5aTT13VLdCLknsZtLJEXs1Wgf53RuokgsA4rPzOef2HmC2lm2azVBrI5DgyAt8hyi_tOLMccochZUG5eKAdWgtgMQ2w/s1600-h/PDVD_035.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidfWw3eoljwvv8u1VUob3WpCw7kaAwzaKBqPcxCm2l-AsMXbQs5aTT13VLdCLknsZtLJEXs1Wgf53RuokgsA4rPzOef2HmC2lm2azVBrI5DgyAt8hyi_tOLMccochZUG5eKAdWgtgMQ2w/s200/PDVD_035.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307068243043680274" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1Sp9eGvr6Ys-RHRXbBLyIxfG_lydWfGEt7yetm6O8VDwqmyhi3xccjunTMBcbQySJ4GKkHnFRLgRX5M55JQCw_LEktjnQ1VrV7JRFiOPqoKePdYLLmNaQT6ZKxX8DRBMGtPR8HtiOuA/s1600-h/PDVD_024.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1Sp9eGvr6Ys-RHRXbBLyIxfG_lydWfGEt7yetm6O8VDwqmyhi3xccjunTMBcbQySJ4GKkHnFRLgRX5M55JQCw_LEktjnQ1VrV7JRFiOPqoKePdYLLmNaQT6ZKxX8DRBMGtPR8HtiOuA/s200/PDVD_024.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307068236620228642" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq3zwN17T-d7vNqNL-WRhikksJOUQWXAYkgJ5ml7PtYrbTrfZyDbs1JPtr77qcpvB6b6SxopH8HtFfo6sWdexNJPKjbwlCgkNaolXE004QQbvFwIxrv-pHTXUCePyxRaJq_0hqr6LVkKQ/s1600-h/PDVD_037.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq3zwN17T-d7vNqNL-WRhikksJOUQWXAYkgJ5ml7PtYrbTrfZyDbs1JPtr77qcpvB6b6SxopH8HtFfo6sWdexNJPKjbwlCgkNaolXE004QQbvFwIxrv-pHTXUCePyxRaJq_0hqr6LVkKQ/s200/PDVD_037.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307068240688406978" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">The mention of Dorothy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Coburn</span> does let me bring-up the second of those two points of distinction I mentioned in the opening paragraph. It’s fairly clear that most of the point of this film lay in having attractive women lie up on screen in the shortest skirts allowable by law. This is even made a joke of, with the carefully revealing and thoroughly modern bathers-bottoms of the women visible in many shots. Then you have the fact that Laurel and Hardy can’t walk three paces without passing a woman draped over a rock, sunning herself. The amount of leg being shown is both awe-inspiring and quite welcome, and while it’s thoroughly ridiculous that seems to be in keeping with the spirit of the project. I mean, at one point a woman is seen pulling-on fur garters – it’s at such points that any of the potential <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">ickiness</span> of the premise is neatly and quietly nipped in the bud.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKoJnqzfaQcL0X-DZDgUxLOKfbhV-cYNMoseGWxQauHtHzeRqvcX5H44LDgSmOu0bHA5KEfy2r-HbXmObBmJE_ztU_Z41FY-siy9TY1tdPi7jZ9UQOU2Nze0Or8W5qRrK77SMXCBfZ_E/s1600-h/PDVD_015.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKoJnqzfaQcL0X-DZDgUxLOKfbhV-cYNMoseGWxQauHtHzeRqvcX5H44LDgSmOu0bHA5KEfy2r-HbXmObBmJE_ztU_Z41FY-siy9TY1tdPi7jZ9UQOU2Nze0Or8W5qRrK77SMXCBfZ_E/s200/PDVD_015.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307066320578968258" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEineRLfcxuyHqwMhkKvqLqlPcLP72YuwDjbY5DAvjSUaoIfTwWhImIKOZ3_dZzla09pvft67rUcCVEJbiWxsjYZzDIH1QZEyCBq1bYP7XzpTVaxCvuiI1yWUNxXkA94H0B4heZv6ZpCBno/s1600-h/PDVD_029.jpg"> </a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSHqKUi7mRz1ofJiKz6WxqnZae9bk2JGuz-jp-wg-WeOXWKv14t31SyU2Ehyphenhyphend7VcFO5O1l3HSAarEf14Anq96GsiFihV0Im4bpIsI1asgx0st5FzpgSSi-0WyRiysjpbbnEENVkJGHA5I/s1600-h/PDVD_040.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSHqKUi7mRz1ofJiKz6WxqnZae9bk2JGuz-jp-wg-WeOXWKv14t31SyU2Ehyphenhyphend7VcFO5O1l3HSAarEf14Anq96GsiFihV0Im4bpIsI1asgx0st5FzpgSSi-0WyRiysjpbbnEENVkJGHA5I/s200/PDVD_040.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307066314992820434" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3cUkdqUl9vEWKcS5DXjBrB1UvkGBcVwg6-452EghUAGKfm-BGyV2mQLDNs8iZTlNaYsjNOrUqx9VxsrMjoD2bG5IAf61IwcVU9cGSe3cUaLmPFzLUazk95dIaj9O0mgvfUWFFqZPLCks/s1600-h/PDVD_030.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3cUkdqUl9vEWKcS5DXjBrB1UvkGBcVwg6-452EghUAGKfm-BGyV2mQLDNs8iZTlNaYsjNOrUqx9VxsrMjoD2bG5IAf61IwcVU9cGSe3cUaLmPFzLUazk95dIaj9O0mgvfUWFFqZPLCks/s200/PDVD_030.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307066322661717058" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEineRLfcxuyHqwMhkKvqLqlPcLP72YuwDjbY5DAvjSUaoIfTwWhImIKOZ3_dZzla09pvft67rUcCVEJbiWxsjYZzDIH1QZEyCBq1bYP7XzpTVaxCvuiI1yWUNxXkA94H0B4heZv6ZpCBno/s1600-h/PDVD_029.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEineRLfcxuyHqwMhkKvqLqlPcLP72YuwDjbY5DAvjSUaoIfTwWhImIKOZ3_dZzla09pvft67rUcCVEJbiWxsjYZzDIH1QZEyCBq1bYP7XzpTVaxCvuiI1yWUNxXkA94H0B4heZv6ZpCBno/s200/PDVD_029.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307066324712693314" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3cUkdqUl9vEWKcS5DXjBrB1UvkGBcVwg6-452EghUAGKfm-BGyV2mQLDNs8iZTlNaYsjNOrUqx9VxsrMjoD2bG5IAf61IwcVU9cGSe3cUaLmPFzLUazk95dIaj9O0mgvfUWFFqZPLCks/s1600-h/PDVD_030.jpg"> </a></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">So, over all this is an mildly diverting film, but not really anything worth scaling a mountain to track down (especially since it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">isn</span>’t that hard to find). Given that this is the first Laurel and Hardy film I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">ve</span> seen, it’s left me with the feeling that this probably <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">isn</span>’t their best work, and that I should probably track some of their other stuff down too. Then again, I might make the point of it being their sound stuff, as I suspect they're the sort of comedians who’d come across better with audio.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">In any case, at least this is the last comedy I’ll be reviewing for a while, as well as being the final silent I'll be reviewing (I guess this means I'll finally have to buy a decent set of headphones) . I do unfortunately appear to have missed a few films - D.W. Griffith prehistoric capers which seem to be available only as 16mm prints from the Library of Congress, which is frustrating since they seem to constitute the very origin of the species (as well as some spectacularly crummy dinosaurs) - but hopefully I'll be able to do a better job across the sound era. With the exception of a few films which I’ll be getting to across the next few weeks, caveman cinema went out of style across the next couple of decades, and it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">wasn</span>’t until the decline of Hayes Office censorship and correspondent rise of the modern exploitation film in the 1950s the genre took off again in a slightly (but only slightly) more sober form. Then again, if anyone was ever going to try and handle cavemen in a serious and thought-provoking manner, it was Roger <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Corman</span>.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6x1Q22gUf3AKSnjPz9S-2Xaayr-_GGM29q45UQOYXQWTYjN8vz3Srap9GeMpEGPHPuTDdiKozIhWc4VAZaq505D2whmOtpq8GIJnXsfMFBmFzJG2nsJB1v5XwdiDM0R0hvaLJhQ_tWXY/s1600-h/PDVD_042.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6x1Q22gUf3AKSnjPz9S-2Xaayr-_GGM29q45UQOYXQWTYjN8vz3Srap9GeMpEGPHPuTDdiKozIhWc4VAZaq505D2whmOtpq8GIJnXsfMFBmFzJG2nsJB1v5XwdiDM0R0hvaLJhQ_tWXY/s200/PDVD_042.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307068631134833602" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Overall:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX2KDB04-DzqmKAwn_eB7BzHxjKQj3NYkNwT3RmcHTz04KSJfPgvGQadAvIKDA0oS9w7vrioTqkK49raA93BPnRjyQDESEkdfS7nhY-LtcJxF0Nzywxgc1UaGp8Di03VRNeS6TjCJDpSc/s1600-h/2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 140px; height: 65px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX2KDB04-DzqmKAwn_eB7BzHxjKQj3NYkNwT3RmcHTz04KSJfPgvGQadAvIKDA0oS9w7vrioTqkK49raA93BPnRjyQDESEkdfS7nhY-LtcJxF0Nzywxgc1UaGp8Di03VRNeS6TjCJDpSc/s200/2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307069500800429218" border="0" /></a><br /><br />2 McClures out of 5.<br /></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"></p>Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-65563454718122909042009-02-22T03:47:00.000+11:002009-07-21T14:20:52.603+10:004. The Lost World (1925)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.dinosaur-museum.org/cinesaurus/lost-lg.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 307px;" src="http://www.dinosaur-museum.org/cinesaurus/lost-lg.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="">Director: </b>Harry O. Hoyt<o:p></o:p></div><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Cast:</b> Bessie Love, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, Lloyd Hughes, Arthur Hoyt<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Caveman Quotient:</b> One love-lorn apeman, and a chimpanzee who must have taken one hell of a wrong turn at Albuquerque.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Analysis:<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Way back in 1912 or so, Arthur Conan Doyle got tired of dressing-up as a Viking and finding gelflings in his sock draw, and decided to do something useful with his time. Normally, I suppose he’d just write a Sherlock Holmes novel, but Conan Doyle had also gotten sick of detectives by this point and so instead he set about concocting a rather different sort of hero. Instead of a snooty genius of artistic temperament who kept himself constantly cool and withdrawn from the world, he developed Professor Challenger – a snooty genius of artistic temperament who went around yelling boisterously at people as though he were a pissed-off Brian Blessed. Having developed this queer old bird, he sent him off into the middle of the Amazon, to get lost in a tangle of Jules Verne scientific romance and <i style="">Boy’s Own</i> adventure. The result is <i style="">The Lost World</i>, a really cool novel that I actually remember very little about. The fact that I have a bad memory isn’t important, however – what matters is that the story was a success. Enough of a success that First National decided it was worth making a picture of, in any case. Sure, there were some hurdles in the way, chief being how the hell you realistically portray live dinosaurs on film using the technology of the early ‘20s, but they stuck with it and the results are, if not a particularly good film, then that next best thing - a commercially successful one.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD9MUN_9STyyXuEssNNRekaaXALeqE3E0dVodsSIGC-mmAp9ylYVHmx4GFgC_kaq01BLmzb-VHzDZwARgdHzRYNtG9cpLDJHonenLonWVzBBaSnilHFysa9gezyINXYUysYFkYXFdggZM/s1600-h/PDVD_008.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD9MUN_9STyyXuEssNNRekaaXALeqE3E0dVodsSIGC-mmAp9ylYVHmx4GFgC_kaq01BLmzb-VHzDZwARgdHzRYNtG9cpLDJHonenLonWVzBBaSnilHFysa9gezyINXYUysYFkYXFdggZM/s320/PDVD_008.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358331125511842" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginl26VJlfsJM_cCIXBQePm5NwXQyUV7OuYhCENVULlsxwDWByT7ixwB38NBsAYtrG6h4XmLQ9yp48O7mCvMu3FdXP8PvxuSu9EjdjoSiiTQ-Cf6N962ciChBZpJ9HeDd5EZuoJvPO5kw/s1600-h/PDVD_023.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginl26VJlfsJM_cCIXBQePm5NwXQyUV7OuYhCENVULlsxwDWByT7ixwB38NBsAYtrG6h4XmLQ9yp48O7mCvMu3FdXP8PvxuSu9EjdjoSiiTQ-Cf6N962ciChBZpJ9HeDd5EZuoJvPO5kw/s320/PDVD_023.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358331673611826" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRPEW4J6xtsD4_5svbHkX1DZcFkw8I-QSZ0OXKDSgwht29Zaw5Omv1b88xU6TUmNglG5lThGDEsu2vPeM78uqxEzV47ipoWU-g7BYOzYHSWLb2m3vFNFpyD5bMFeqw5uoGYl8zILK7BWM/s1600-h/PDVD_040.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRPEW4J6xtsD4_5svbHkX1DZcFkw8I-QSZ0OXKDSgwht29Zaw5Omv1b88xU6TUmNglG5lThGDEsu2vPeM78uqxEzV47ipoWU-g7BYOzYHSWLb2m3vFNFpyD5bMFeqw5uoGYl8zILK7BWM/s320/PDVD_040.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358337865544578" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin5ePK4tOi-6pwj6E72waApkjaKtckdrtB9-QJOL9EviQEvc_GnklvWaSVvinStFVDCi8crzBJCCcZh7ykdknQ8mOA7oYpAzqyQMMLh1NupxTuKsz0JKsvnqs4lt57Ckps5bu9GTi4dqo/s1600-h/PDVD_038.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin5ePK4tOi-6pwj6E72waApkjaKtckdrtB9-QJOL9EviQEvc_GnklvWaSVvinStFVDCi8crzBJCCcZh7ykdknQ8mOA7oYpAzqyQMMLh1NupxTuKsz0JKsvnqs4lt57Ckps5bu9GTi4dqo/s320/PDVD_038.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358339225561778" border="0" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">The plot of <i style="">The Lost World</i> has by this point become the stuff of cliché , but then I suppose this is what happens when you go ahead and make the archetypal “lost world” film. Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery, more or less perfectly cast) has just returned from the jungles of Venezuela telling tales of an isolated plateau populated entirely by prehistoric beasts. Unfortunately for the Professor, no-one believes him – the photographs he took as evidence were ruined when his canoe capsized – and the press has been having a field day with him ever since he returned to London. The professor takes this about as well as you’d expect any megalomaniacal firebrand to, and has gotten in to the habit of beating the living tar out of any reporter who comes within an inch of him.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">This brings us to Ed Malone (Lloyd Hughes), a young and rather clueless reporter for the London Record-Journal. Malone has a rather unique problem, you see, in that his fiancée of some years – a Miss Gladys Hungerford, to be precise – has gotten it in to her head to refuse the hand of any man unless he’s shown his mettle by staring death in the face. Malone being a hapless klutz (albeit a handsome and charming one, in a non-threatening sort of way), the only danger he’s liable to encounter any time soon will be from tripping over his own shoelaces, and he’s left at something of a loss. His break comes, however, when he manages to trip and fall into his editors-in-chief’s office. Revenge brewing in their moustachioed little craniums, the editors-in-chief pack Malone off on a suicide mission to cover a lecture being given Professor Challenger that very evening at the London Zoological Society. <o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">There’s a problem there, though – the lecture is barred to reporters, and if Malone shows his press pass he’ll get kicked out. Luckily, however, he spots someone he recognises in the crowd of jeerers waiting in line at the lecturer hall - Sir John Roxton, famous hunter, wooer of women and pillager of picturesque locales, who is also a friend of Challenger’s (and who consequently grants far more credence to the Professor’s claims than the host of unruly students who have gathered to mock him). Roxton (Lewis Stone) agrees to smuggle Malone in on his own pass, and together they take their seats as Professor Challenger is welcomed onto the stage by his colleague Professor Summerlee, and walks straight into the highly vocal derision of the crowd. Challenger does what one expects of such characters in these circumstances, hurling out bombastic insults at his detractors and getting all the best lines of the movie in the process. He then follows-up with something completely out of left field - it turns out Challenger isn’t here to defend his claims at all. No, instead the professor is, appropriately enough, here to issue a challenge – to demand volunteers for a dangerous expedition back into the primordial lost world.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXZLZJnNUcxQ3Cz6NpUAmKej1pZsUltSWmjmV5mZ0tqGLAUT6KEanrqRp1vrJjCyg5B3hMlhBlsv871bWQOEKmvevYOnzITd_2kzmJiOQv07wdHdU6r2vkDNvSEGHL-iXkK3euZy-V-0/s1600-h/PDVD_048.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXZLZJnNUcxQ3Cz6NpUAmKej1pZsUltSWmjmV5mZ0tqGLAUT6KEanrqRp1vrJjCyg5B3hMlhBlsv871bWQOEKmvevYOnzITd_2kzmJiOQv07wdHdU6r2vkDNvSEGHL-iXkK3euZy-V-0/s320/PDVD_048.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358956239082674" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6wqqNt3PYQ6JnaKgYzIFZUZrWGfjVopt5uksRxN3X-1iaSpPAE204XBPWI3I2QDi6JNuOd5BMUCemgBn-Byl2j0V_w_GltbZ0GSKkVF_XvPBDjiApNkYxtKgyczZHlNioe3OZHpfoIA8/s1600-h/PDVD_046.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6wqqNt3PYQ6JnaKgYzIFZUZrWGfjVopt5uksRxN3X-1iaSpPAE204XBPWI3I2QDi6JNuOd5BMUCemgBn-Byl2j0V_w_GltbZ0GSKkVF_XvPBDjiApNkYxtKgyczZHlNioe3OZHpfoIA8/s320/PDVD_046.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358952167379906" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjySwJlxcEXs8pt98vbpPwxUds7je3IXACRYBQ2PaWN_6Rf3t2EdSRTMyouZjOwoM2RkNeMsNjS84dDKi7MVjc7TWJ0dHFqYhCBqo7M-8kAuxKoAkhG_CnSa7F0HKLT0-jbVnTzeS5LkoQ/s1600-h/PDVD_044.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjySwJlxcEXs8pt98vbpPwxUds7je3IXACRYBQ2PaWN_6Rf3t2EdSRTMyouZjOwoM2RkNeMsNjS84dDKi7MVjc7TWJ0dHFqYhCBqo7M-8kAuxKoAkhG_CnSa7F0HKLT0-jbVnTzeS5LkoQ/s320/PDVD_044.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358951681933058" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDv_6vTeYXhs-5EGES6igOph_VSJMBeQ6IWvOK2kV1bgRscxEPwJNm2DRVmr4rWvuZqZxwtq-4yiLVd86PjkSVg7s6JYQJ_FIviWbVP1oU16bzauhiIUVVtyQAbvEsm0Er0l1gNz3u41c/s1600-h/PDVD_047.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDv_6vTeYXhs-5EGES6igOph_VSJMBeQ6IWvOK2kV1bgRscxEPwJNm2DRVmr4rWvuZqZxwtq-4yiLVd86PjkSVg7s6JYQJ_FIviWbVP1oU16bzauhiIUVVtyQAbvEsm0Er0l1gNz3u41c/s320/PDVD_047.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358952984900866" border="0" /></a><br /></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Out of a room of at least five hundred people, this nets Challenger three volunteers. First is Summerlee, who may be sixty years old but is sure enough that Challenger’s a fraud that he’ll follow him into the rainforests just to prove it. Then there’s Roxton, who has spent his entire time on screen looking deeply bored by his civilised surroundings. And then, of course, there’s Malone - a near-suicidal mission halfway around the world is just about the best thing that could happen to him right now, and while Challenger doesn’t think much of him (“the brain of a child, but the body of an athlete!” is how the doc puts it) he signs him up anyway. Unfortunately for Malone, he wants to know the man’s occupation, and the reporter is either too honest or too stupid to lie. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">One frenzied chase sequence later, Malone is climbing out of his hiding place on the back of the cab the Professor caught home. He sneaks into the Doc’s house through an open window in an ill-advised attempt to prove to Challenger that maybe not all reporters are the scum of the Earth, and he’s barely gotten two words out regarding the special consideration he should be afforded do to the stipulations of his betrothal before Challenger has him in a headlock and their rolling out the front door. However things finally get sorted-out when a cop breaks things up, and Malone’s mentioning that Roxton is a friend of his is enough to win Challenger over, begrudging though his approval may be.</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQdL7lwNdvKYWzzQ3LwTyx6584YkB2dG3yyb9RQ8NKjyaeQDCPvENbX0v8vHuy2OqyiTXpY8RZc08DSxV-eWUvGWSA-f2w4GvxQQ1OJiZrQ0h8IvFlArnCBroqC75-db-usYDy4l3KC1g/s1600-h/PDVD_057.jpg"> </a><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig9XhE69API28-RA98xlN5fxQc8MoxizdNrryIjbUebgHzyIo0ihtkLmL5IunGMDS7WicAuKWXV_FWvq502M7bXVQrNdXqlUNkccDOhSQdx7upuW-1rYz4yiYuaRt7Kqgz3Vxsb_FSaPE/s1600-h/PDVD_061.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig9XhE69API28-RA98xlN5fxQc8MoxizdNrryIjbUebgHzyIo0ihtkLmL5IunGMDS7WicAuKWXV_FWvq502M7bXVQrNdXqlUNkccDOhSQdx7upuW-1rYz4yiYuaRt7Kqgz3Vxsb_FSaPE/s320/PDVD_061.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305359330538013058" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizoI4-CIURst818EO6LC3GklvPRfySApdtQtpuOmqxorpcuFeoFad7pJyk0voWwLGhHatNsr7HDRV_J34_K5wrCX1yfv4sP_yqUSiF1gJfu5bseqt31UPRzbnYVgjqPk0jvIvYvFOwRbU/s1600-h/PDVD_053.jpg"> </a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizoI4-CIURst818EO6LC3GklvPRfySApdtQtpuOmqxorpcuFeoFad7pJyk0voWwLGhHatNsr7HDRV_J34_K5wrCX1yfv4sP_yqUSiF1gJfu5bseqt31UPRzbnYVgjqPk0jvIvYvFOwRbU/s1600-h/PDVD_053.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizoI4-CIURst818EO6LC3GklvPRfySApdtQtpuOmqxorpcuFeoFad7pJyk0voWwLGhHatNsr7HDRV_J34_K5wrCX1yfv4sP_yqUSiF1gJfu5bseqt31UPRzbnYVgjqPk0jvIvYvFOwRbU/s320/PDVD_053.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305359324835288290" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipMJslYqDFC-a_l9FE5rjWiiuQYe5Ciw9efUewzMJpEXqUKS_No40lfOT4w8DkWNDnKt4oLmWjX7iDRbG2C5-oNKvLZa3PGbv0ImH-UDiRJ9mdPFLrDX5KBHfTylTPPb4ARQ-UaPiM11I/s1600-h/PDVD_054.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipMJslYqDFC-a_l9FE5rjWiiuQYe5Ciw9efUewzMJpEXqUKS_No40lfOT4w8DkWNDnKt4oLmWjX7iDRbG2C5-oNKvLZa3PGbv0ImH-UDiRJ9mdPFLrDX5KBHfTylTPPb4ARQ-UaPiM11I/s320/PDVD_054.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305359328413968098" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQdL7lwNdvKYWzzQ3LwTyx6584YkB2dG3yyb9RQ8NKjyaeQDCPvENbX0v8vHuy2OqyiTXpY8RZc08DSxV-eWUvGWSA-f2w4GvxQQ1OJiZrQ0h8IvFlArnCBroqC75-db-usYDy4l3KC1g/s1600-h/PDVD_057.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQdL7lwNdvKYWzzQ3LwTyx6584YkB2dG3yyb9RQ8NKjyaeQDCPvENbX0v8vHuy2OqyiTXpY8RZc08DSxV-eWUvGWSA-f2w4GvxQQ1OJiZrQ0h8IvFlArnCBroqC75-db-usYDy4l3KC1g/s320/PDVD_057.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305359330835776786" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig9XhE69API28-RA98xlN5fxQc8MoxizdNrryIjbUebgHzyIo0ihtkLmL5IunGMDS7WicAuKWXV_FWvq502M7bXVQrNdXqlUNkccDOhSQdx7upuW-1rYz4yiYuaRt7Kqgz3Vxsb_FSaPE/s1600-h/PDVD_061.jpg"><br /></a></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQdL7lwNdvKYWzzQ3LwTyx6584YkB2dG3yyb9RQ8NKjyaeQDCPvENbX0v8vHuy2OqyiTXpY8RZc08DSxV-eWUvGWSA-f2w4GvxQQ1OJiZrQ0h8IvFlArnCBroqC75-db-usYDy4l3KC1g/s1600-h/PDVD_057.jpg"> </a><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">All this rigmarole aside, it’s time to get to the meat of the story. It seems that Challenger’s desire to return to the Venezuelan plateau is not entirely scientific in nature. Once back inside he shows Malone a sketchbook, formerly the property of one Maple White, and which contains incredibly detailed drawings of live Brontosaurs, Allosaurs and a wide variety of temporally-dislocated plant life. It also shows a map of the mesa – a great big thing miles long and with shear cliffs all around, accessible only by spanning the gap from a nearby escarpment via log bridge. He then introduces Malone to Miss Paula White (played here by the unfathomably adorable Bessie Love) – Maple White’s daughter. As she tells it, she had accompanied her father on his scientific expedition only to find herself laid-up with dengue at the foot of the prehistoric plateau. Her father scaled the summit, but when the bearers caught sight of the dinosaurs they flipped and high-tailed it back to Rio, taking Paula with them and leaving Maple marooned on his Mesozoic mesa, his log-bridge to freedom in ruins. Now Paula believes he father has survived, and she and Challenger have been trying to get together the money and men for a rescue expedition. Well, they have the men now (even if those men happen to be a senile coleoperist, a milksop and an over-the-hill baboon-botherer) – all they need is the money. And it’s here that Malone immediately proves his usefulness. You see, this being the 1920s newspapers were often apt to finance ill-conceived ventures. And while Malone’s managing editor might not buy the scientific value of this trip, as Malone so rightly points-out this makes for a great human interest story. And so<span style=""> </span>maybe, with a little persuading (and the promise of exclusive publishing rights), they could be made to finance the trip as a rescue mission...</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">If you’ve grown weary of the longwindedness of my plot-recapping then have no fear – it’s all about to stop. This isn’t necessarily because I have any great concern for the welfare of anyone stupid enough to read this (on the contrary, I’d probably do a shot-by-shot retelling of <i style="">Lawrence of Arabia </i>if I thought I could find the time). Instead, it is at this point that <i style="">The Lost World</i> decides to abandon both the fecundity of its premise and the character relationships developed in the first twenty minutes of the film. Instead, <i style="">The Lost World</i> turns into one of those infuriating old jungle adventure films where the characters spend all their time gazing at things without ever interacting with them. The only difference is that this time, instead of stock footage of water buffalo we get brand new footage of some of Willis O’Brien’s less impressive “fighting dinosaur” animation. Despite the fact that something is always happening, the result is a film that just feels padded and sloppy. How padded and sloppy? Well, I watched both the restored 95 minute and 60 minute edited versions of this, and I honestly can’t think of any reason to recommend the more complete version except perhaps for it’s having much better image quality. Thirty minutes hacked from an already incomplete film, and it still survives with its plot more-or-less intact? That is one poorly-written film.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguTx49syPLXdn4SNG6mj-5DW4MgQI7BtvSaCxL2jg15ns4pAxUgLq2I-Z1bNWu935QEa0-ctnN1tIrOqUym45BZp6oEp48WV_vKDXIs-MoHy0qEb4Y1m_DqTSsv0j9tRvTxKzPYiGLKYM/s1600-h/PDVD_064.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguTx49syPLXdn4SNG6mj-5DW4MgQI7BtvSaCxL2jg15ns4pAxUgLq2I-Z1bNWu935QEa0-ctnN1tIrOqUym45BZp6oEp48WV_vKDXIs-MoHy0qEb4Y1m_DqTSsv0j9tRvTxKzPYiGLKYM/s320/PDVD_064.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305360169525408306" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIENQnXNFh1gxmlwK08n4lQJ15-yBDAV2ZBDdK3XUuxBuiaKO8O7PylL8keJvlb_R-ZB0Iat33CJSE0qGOnYTW-8BC4JHRR6TO-2qJE7WDVU7JIdH3s4xHE7qmEeCZ-lWFugJltTDuX5M/s1600-h/PDVD_065.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIENQnXNFh1gxmlwK08n4lQJ15-yBDAV2ZBDdK3XUuxBuiaKO8O7PylL8keJvlb_R-ZB0Iat33CJSE0qGOnYTW-8BC4JHRR6TO-2qJE7WDVU7JIdH3s4xHE7qmEeCZ-lWFugJltTDuX5M/s320/PDVD_065.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305360169540883250" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJB9gIEaaN7srN0Q-lAU6dirQK5Nc1XWhfe3ROqJpk0QZJ1BI1abb2UQvPjuth6M2fGzHWVzEXeRRjsefrqufjywfr4A5gYLZUzkWeHUPSpZQmFesV1FFA3-PnvcSCJ4W6sawcChJKZKQ/s1600-h/PDVD_071.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJB9gIEaaN7srN0Q-lAU6dirQK5Nc1XWhfe3ROqJpk0QZJ1BI1abb2UQvPjuth6M2fGzHWVzEXeRRjsefrqufjywfr4A5gYLZUzkWeHUPSpZQmFesV1FFA3-PnvcSCJ4W6sawcChJKZKQ/s320/PDVD_071.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305360173913664354" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-lXichoHDYmz8MiDwHh28bWCxpCfPQ7IpxGyKHaPvSZAceJC5i_HeqqpUCODhkdJrNIrG9DBRz0YDR653upldJczi6unI3OWfeCK36ZRTzFfBfL6gZSPRg2ob6uwsm3Q2pz-bciLK_Dk/s1600-h/PDVD_068.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-lXichoHDYmz8MiDwHh28bWCxpCfPQ7IpxGyKHaPvSZAceJC5i_HeqqpUCODhkdJrNIrG9DBRz0YDR653upldJczi6unI3OWfeCK36ZRTzFfBfL6gZSPRg2ob6uwsm3Q2pz-bciLK_Dk/s320/PDVD_068.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305360173131590146" border="0" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=""> </span>So, as is to be expected, the explorers become trapped on the mesa, the bridge they’ve improvised from a tree knocked into the abyss by a Brontosaurus. As is also to be expected, Paula and Ed gradually fall in love, with Roxton acting as a rather milque-toast version of the usual rival who complicates things. Then Roxton finds Maple White’s corpse, and Paula and Ed decide they’re trapped forever and they could married and Gladys be damned, and meanwhile I sit there growing very bored and wondering just what exactly is the point of it all. Perhaps less expected, Paula is followed everywhere by an apeman and his friend the chimpanzee, who spend most of their time trying to kill Ed Malone. I will grant that isn’t something you see every day. And Paula’s affinity for monkeys does come in handy when it allows her to coax the pet capuchin of one of the porters left at the foot of the mesa into climbing up the cliff face with a rope ladder tied to it. But that doesn’t really make-up for all the wasted potential of a dinosaur film in which the characters never do anything at all related to the dinosaurs.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">The blame for much of this can, as I understand it, be laid at the feet of screenwriter Marion Fairfax. Supposedly, she didn’t have much faith in Willis O’Brien’s special effects actually delivering on their promise, and so she wrote a film which, she claimed, could survive intact the excision of all of its dinosaur-related scenes. Unfortunately Fairfax realised this perfectly – the problem being that, in so doing, she failed to develop a story interesting enough to stand on its own.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV8GglPcwJLtBmSCgBxWrWtqcBFqhnF5O5HUOZfOXTfxK4HJpreQ77M_XWS2VmxyP-uceyX_ycLr8yaUUke3tfy-HCHfNd3o9f074oKcPbgfgExD7H-s8g166wXcgQZPo8vJ7YkG7CdKM/s1600-h/PDVD_076.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV8GglPcwJLtBmSCgBxWrWtqcBFqhnF5O5HUOZfOXTfxK4HJpreQ77M_XWS2VmxyP-uceyX_ycLr8yaUUke3tfy-HCHfNd3o9f074oKcPbgfgExD7H-s8g166wXcgQZPo8vJ7YkG7CdKM/s320/PDVD_076.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305360978670477618" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9v_qbifBO-11t0M1N5PMk0eC5UUCKoXcwABDmNgLS7FAk5mzsjegOHjD5YJgMi3D-lyh3Xqkdfpg6kgC4u1r2LNvsGwt1sqEgBOd0jzkZd5qPdBsSIZXbC92oGjdIhquds_VjoyMXK9g/s1600-h/PDVD_078.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9v_qbifBO-11t0M1N5PMk0eC5UUCKoXcwABDmNgLS7FAk5mzsjegOHjD5YJgMi3D-lyh3Xqkdfpg6kgC4u1r2LNvsGwt1sqEgBOd0jzkZd5qPdBsSIZXbC92oGjdIhquds_VjoyMXK9g/s320/PDVD_078.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305360979461487506" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioF0U3pQRACoUDO3ZzC6O08hgP3MpnIM8H2K76E3HoEefH2KAmSyCnwCIEQhNFwoIEZaVsVOCJ54yQXkZpdpWua93RZqs7_C54V1CcEHPT7joSEF_3FOa_DUrUJp_HhR2BTb1Iwq3vjhc/s1600-h/PDVD_087.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioF0U3pQRACoUDO3ZzC6O08hgP3MpnIM8H2K76E3HoEefH2KAmSyCnwCIEQhNFwoIEZaVsVOCJ54yQXkZpdpWua93RZqs7_C54V1CcEHPT7joSEF_3FOa_DUrUJp_HhR2BTb1Iwq3vjhc/s320/PDVD_087.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305360982271269618" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglJ7irbELXZuIVev86seJC3sG9C-EzfbhzTQnA297MdfIa1wDJ7NnVhV6MA3o3DSGj3hTdvvHIDcgoQKMg4acZOJnnQh3A1T9YvhaBoEMv99FaGC-FUHOWgGoNbnYfHaNYsjf0IwkT0NM/s1600-h/PDVD_090.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglJ7irbELXZuIVev86seJC3sG9C-EzfbhzTQnA297MdfIa1wDJ7NnVhV6MA3o3DSGj3hTdvvHIDcgoQKMg4acZOJnnQh3A1T9YvhaBoEMv99FaGC-FUHOWgGoNbnYfHaNYsjf0IwkT0NM/s320/PDVD_090.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305360983416007106" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">What’s more, while the dinosaur scenes must have looked pretty spectacular in 1925 they’ve aged rather poorly across eighty years – hell, they’d aged poorly by 1933, when <i style="">King Kong</i> came out. What’s especially irritating is that there is every indication that O’Brien could have done better – his models are usually decent (he had gotten Marcel Delgado on by this point, who was capable of building far more sophisticated and detailed miniatures) and the real problem lies more in the cheap jerkiness of the animation, which was something far less evident in <i style="">The Ghost of Slumber Mountain</i>, a full seven years earlier. A large part of this is no doubt due to the demands which tax any film featuring this much animation, but this is at the same time exactly why it would have helped to integrate the dinosaurs more thoroughly into the main action of the story. If they’d posed a threat more often, then there’d be some sort of emotional response to compel the viewer into buying them. <span style=""> </span>Heck, she didn’t even manage a plot that makes sense. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? First off, if Challenger has both the diary of a missing man and the testimony of his daughter, then why on Earth is it so difficult for him to convince people that his lost plateau at least exists, irrespective of what’s atop it? Then, when it comes to funding the rescue mission, why firstly has no-one heard anything of it despite the fact that Challenger claims to have been working at the thing for weeks, and in the second point why didn’t Challenger immediately approach Roxton – who is shown to be both an extremely wealthy man and primarily interested in the affair due to his fondness for Paula – about funding the rescue mission? The most obvious assumption would be that he abstained on Paula’s behalf so that she shouldn’t feel as though she were prostituting herself for the sake of her father, except that once Malone enters the picture there’s no reason at all why Roxton couldn’t step forward and offer the money off his own back – in fact he has a clear incentive to do so, as it would immediately put him one up over poor old Ed. Add to this hideous minor details like Zambo the Comedy-Relief Fake Black Guy, the wasting of what looks to have been quite a good lead actress in a pointless “faint & scream” heroine roll, and that most heinous of all crimes in the inclusion of a “cute animal helper”, and by the end of things Fairfax was beginning to sorely test my patience. Why the hell do these movies always need the black guy? Is it like how British films always need the gay guy or the comedy Frenchman? And am I the only person in the world who doesn’t get excited at the prospect of a clumsily-inserted monkey sidekick? Apparently, yes.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr03-qPwzsWVa_YBJbVTDOh9ebFM4ugcz_fmFeSvGgj8JuR1lHTiWkpx4eCw_TOhcxoj8E_4Iu3KAaZxcsdtmzNxXj7P-7cVQvIYYUjr8IbH4lfX8R2i-IzrUDYnHrJMjMHOyS_O2xGCE/s1600-h/PDVD_092.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr03-qPwzsWVa_YBJbVTDOh9ebFM4ugcz_fmFeSvGgj8JuR1lHTiWkpx4eCw_TOhcxoj8E_4Iu3KAaZxcsdtmzNxXj7P-7cVQvIYYUjr8IbH4lfX8R2i-IzrUDYnHrJMjMHOyS_O2xGCE/s320/PDVD_092.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305362320417397522" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjxuD10XeTkMy4q0qdOwoU_zSt_qiMyAq7Cem1yq3CT6YoO9Gb94ic1Q4yMNanxPtg_YFlx5yfiG_Y4wLxljNnBVZLUvBg57jJsNNArgWDJeDJkzCyasQUbGOublcYGCh1LAgp2b0yY-M/s1600-h/PDVD_104.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjxuD10XeTkMy4q0qdOwoU_zSt_qiMyAq7Cem1yq3CT6YoO9Gb94ic1Q4yMNanxPtg_YFlx5yfiG_Y4wLxljNnBVZLUvBg57jJsNNArgWDJeDJkzCyasQUbGOublcYGCh1LAgp2b0yY-M/s320/PDVD_104.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305362323144288002" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7I1Q_TgVI2Uj8XZi5gIPmHzJ2bldl-te-hbqCrmXbM0gubTiZjdMS8QeRrCrqAug_ZPiUvjOYO8AFu8wO8SerOntHD5OWIsDnwbL9kS9pENJ3hs4lUvAByWz9UjAgH2u9Q6Iux5qZec8/s1600-h/PDVD_090.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7I1Q_TgVI2Uj8XZi5gIPmHzJ2bldl-te-hbqCrmXbM0gubTiZjdMS8QeRrCrqAug_ZPiUvjOYO8AFu8wO8SerOntHD5OWIsDnwbL9kS9pENJ3hs4lUvAByWz9UjAgH2u9Q6Iux5qZec8/s320/PDVD_090.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305362316889494130" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SUTmVq6d7bX2Tr1vuWT7Wi8vxvRdskZcxmqdHGzJ5-q1k3bsUzkPc1Im9s05btbgYXk9gJ_oi0IXlFc8Jmn419Qx5PkPFM6U4vhUNScCP6s__VjSPM9q6poJIE3eYBPKbVRpAqDmI9Y/s1600-h/PDVD_095.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SUTmVq6d7bX2Tr1vuWT7Wi8vxvRdskZcxmqdHGzJ5-q1k3bsUzkPc1Im9s05btbgYXk9gJ_oi0IXlFc8Jmn419Qx5PkPFM6U4vhUNScCP6s__VjSPM9q6poJIE3eYBPKbVRpAqDmI9Y/s320/PDVD_095.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305362320796990802" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Of course one could argue that all of this is beside the point, and they’d probably be right. <i style="">The Lost World</i> is a spectacle film aimed squarely at the hind brain, crammed full of neat stuff of all kinds. The problem is just that none of it has anything to do with anything else, and in the end it just feels like the makers were killing time waiting for the spectacular finale.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">As to that finale? Well, you probably know what’s coming – after all, in many ways <i style="">The Lost World</i> is just a dry run for <i style="">King Kong</i> with its priorities all mixed up. If not then go away and watch the film, since it’s both a nice twist and a nice tweaking of the source material. If you do know what happens (and since I’m assuming the only person reading this is Matt, you probably do) then good, since it means I can discuss it. In short, what happens is this: at some point, during one of the various dinosaur fights, a brontosaurus is knocked from a cliff edge and into a mud pit situated at the floor of the plateau. When the adventures finally escape the plateau (which, true to this film’s goal of establishing every single cliché of the genre to which it lends its name, is currently in the process of being wracked by enormous volcanic eruptions) they discover that the unfortunate dinosaur is still alive. And this is where Sir John Roxton gets it in to his head to make an incredibly stupid suggestion. The decision to ship the live dinosaur back to civilisation is one taken directly from the books, but here the film makers have sensed an opportunity and delivered one of their few genuine improvements over the novel – instead of a pterodactyl hatching from an egg in the lecture hall of the Zoological Society and winging its way out into the London air, we’re instead treated to a full-grown apatosaur breaking loose from the confines of its ship and running havoc around the streets of London. It’s by far the best part of the film, completely redeeming it from the wasted potential of the middle hour, and it would go on to provide a direct template first for Kong’s tour through New York, and then more transparently for the brilliant rampage sequence in 1953’s <i style="">The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms</i>. Factor in the fact that <i style="">The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms</i> simultaneously created the kaiju films of Japan and the atomic monster explosion of the United States, and you’ve got one of the most influential monster films ever made.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2035CR0Ks0ubt_-N_XSBLVhoPxUJhFJb0781iw1cfKM7jGrNLxQEhOo31wdYS4Fg59s1bwnI8sh0_SndyH1GQhpMYj_5APMPbRAbY4-wbVX3oJmWfTJ4Q4um7qUTWW8g67RQ68eXF9i0/s1600-h/PDVD_109.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2035CR0Ks0ubt_-N_XSBLVhoPxUJhFJb0781iw1cfKM7jGrNLxQEhOo31wdYS4Fg59s1bwnI8sh0_SndyH1GQhpMYj_5APMPbRAbY4-wbVX3oJmWfTJ4Q4um7qUTWW8g67RQ68eXF9i0/s320/PDVD_109.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305362810337987586" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJGyaVNfjCeqdcwZk8axZ7EZaIxUzsjNA-z2tNRbfo2LJRYIt_B50LXeC0gK6WbEWbkE0wyLzEqfcC3jVnIpTct5E_hs7rcGHzhlOlqdG1ktgvr-Mq66L1HBgNot49cVNsAb3ZgX4ehpU/s1600-h/PDVD_110.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJGyaVNfjCeqdcwZk8axZ7EZaIxUzsjNA-z2tNRbfo2LJRYIt_B50LXeC0gK6WbEWbkE0wyLzEqfcC3jVnIpTct5E_hs7rcGHzhlOlqdG1ktgvr-Mq66L1HBgNot49cVNsAb3ZgX4ehpU/s320/PDVD_110.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305362812874616210" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjimrM9OP7UFBnscvEtsRKWnYwX5XCdXQWB5kYHb9cD17FYReVD1yuFBx-78V-XjfmrBwMI0shj0ddWDOhg07SVK_7H456AjXM5FZ0Qzn2a3bv14thX1Yej4aJcTGgpeQl5iMX-cQkBFQc/s1600-h/PDVD_112.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjimrM9OP7UFBnscvEtsRKWnYwX5XCdXQWB5kYHb9cD17FYReVD1yuFBx-78V-XjfmrBwMI0shj0ddWDOhg07SVK_7H456AjXM5FZ0Qzn2a3bv14thX1Yej4aJcTGgpeQl5iMX-cQkBFQc/s320/PDVD_112.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305362813266277282" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil1zYRFGBBmU0KbU7j_Nu343wFa5ZCvXo158YpZRJep-vwTC7byq6YUdJQpsCQHjpNLsbVdJFSPg9FNCeoSpMRHGp1VpXTfQ3txSsCbY4N_l5quG1s44EiNb0k-zU2WXn4DPrb7j3zgSY/s1600-h/PDVD_114.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil1zYRFGBBmU0KbU7j_Nu343wFa5ZCvXo158YpZRJep-vwTC7byq6YUdJQpsCQHjpNLsbVdJFSPg9FNCeoSpMRHGp1VpXTfQ3txSsCbY4N_l5quG1s44EiNb0k-zU2WXn4DPrb7j3zgSY/s320/PDVD_114.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305362814667384098" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">I just, you know, wish that it had been a better movie. The finale really is great, maybe not <i style="">Kong</i> level or even <i style="">Gwangi </i>but solidly enjoyable in any case, and with vastly better stop-motion work than that displayed throughout the body of the film. The opening twenty minutes show a lot of promise, too, and you can see how in a different era the mid-section could have been considered to deliver on it. After all the olden days were a strange time, when a film like <i style="">Grand Hotel</i> could win Best Picture and Wallace Beery was considered an excellent character actor. I’m not one to rag on a film for looking dated, and really I don’t think it <i style="">is</i> dated – it’s just sloppy, which is a quality that transcends both time and space. It’s an enjoyable way to pass an hour or so in any case, and it isn’t too hard to see what audiences saw in it way back when to make it the big hit that it was. This was, after all, a new kind of motion picture at the time, and it doesn’t seem fair to expect them to have gotten it right on the first try.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">As for technical supervisor Willis O’Brien, following this film he was something of a hot property, and would spend his time wandering from studio to studio trying to get projects off the ground. The problem was that, at the time, special effects-driven monster films weren’t really very well understood, and so studios were seldom inclined to put much faith in O’Brien. He spent some time in development for a film about Atlantis, only to have it scrapped, and then followed this up with a project at RKO called Creation. The film was a loose rip-off of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land that Time Forgot, and involved a modern ship getting wrecked on an island inhabited entirely by dinosaurs. After spending several years and a few hundred thousand dollars on Creation with nothing to show for it but a few minutes of test footage, David O. Selznick stepped in and suggested O’Brien team-up with Merrian C. Cooper to make King Kong. The movie constituted both a significant technical advance in terms of the integration of stop-motion and live actors, and one of the best adventure stories ever film. O’Brien was called back that same year to help crank-out the cheap-jack sequel, and suffered not only at the hands of the studio but on the home front, as his estranged wife decided during filming to murder their children and then turn the gun on herself.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIen3za02gzhZmf3ncoe0TTV_Fdpp1ea7oe-n0Dizb7ggLbHlfaGieG13wrb1xqzz8_JRdDboS5DWQA2dBEAMFetjn8gWq2Lv1qgDV8B9jmhknUjm5_cm5BLtCUncFRkve2tDj0THfJhU/s1600-h/PDVD_131.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIen3za02gzhZmf3ncoe0TTV_Fdpp1ea7oe-n0Dizb7ggLbHlfaGieG13wrb1xqzz8_JRdDboS5DWQA2dBEAMFetjn8gWq2Lv1qgDV8B9jmhknUjm5_cm5BLtCUncFRkve2tDj0THfJhU/s320/PDVD_131.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305363527910564930" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh08QsXzpyzknOxsXhpYGOJ6aNPdDLZfb8xZAtjBRpaD8Pa3SIlkwI0jeVUXl0XEkrgMqbk8Z9fPiEKpqzhHJVmOSea0JYoPg3ekAfckQxLMdzQtUU_PweAUnmpGdOTk8MO5d586LzkXkc/s1600-h/PDVD_156.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh08QsXzpyzknOxsXhpYGOJ6aNPdDLZfb8xZAtjBRpaD8Pa3SIlkwI0jeVUXl0XEkrgMqbk8Z9fPiEKpqzhHJVmOSea0JYoPg3ekAfckQxLMdzQtUU_PweAUnmpGdOTk8MO5d586LzkXkc/s320/PDVD_156.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305363528816803666" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS9bmYiz58E33DDUVctFHhWM3j0gF8_zOZgMZj1ALyA_zEpw6xTV05Dr9YsLN5lZnlVjpNnc4wcg6EIKWAY9qPmBSF_Xp19ZPzwkXbxj4QMHQsLBG7wKPnbZJIqooAnnY162b99Ae9Kkk/s1600-h/PDVD_118.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS9bmYiz58E33DDUVctFHhWM3j0gF8_zOZgMZj1ALyA_zEpw6xTV05Dr9YsLN5lZnlVjpNnc4wcg6EIKWAY9qPmBSF_Xp19ZPzwkXbxj4QMHQsLBG7wKPnbZJIqooAnnY162b99Ae9Kkk/s320/PDVD_118.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305363527093847970" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-hijzxVdnwRx2RkHXtyzRsrHe7JBvFRkVwXS6VUoFHuDwSEZJEnH4B27SQMJwETuF7_EHM4hRqisq978a1bmkqFlr3ln6i6NSM8_N5vYfTLsvnpw3tSl9EK1McmViZEZ7B61Wl5nlRg/s1600-h/PDVD_120.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-hijzxVdnwRx2RkHXtyzRsrHe7JBvFRkVwXS6VUoFHuDwSEZJEnH4B27SQMJwETuF7_EHM4hRqisq978a1bmkqFlr3ln6i6NSM8_N5vYfTLsvnpw3tSl9EK1McmViZEZ7B61Wl5nlRg/s320/PDVD_120.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305363526001196290" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Afterwards, O’Brien went on to try and get further projects off the ground – most famously (or infamously) <i style="">War Eagles</i>, a projected film with Merrian C. Cooper about a lost colony of Vikings living on a prehistoric island who must do battle with Nazi airships while riding atop giant eagles – but nothing really came-up until the 1950s, when the giant monster fad was kicked-off by the 1952 reissue of his own <i style="">King Kong</i>. O’Brien may ended his days lending name cache to two-bit productions, but at least he left a string of impressive films in his wake, while also serving as the principle inspiration to countless others – most notably Ray Harryhausen, who he worked with on <i style="">Mighty Joe Young</i> and who would go on to bring O’Brien’s concept for The <i style="">Valley of Gwangi</i> to life (and who is also, it should be noted, currently trying to get a <i style="">War Eagles</i> film off the ground – we can only hope). Perhaps, however, O’Brien’s most important legacy is that he inspired Tom Waits to write a really weird song where it sounds like he is trying to vomit-up the soles of his own feet. And that, truly, is something for the ages.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Before I move on to the next section, there's something else I'd like to deal with. Readers familiar with Conan Doyle's book will immediately twig to one major change in the plot - a complete overhaul of the original story in favour of a standard romance, with the insertion of a female lead who was in no way at all present in the book. In the book, a good deal more is made of Ed's feelings for Gladys, leading up to an "oh ho those wacky, capricious women!" sort of twist which has been preserved for the film, but robbed of much of its purpose by the blooming romance between Malone and Paula. Now, I'm not really going to complain about this, since I realise First National probably didn't have the resources to stage the elaborate caveman battle scenes of the book but still need something to fill the time, and at the same time I'm glad they makers largely managed to undercut the lighthearted misogyny of the novel. However, I am curious as to just how early an example this is of the time-honoured Hollywood tradition of shoe-horning an unasked-for love story into an adaptation of a novel. The pattern it takes - giving the missing White a daughter who wants to come and help find him - seems to have been repeated ad infinitum in later adventure film, so that you can barely swing a cat without hitting half a dozen conveniently extinguished patriarchs, there corpses ready to launch those they left behind on exotic and highly sensual adventures. Granted, I'm not complaining really, since I liked Bessie Love in this film and I enjoy, for example, the 1950 version of King Solomon's Mines, which does basically the same thing (right down to more or less ignoring the original point of the story) but makes it so that Deborah Kerr is looking for her husband and ends-up falling for Stewart Granger instead. I'm just curious as to where exactly it all began.<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><b style="">I’m No Scientist, But...<o:p></o:p></b></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Well, this film certainly has its share of cracked science. The question is, where on earth do I start? Probably with the central premise, which was clearly nonsense even in 1912. Putting aside whether or not dinosaurs could survive to modern times on the plateau (which seems unlikely even taking into account early ideas about evolutionary biology which posited dinosaurs as only a few thousand years old) there’s the fact that the population of dinosaurs present on the plateau is simply too large to support itself. The amount of food needed for just one of those Apatosauruses (they are called Brontosauruses in the film, but I’m letting them off because they didn’t know any better) would have been simply astronomical, and I doubt the vast herds seen during the course of the film could have survived one something that can be walked across in a few hours. The same goes for the various Allosaurs. It all reminded me of something I read in, appropriately enough, Michael Crichton’s <i style="">The Lost World</i> about how there’s typically only one pride of lions to every hundred odd square miles.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Then there’s the question of the species present, all of which are clearly North American in origin despite the film’s South American setting, and range from Jurrassic (the Apatosaurs, Allosaurs and Stegosaurus) to Cretaceous (the Pteranodons and Triceratopses) with no real regard to the mechanics of it. As I understand it, the implication is that the plateau was thrust up out of the earth by volcanic activity and thus stranded a particular ecosystem. These plateau are actually real things, called tepui and entirely unique to Venezuela, but apparently they occur through a process of erosion rather than volcanic upheaval. They do boast unique, ancient ecologies, however although neither dinosaurs nor large, preternaturally intelligent spiders have as yet been found amongst any of them. To be fair, the book makes even less sense on this point, since it includes a Megalosaurus, an Ichthyosaur and a Diatryma amidst the species represented on the mesa. Greg Bear, I believe, did come-up with a neat explanation for all of this by adopting an approach similar to that seen in the new King Kong film. In his book <i style="">Dinosaur Summer</i>, which is a sequel to <i style="">The Lost World </i>set a generation on, he posits firstly that various different species have wandered on to the plateau at different times and been trapped by accident, and secondly that these species have all evolved over time to become distinct from anything in the fossil record. Actually, no, I think I’m mixing that up, and the giant predatory bird in Bear’s book is actually a dinosaur that has evolved over time, while the “wander on throughout history” approach is the one posited by Conan Doyle (in which case it makes slightly more sense, since South America was, and still is, home to various species of large flightless birds – although I doubt a rhea could tale down a stegosaur). In any case, I’m just confusing myself and we should move on.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">As to the ape man? Look, I just don’t know. Sometimes you see something in a film and you think to yourself “What the hell was the thought process that led to this?” I mean, I guess the chimp he pals around with is supposed to be one of his less evolved cousins or something? Maybe just over visiting from Africa? Actually, this film seems to have developed a whole mythos about how apes are somehow connected to women. Jocko the monkey loves Paula, and the ape man loves Paula, and I bet the chimpanzee would love Paula too if it got to know her better. It’s like there’s supposed to be some sort of “coalition of the primitive” connecting women, monkeys, and the black guy who looks after Jocko. Honestly it baffles me endlessly. I mean, what the hell does a hairy monkey man even find all that attractive in a human woman? Granted, I think Bessie Love is gorgeous, but I’ve only very occasionally been taken for caveman. I keep imagine it, several months into the relationship, constantly pestering Paula to stop shaving her legs. (Incidentally, speaking of scientific impossibilities, the party is in the field at least three months, and yet Paula’s hair never changes at all). Actually, if you wanted to be kind, you could argue that rather than being "just some guy", the horny ape man is actually a representation of Sir John Roxton's suppressed id, which would explain why it keeps trying to kill Malone and yet Roxton is constantly forced to do battle with the beast by shooting it with his gun, thus reasserting his cultured civility over his desre to club Paula and drag her into the bushes. You <span style="font-style: italic;">could</span> argue that, but you'd have to pause and wonder just how much credit you want to give to a film where a caveman in Venezuela spends his time hanging-out with a chimp.<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Other things to pick-at include inaccuracies in the physiology of the dinosaurs, but since it’s very late at night I’m willing to cut O’Brien and co some slack and just ascribe it to budgetary constraints and the general scientific conceptions of the day. In the end, the film is pretty goofy, but it’s nothing on crap like <i style="">One Million B.C.</i> and <i style="">The Land that Time Forgot</i> (not to suggest that either of those films are actually crap, mind). One thing I won’t let slide, however, is the inevitable appearance of a Pteranodon in the lost world. It’s not that I object, of course, to such a creature making an appearance, but I am a little confused by the characters’ insistence that it is in fact a Pterodactyl. In addition to this, what the hell am I suppose to make of the fact that an enormous, airborne creature with no obvious potential predators has had untold aeons to fly loose from its Mesozoic prison and conquer the world. Every damned lost world film has a Pteranodon in it, and every damned time I find myself wondering the same blasted thing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">Over All:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhutlzcq-RI3uAus6Bf2f2FRM0Xvx13idcsuJpb1b4pK6cy_z4uEoBY-HukryeT15s2cMP5j40LfEy1Ds7TuG9cR5jpCED7h0-ocxFYStpsgyyRnO4Ro72viZGg5BtWWn1Ssdto2xUaPnA/s1600-h/2half.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 170px; height: 65px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhutlzcq-RI3uAus6Bf2f2FRM0Xvx13idcsuJpb1b4pK6cy_z4uEoBY-HukryeT15s2cMP5j40LfEy1Ds7TuG9cR5jpCED7h0-ocxFYStpsgyyRnO4Ro72viZGg5BtWWn1Ssdto2xUaPnA/s320/2half.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305364311022298258" border="0" /></a>2 ½<span style=""> </span>McClures out of 5.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal">Thomas, What is The Very Best Moment In The Film?</p><p class="MsoNormal">When an Allosaurus jumps up and bites a Pteranodon out of the air.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.dinosaur-museum.org/cinesaurus/lost-lg.jpg"><br /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-24821351333183365442009-02-14T23:01:00.000+11:002009-02-16T19:02:18.010+11:003. A Brief History of Time Lapse<span style="font-size:100%;"><b style=""><span style=";font-family:";" ></span></b></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">What the HELL is Going On Here You Tardy Git?</span><br /><br />The well-oiled machinery of my blog having ground to a halt atop the clumsy Victorian orphan of poor planning, I've decided to take advantage of this unforeseen break in schedule by using this week's post as a sort of info-dump for things that I'd probably never get around to discussing in an actual review. It is in this spirit - that same spirit of wide-ranging and poorly-researched rambling which so infuses all my projects - that I now set out to recount what will no doubt prove to be a highly inaccurate history of stop-motion special effects in general, and of the career of stop-motion pioneer Willis H. O'Brien in particular. It might be fair to say that anyone devoting time to reading a blog about caveman films already has a pretty good handle on both those subjects, but at the same time it's a fair call that anyone devoting time to maintaining a blog about caveman films <i>really </i>likes the sound of their own voice.<br /><br />So let us go back - back in to time - to an age when skirts were long, films were short, and <i>The Phantom Menace</i> was just a twinkle in an adding machine's eye...<br /><br /><b style=""><span style="">What the Hell <i>Is</i> Stop Motion Anyway?</span></b><br /><br />Well this part is fairly simple. As most people know, a film strip consists of a sequences of images each only incrementally different from the last. When projected back on to a screen one after another at a fast enough rate, the human mind is unable to perceive the gaps between the individual images - thus giving the illusion of a moving picture. Instead of filming a moving image and capturing it as a series of frames, it's possible to reverse this process by shooting one frame of a stationary object, moving that object to the position it would occupy in the time elapsed between frames, and then taking another picture. Do this a few thousand times and then project the results back on screen, and you have a series of static images coming together to produce the illusion of an animate object. Which is to say, you stop the camera rolling, move the object a little, and then start the camera again and in the end it looks like your object is moving - hence, "stop-motion".<br /><br />This is the core principle of all animation, of course, the more common variation being to film sequences of two-dimensional images rather than moving a puppet frame by frame. This latter approach has its origins in things like zootropes - little wheels which, when spun, gave the impression that the images printed on them were moving as though alive - and flip books, which were basically just store-bought versions of those cartoons everyone tries to make as a kid by drawing lots of pictures on the various pages of their Maths notebook and then flicking through them ineptly (I will admit, however, that when <i>Animorphs</i> came out I thought that the little morphing flip animations in the bottom corners of the pages were the coolest thing ever). Oddly enough, however, when cinema rolled around people didn't immediately click to apply the principle in films (maybe because it's just really hard). You had guys like J. Stuart Blackton, I suppose, but while making a chalk drawing of a guy grow a beard and then look grumpy is hardly the pinnacle of the animator’s art (though congrats for trying). And so 2-D animation was slow to get going even as stop-motion was picked-up as a neat little visual gimmick by exhibitors looking to put together "trick" films.<p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rYDmH2B9XJw&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rYDmH2B9XJw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" ><br /></span><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br />No-one's really sure who "discovered" stop-motion, but it seems to have gotten quite popular quite quickly. Although the first film makers, such as the Lumiere brothers, were content to shoot footage of everyday life and then call it a day, the technology was soon seized upon by a number of popular entertainers who immediately realised the potential for motion pictures in augmenting their stage acts, eventually leading to the narrative cinema we all know and love. The most famous, and the most important, of these early crackpots was Parisian magician Georges Melies – generally regarded as the father of trick photography, and of fantastical cinema in general. After attending an early exhibition of one of the Lumieres' short films, Melies was struck by the technology and tried to buy one of the brothers' cameras. They weren't budging, so instead Melies purchased a set-up from a rival inventor and modified it into something more to his liking. Like anyone whose just bought a new camera, he immediately went out and started filming everything that took his fancy (presumably while clad in a flowing purple robe with stars on it). The “Eureka!” moment, according to Melies, came when he was trying to film a car driving down the road and his camera jammed. By the time he got it working again, the car had moved out of the viewfinder and a hearse was in its place. Melies was pretty annoyed at all this, but when he got back to his haunted tower on a cliff edge and developed the film and played it back he discovered something truly marvellous – to all appearances, the ordinary car he’d been filming suddenly transformed mid-shot into the hearse which had been following it! Now here was something markedly more interesting that watching some jerk get sprayed in the face with a garden hose.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of course, this story is probably just something Melies pulled out of his pointy wizard hat to fool reporters, since it dovetails a little too nicely with his own macabre sense of humour. But however Melies happened up the effect, it did open the guy up to the full potential of in-camera visual trickery. Forced perspective, matte shots, time-lapse and of course the much greater control afforded by a studio environment as opposed to attempting stage magic were all thoroughly plundered by Melies. While he initially showed films as a small part of his stage act, in time the films became the main attractions, growing more and more ambitious until Melies’ craft finally saw full bloom in what is his most famous film, 1902’s 14 minute epic <i style="">A Trip to the Moon</i>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZI9OaZHxk64&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZI9OaZHxk64&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The importance of Melies lies as much in the way he inspired others to screw around with camera effects as it does in his actually inventing all of those techniques. In fact, in early cinema it’s often more appropriate to talk of “pioneers” than “inventors”, since half the time you would have some crazy guy deep in the jungles of Peru trekking over the Andes to show people his miraculous new innovation of playing footage in reverse at high-speeds for comedic effect, only for him to “discover” that it’s 1924 and <i style="">Sherlock Jr</i> is showing at the local Cineplex. In any case, the art form had been freed from the shackles of short subjects in which people walk out of a factory, and film makers were now happy to play about with lots of whacky crap. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">On one level, I’m sure that film makers were doing this for the fun of it, but on another level cinema in its early days was still little more than a novelty, facing very real competition from things like stage plays and box socials. As a result, a lot of films focused on giving the filmgoers something that could only happen on screen. This is where stop-motion began to come into play, a key weapon in the arsenal of special effects necessary to get butts into seats. As a result, you get crazy trick films like Segundo de Chomon’s <i style="">The Electric Hotel</i> (1905) – a largely plotless vignette where a newlywed couple book into a hotel where everything automatic, and the audience is thus treated to such spectacles as luggage making its own way to a person’s suite, and a man getting his shoes polished by an invisible bootblack. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/40bnwelcq3M&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/40bnwelcq3M&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is, of course, a pretty neat idea for a film, and would be ripped-off mercilessly in 1909 by Emil Cohl’s <i style="">entirely</i> plotless <i style="">Automatic Moving Company</i> and by those lousy shills at <i style="">Sesame Street</i> for decades to come. It also points to something important about the way that stop-motion has generally been utilised in motion pictures as compared with 2-D animation – something which can perhaps be better exemplified if we look at the career of animation pioneer Winsor McKay.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A newspaper cartoonist of moderate popularity, McKay’s principle interest was in fantasy and he explored this through his comics, which took place largely inside the dreams of his characters. In 1910, McKay made the leap to film by producing a two minute, full-colour animation based on his most popular character, Little Nemo. A pretty cool cartoon about nothing in particular, displaying animation easily on a par with anything Disney would produce (with the exception of <i style="">Fantasia</i>) up until the digital revolution of the late 80s, it was also completely self-contained. McKay had essentially created an independent fantasy world, and he followed this up with another hermetically-sealed vignette in the form of <i style="">How A Mosquito Operates</i> in 1912. His next film was something altogether more ambitious, however – not content to simply tell weird stories about nothing in particular, McKay cooked-up what is generally regarded as the very first character created specifically for the screen, and in the process sealed the fate of American animation as a silver-screen extension of the comic book fantasy world.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kcSp2ej2S00&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kcSp2ej2S00&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In 1914, McKay supposedly made a boast (possibly drunken?) that he could bring a dinosaur to life. He then went out and did just that, by animating the utterly charming short <i style="">Gertie the Dinosaur</i>. In live exhibitions, McKay would stand by the screen and coax Gertie out of her cave, then give a few simple commands to the misbehaving dinosaur before finally stepping into the screen and riding away on her back. It’s pretty simple stuff by today’s standards, but the fact that McKay looked at a challenge like “Bring a dinosaur to life”, and then thought “Well, ok,” and did it – well, it’s just sort of inspiring, you know. (What makes it even more impressive is that no-one at that point had clicked to the idea of animating moving objects over a single background matte, and so every single frame of the five minute film had to be redrawn in its entirety, <i style="">by hand – </i>“Little Nemo”, for example, ran for only two minutes and yet took a month of continuous work to produce). It’s appropriate that 2-D animation would begin with a guy vanishing off into a wholly animated world, since this was the principle use to which the form was put. So while cartoons were used to create wholly artificial realities (that is to say, you know, actual <i style="">cartoons</i>), it was left to stop-motion to take-up the slack in providing an effective means of augmenting our reality. Which is all to say that, while 2-D animation is all about creating new worlds, stop-motion has, with numerous notable exceptions (hello, Wombles! Hello Welsh children’s television!), principally been a tool for special effects.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UY40DHs9vc4&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UY40DHs9vc4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">And Now The Actual Point of This Article...<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The guy who really took all of this to the next level (in America, at least) was a young fellow from Oakland, California by the name of Willis H. O’Brien. While O’Brien had always been passionate about sculpting and illustrating, he took a wide variety of jobs throughout his early life in order to support himself (and as I am contractually obliged to mention in any discussion of O’Brien’s life, one of those jobs was as a guide for palaeontologists working in the Crater Lake region of Oregon, something that apparently left O’Brien with a life-long fondness for palaeontology). One day, however, while sculpting something or other, it occurred to O’Brien that he could animate a figurine on film using the same principles as cell animation by moving its various body parts incrementally. Now, as we’ve seen stop-motion was nothing new by this point, but for O’Brien at least it was something of an independent discovery. Furthermore - while stop motion had been applied to a wide range of ordinary objects, the notion of animating a model so as to give it the appearance of life was, in the early teens, if not an entirely new idea then still a fairly novel one. O’Brien rightly figured there’d be money in it, and put together one minute of test footage depicting a stop-motion caveman fighting a stop-motion dinosaur. It was fairly crude – the models were clay over rough wooden armatures, and had a tendency to melt under the stage lights – but it was enough to sell a producer on the idea of stop-motion cartoons, and O’Brien was given $5,000 to make something slightly more ambitious.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The result was 1915’s <i style="">The Dinosaur and the Missing Link</i>, a six minute film about a group of aristocratic cavemen who attempt to win the hand of the Duke’s daughter, but are perpetually being hassled by Wild Willy the Missing Link (I believe the original title was <i style="">Don’t Bogart A Dukeling</i>). It’s a pretty simple film, with jerky animation and cheap models and no composite shots, but it compensates for its lack of technical polish with a nicely whimsical sense of humour and some impressive ambition in terms both of the scope of O’Brien’s creations and in what he has them do. O’Brien was determined to give his models the full range of physical expressiveness. As a consequence, he not only has a monkey man, but sets it to swinging about in trees and trying to cut the tail of a sauropod. For no real reason aside from a bit of comic effect he whips-up an adorable “desert quail” (a <i style="">Diornis</i>) and has it flounce about the place making goo-goo eyes at one of the cavemen. This brings me back to the point about the humour – we saw essential the same thing in Chaplin’s <i style="">His Prehistoric Past,</i> released a year earlier, with the jokes coming mostly from anachronistic references and irony (why else would you set a comedy in the Pleistocene Era, after all?). The difference is that <i style="">The Dinosaur and the Missing Link</i> is much funnier. O’Brien has a nice comic touch, with a mixture of wryness and a mild cruel streak, and it’s something that would pop up a lot in his later “serious” work (a personal favourite of mine is the look of utter confusion and disappointment conveyed by an Allosaurus in <i style="">The Lost World</i> after it accidentally knocks an Apatosaurus it was fighting off a cliff). All in all, it’s most obvious comparison is one of those low-budget Eastern European stop-motion shorts that always used to show-up as filler between episodes of <i style="">The Wild Thornberries</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ixF8KumaszM&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ixF8KumaszM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This film went into distribution and was eventually seen by Thomas Edison, who decided to not only purchase the rights but to hire O’Brien to produce a series of further shorts. Given that this is Thomas Edison we’re talking about, I’m surprised he didn’t just change the opening title card to read “A Product of the Edison Company” and then have one of his cronies set about ripping it off. Then again, by the teens I suppose it was getting harder and harder for a man to make an honest living by shamelessly pirating the works of independent filmmakers. Which is a pity since piracy is after all what the American publishing industry was founded on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In any case, 1916 saw the production of <i style="">R.F.D. 10,000 B.C.</i>, a ten minute “mannikin comedy” which, while less entertaining overall, represents a significant step forward in terms of animation. The plot is straightforward, and indeed slight and somewhat drawn-out even for as brief a span as ten minutes, following a conniving cavepostman who switches a valentine from his rival with a card saying “Old Maid” and proceeds to take advantage of the resultant misunderstanding. What’s really significant is the level of attention which O’Brien has put into the physical acting. In the long shots the mannikins give performances easily rivalling those in your average live action film of the period, and in fact display a great deal more subtlety and nuance of inflection than one had any right to demand in 1917 (in fact this may be the undoing of the film, the entertainment value of which seems to have been put second to O’Brien indulging in the minutiae of character movements). In addition to this, O’Brien had begun to incorporate seemingly minor yet highly important effects. He manages to animate the puffs of smoke coming out of the postman’s pipe, for example, and even positions an air bladder inside the chest of a sauropod which could be inflated and deflated to present the illusion of breathing. There’s even a moving background for a shot where a character is flung through the air.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AN8fDk7W1d4&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AN8fDk7W1d4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">Prehistoric Poultry</span>, of later the same year, represents another step forward. Not only is the animation smoother, the models have once again improved significantly. The caveman models now have detailed faces capable of registering different expressions, right down to moveable eyeballs. The prehistoric poultry of the title is a reappearance by the <i style="">Diornis</i> (and here I <i style="">must</i> pause and cry loudly to the heavens “I WANT ONE!”), this time presented with a carefully animated, highly flexible neck that’s even fitted with bladders to show the bulge when it swallows something. And it flies! And while the sauropod makes another appearance, this time it appears to have been directly modelled on McKay’s Gertie, right down to making its appearance by emerging from a cave and eating a tree (itself a considerable step forward in the interaction between sets and characters). The film itself is a slight affair, little more than a series of quick gags involving a caveman who gets stoned and then accidentally shoots a guy out of a catapult, but overall it’s pretty entertaining.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/a5wVEvqwpxA&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/a5wVEvqwpxA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, it seems that the next two films O’Brien made for Edison are lost (or at least, not up on YouTube), but this is alright since it allows me to move on to what could be considered O’Brien’s big break, and his first really major work as a writer director and special effects technician. On or about 1917, O’Brien was approached by producer Herbert Dawley with the offer of producing a feature length film. Rather than another full animation, live actors would be integrated into and alongside footage of O’Brien’s fantastical creations, with the aim being to make everything look as realistic as possible. The result was <i style="">The Ghost of Slumber Mountain</i>, a film which (as has been pointed-out ad infinitum) is in many ways simply a proving ground for the techniques that would come to play in the far more ambitious <i style="">The Lost World</i> a few years later. And yet at the same time it actually holds together far better, as a whole, than it’s admittedly more spectacular descendant.<br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigkzZkIoDUNtlrSLR7-h5-M1ycBOrMoam9Gl8BKloyGqx6oxmGgs3nlrajF_dfK4YzrWWxORBMqQfzcijd9jY-uqSDTEthJcTU0MmO_bfTr5YPu96NKjuL6rNe1jSuKLoOp3fBA_RfSrw/s1600-h/poultry.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 219px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigkzZkIoDUNtlrSLR7-h5-M1ycBOrMoam9Gl8BKloyGqx6oxmGgs3nlrajF_dfK4YzrWWxORBMqQfzcijd9jY-uqSDTEthJcTU0MmO_bfTr5YPu96NKjuL6rNe1jSuKLoOp3fBA_RfSrw/s320/poultry.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303299527273940418" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The plot is fairly simple, really. Uncle Jack (played by Dawley) is pestered by his nephews into telling them a story of rip-roaring adventure. Jack, a writer, is more than happy to oblige, and he sets the two boys on his knees and begins to ramble on in somewhat purple prose. A few years back, you see, Jack and his friend Joe headed out to Slumber Mountain on a camping trip. On the way up they passed by an empty cabin, and the gravesite of the desiccated coconut who used to dwell there – a hermit by the name of “Mad Dick”.<span style=""> </span>Mad Dick was an enigmatic sort, seldom glimpsed. Joe is apparently a regular in the area, and yet even he can only recall encountering the fellow once. As Joe tells it he happened by Dick’s cabin one night and caught sight of the hermit heading off up the mountain. His interest piqued, Jack tailed the man, and so bore witness to a rather peculiar sight. Upon reaching the top of the mountain, Mad Dick pulled a queer sort of spyglass from his satchel and began peering out through it into the night. I’m sure you’ll agree with Joe that it was all very peculiar, and the man eventually made his way back down the mountain, taking care not to alert Mad Dick to his presence.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Jack is suitably tantalised by all of this, and when he lies down to bed he’s still got Dick on the brain. He’s scarcely closed his eyes, however, when he hears a strange voice calling him from up the mountain. Curious, he follows the voice, and finds that he’s been led straight to the cabin of Mad Dick. It is at this point that the double-exposure ghost of Mad Dick appears (Willis O’Brien under copious amounts of make-up) and directs Jack to break into the cabin. Jack obliges, and discovers that the place is crammed full of dinosaur models, careful sketches and texts on palaeontology. What is especially fascinating, however, is a wooden box inside of which Jack finds the bizarre telescope of which Joe spoke (honestly, it looks like a cross between a gramophone and one of those weird viewfinders Luke Skywalker was always peering through). The ghost leads Jack up to the top of the mountain and begs for him to glance through the telescope. Jack obliges, and what do you think he sees? No, it’s not an inky nightscape – it’s a prehistoric wonderland!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yes, the telescope allows people to gaze back through time. This is pretty darn cool (as Jack declares – “Thunder lizards!”), and the second half of the film is made-up almost entirely of shots of dinosaurs wandering about doing various things. Firstly, there’s an Apatosaurus that wanders down to drink at a river. It finishes-up wading out midstream, an effect accomplished using a sort of mouldable gelatine that could be used to loosely mimic the splashing and rippling effect of water. Then Jack sees what looks like a Gastornis, a flightless bird that stood as tall as a man and had a beak the size of a suitcase, eating a snake (here Willis O’Brien confirms something that I’d already suspected from the Diornis in his earlier films – namely, that the guy had a real knack for animating birds. This think looks great). Then Jack sees a pair of Triceratopses fighting one another – eventually one of them retreats, but the victor has little time to celebrate. Out of nowhere comes an enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex, which duels with the Triceratops for a short while before eventually finishing it by ripping a massive chunk from its side.<br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcobvIVx_clh-BlEAq_cXsiMtQIMuWycbVD3wQDobPkJtLbdiuSA4kjUI2N8oJljkAU_49R5boTF3hbLhdOaQgqevLecRJtPM7sxCCrCxfcILdkERB6E9Oj3hnyB19WcWUFUjeNwlTla0/s1600-h/dinosaurs.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcobvIVx_clh-BlEAq_cXsiMtQIMuWycbVD3wQDobPkJtLbdiuSA4kjUI2N8oJljkAU_49R5boTF3hbLhdOaQgqevLecRJtPM7sxCCrCxfcILdkERB6E9Oj3hnyB19WcWUFUjeNwlTla0/s320/dinosaurs.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303298748528824370" border="0" /></a></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s a gruesome sight – so gruesome, in fact, that Jack cries-out in terror. And wouldn’t you know it – <i style="">the gosh-darned Tyrannosaurus hears him</i>! Before Jack can even begin to <i style="">contemplate</i> how much shit he’s in, he finds himself running for his life very large, very hungry dinosaur that has suddenly gotten 65 million years too close for comfort.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">The Ghost of Slumber Mountain</i>’s story isn’t particularly deep, but really it doesn’t need to be. It’s enough to get Uncle Jack up on the mountain so that he can gaze at what would have, in 1918, been simply spectacular dinosaur effects. It hardly needs stating that the effects are somewhat less than lifelike, but what it noteworthy is both how much better O’Brien’s models are here than they were even just two years ago, and how much smoother the animation is. In the case of the Gastornis and the Triceratopses the stop-motion is actually better than it would be for the majority of <i style="">The Lost World</i>, although nothing here ever reaches the level of the Apatosaurus animation for the attack on London. Things may drag a little during the “spectacle” portion, but the advantage of stop-motion is that once the effects have become badly dated you’re at least left with some cool-looking models to gawk at. And the sudden twist of having the Tyrannosaurus come at Jack salvages the film from being a mere spectacle, by instead rendering it perhaps the first know instance of humans and stop-motion creations interacting on screen (although it should be noted that dinosaurs and humans would not appear in the same shot together until <i style="">The Lost World</i>). All in all, this is a charming little adventure that benefits enormously from being both quite straightforward and rather brief, thus never really wearing out it’s welcome.</p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/boDiGooHbKw&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/boDiGooHbKw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This briefness isn’t intentional, mind. When O’Brien signed-on for <i style="">Slumber Mountain</i>, it was with the understanding that he’d be producing a feature film (as <i style="">I</i> understand it, the film was also supposed to be about a group of adventurers encountering a lost valley of dinosaurs, but I’m not sure what happened there). In the end, the finished product clocked in at around forty minutes, but Herbert Dawley decided in one of the first of many prickish moves that he would cut the film down and release it as two films entirely independent of one another. Hey! Twice the films, twice the box office, and who ever really believed in that artistic integrity thing anyway? This was bad enough, but didn’t even begin to cover the extent of Dawley’s dickishness. Not only did O’Brien make precious little money off of what was actually a quite profitable film, but Dawley also had his name removed from the credits and proceeded to claim sole responsibility for the story, direction and creation of the revolutionary effects.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thankfully, no-one really bought Herbert Dawley’s story (something about his claims of having constructed life-sized canvas puppets just rang a little false) and when First National Pictures entered pre-production on The Lost World they knew exactly who to turn to for the creation of the dinosaurs. Herbert Dawley went on to produce many other films, but both his name and his work remains at this point in time largely forgotten. Willis O’Brien, as if it needed stating, went on to provide the good parts of one of the greatest monster films ever made.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal">But that, lady and/or gentleman, is a story for next week, as I’m afraid that 4,370 words is my limit.<br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcobvIVx_clh-BlEAq_cXsiMtQIMuWycbVD3wQDobPkJtLbdiuSA4kjUI2N8oJljkAU_49R5boTF3hbLhdOaQgqevLecRJtPM7sxCCrCxfcILdkERB6E9Oj3hnyB19WcWUFUjeNwlTla0/s1600-h/dinosaurs.jpg"><br /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><br /><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/d_6rWndnJCM&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/d_6rWndnJCM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />(this has nothing to do with anything, but damn if it doesn't look cool. Unfortunately Walter R. Booth appears to be outside the scope of my demented ramblings.</div>Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-64917240573701907112009-02-14T02:29:00.000+11:002009-02-14T02:34:22.688+11:00This week’s update may be a little late.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3FGj8wkmWcoIgAxZ6QfBz29qjz10Wdg9j17QoGGJZyoYeXqrWYHowTWYJdxgm6dMoTVyXfkY628HdbmeEhr83h09xbcYuCATXLQ7ukJS5aUGaaZFrhAz2a6O0IAPuIJoaRKDXHBw9nY/s320/technical_difficulties.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 312px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3FGj8wkmWcoIgAxZ6QfBz29qjz10Wdg9j17QoGGJZyoYeXqrWYHowTWYJdxgm6dMoTVyXfkY628HdbmeEhr83h09xbcYuCATXLQ7ukJS5aUGaaZFrhAz2a6O0IAPuIJoaRKDXHBw9nY/s320/technical_difficulties.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">I had originally intended today’s entry to be an overview of the First National production of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost World</span>. As I understand it, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost World </span>represents both the first full length dinosaur film and the first film to depict a giant monster rampage – thus making it perhaps the most influential monster film of all time. As a consequence, I was eager to lay into the film, but at the same time aware of the limitations inherent in reviewing something from an incomplete print. You see, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost World</span> is available in two versions – a truncated 64 minute print which has been the principle one in circulation for the last eighty years, and a newly restored print that brings the running time up to 93 minutes, only ten short of the original theatrical version. I have the former on DVD, and was under the impression I would not be able to get hold of the restored version without paying out a fair bit of money. However, I have recently discovered that the restored print of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost World</span> is available on Quickflix, and that I can have it in my hands by Thursday. So in the interests of journalistic integrity, and putting aside the two thousand-odd words worth of review I had already written on the truncated version, I have decided to hold-off tackling <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost World</span> until next week. Instead, I would like to turn this unexpected hiccough into a two-part celebration of the early works of the one man who did more than any other to popularise the notion of movies where dinosaurs fight each other for no real reason.</p><p class="MsoNormal">So! What this means is that I'll probably just update Saturday afternoon again, like I did last week.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-57698072724163950702009-02-07T14:10:00.000+11:002009-02-07T23:35:06.466+11:002. Three Ages (1923)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg13PWLS4gVR8E6yr-cc9iO3dZchbjHA347MV21JeoKVSWcpPCjXGziZP4YNo4dW_rwUr1COiOeV5oE4GdUUubHfviASltnVjhyEqsIP72qqro4ZjKcjcnRzGi1l0dGX3iLOkc_AAFv0U8/s1600-h/3ages.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 319px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg13PWLS4gVR8E6yr-cc9iO3dZchbjHA347MV21JeoKVSWcpPCjXGziZP4YNo4dW_rwUr1COiOeV5oE4GdUUubHfviASltnVjhyEqsIP72qqro4ZjKcjcnRzGi1l0dGX3iLOkc_AAFv0U8/s320/3ages.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300028165892171650" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >Directors:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Buster Keaton & Eddie Cline<br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >Cast:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Buster Keaton, Wallace Beery & Margaret Leahy<br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >Caveman Quotient:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> 33.3r %<br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >Analysis:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Three Ages</span> was Keaton's first feature film as director, and only second feature film overall, and it shows. Not in the technical elements of the film (it's spectacularly made and nicely acted ) and not in the quality of the jokes (which are funny and usually quite clever, albeit more cartoonish than those of his later features), but in the structure. Keaton wasn't yet a proven property in features, and so as a sort of insurance against failure he agreed to produce a full-length film that could be divided into three short subjects and recoup costs in the event of it failing at the box office. The inherent flaw of such a strategy is that the film risks becoming woefully episodic if the viewer is forced to sit through three beginning-middle-end narratives one after another. However, the solution that Keaton found to this problem is, quite frankly, genius. Rather than creating an anthology film (always risky, and anyway rather pointless in an era when shorts still got wide distribution) or a film where each story follows on from the last and tells the further adventures of the characters after they resolved their last crisis (similarly pointless - why not just make a serial?) Keaton decided to tell three roughly indentical narratives of the quest for romance, each taking place in a different time period and taking the form, as a whole, of a rather loose parody of <span style="font-style: italic;">Intolerance</span>.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghtu66AEqM6FZmfBvoO7riNw5kuYgw4JLavAZGwjOQ5f-Mp4aopak7neD_ndYcRgjvb6PsrSlYgnEwMsrPBY3KPjhRztBJdxntdau7qOFNdUN6uYuAcMsnMsVqK16A7Y7kNyvLgkc1eV4/s1600-h/PDVD_020.jpg"> </a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtlBzPIbjhvxEjdSeeJnhw-I66avAeQtdFfmA9h-jIY4Ww3bA0nBx8fkqOOSZ-eR7YYHtdt3yLkaLed-VwzGWufBegc2p6oD8zIT7VQOPYcaqbFChvfIq-oyL_CPyoUaMxMSAFBfRv7G4/s1600-h/PDVD_007.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtlBzPIbjhvxEjdSeeJnhw-I66avAeQtdFfmA9h-jIY4Ww3bA0nBx8fkqOOSZ-eR7YYHtdt3yLkaLed-VwzGWufBegc2p6oD8zIT7VQOPYcaqbFChvfIq-oyL_CPyoUaMxMSAFBfRv7G4/s320/PDVD_007.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300011841003498962" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmiRC1u1ouN7MpZTuOuh8L2dqATlcvMe1wFVJ1M7NYa-VmaZa05jNDnllbHbp6s09EyHaxW3n5czjzG6QQPK3bbaGjzzsbqYj96WSE_tVBt2UpnE5-Fuhvj2NHQjs8RvC_XXW08P5cM9g/s1600-h/PDVD_011.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmiRC1u1ouN7MpZTuOuh8L2dqATlcvMe1wFVJ1M7NYa-VmaZa05jNDnllbHbp6s09EyHaxW3n5czjzG6QQPK3bbaGjzzsbqYj96WSE_tVBt2UpnE5-Fuhvj2NHQjs8RvC_XXW08P5cM9g/s320/PDVD_011.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300011840947712290" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiABagcN9rdQ8jI-oN4D1Qal9SCczdOwjX0U78Zp77BzXkzjQnK1TD30UoMfv3Y9PObTw3cAtMcOPMhNHQcHjFKXlWHgweynmH8yPRnJm5_x3_qB2_J7KM0lj8efyixuondCMqqVkA8AM/s1600-h/PDVD_073.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiABagcN9rdQ8jI-oN4D1Qal9SCczdOwjX0U78Zp77BzXkzjQnK1TD30UoMfv3Y9PObTw3cAtMcOPMhNHQcHjFKXlWHgweynmH8yPRnJm5_x3_qB2_J7KM0lj8efyixuondCMqqVkA8AM/s320/PDVD_073.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300012434830462818" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghtu66AEqM6FZmfBvoO7riNw5kuYgw4JLavAZGwjOQ5f-Mp4aopak7neD_ndYcRgjvb6PsrSlYgnEwMsrPBY3KPjhRztBJdxntdau7qOFNdUN6uYuAcMsnMsVqK16A7Y7kNyvLgkc1eV4/s1600-h/PDVD_020.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghtu66AEqM6FZmfBvoO7riNw5kuYgw4JLavAZGwjOQ5f-Mp4aopak7neD_ndYcRgjvb6PsrSlYgnEwMsrPBY3KPjhRztBJdxntdau7qOFNdUN6uYuAcMsnMsVqK16A7Y7kNyvLgkc1eV4/s320/PDVD_020.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300011843293522674" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtlBzPIbjhvxEjdSeeJnhw-I66avAeQtdFfmA9h-jIY4Ww3bA0nBx8fkqOOSZ-eR7YYHtdt3yLkaLed-VwzGWufBegc2p6oD8zIT7VQOPYcaqbFChvfIq-oyL_CPyoUaMxMSAFBfRv7G4/s1600-h/PDVD_007.jpg"> </a><br /></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">And boy, if ever there were a film that needed thoroughly satirising it's D.W. Griffith's bloated and overly portentous </span>would-be epic<span style="font-size:100%;">. Yes, it's a technical marvel of a film, and it does have jaw-dropping sequences like the full-scale recreation of the battle for ancient Babylon and the justly reveared crane shot of the steps of Solomon's temple, but at the same time it is woefully sentimental, full of black-and-white moralising, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">leadenly plotted, crammed with dead weight go-nowhere narratives </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and laden with tin-eared speechifying of the sort that only a Hollywood historical epic can produce. As such, it's a wonderful thing to be able to watch Buster Keaton's </span>zany little oddity of a film<span style="font-size:100%;">, which swipes </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >Intolerance</span><span style="font-size:100%;">'s central conceit of cross-cutting between loosely-related stories occurring in different historical epochs and uses it to launch a bizarre and frequently hilarious send-up of the overdone period film in general.<br /><br /><br />The film opens with Father Time (subbing for Lillian Gish, who was out sick) sitting in a chair reading from some creaky old leather-bound volume. We learn from this book that love between a man and a woman hasn't really changed all that much throughout history, and that in order to illustrate this point we are going to be treated to three seperate tales set in the Stone, Roman and Modern ages respectively. In each age we have three archetypal figures - the Adventurer (Wallace Beery), a rough'n'tough rake who is basically just Bluto from Popeye; the Worshipper (Buster Keaton), who is basically just Buster Keaton (i.e. - a loveable dork); and Beauty (Margaret Leahy) who is basically just some chick whose pants/toga/leopard skin Keaton and Beery desire access to (a talentless beauty-contest winner, Leahy was apparently dumped on Keaton by the producers - her haplessness might explain the intense vapidity of her role).<br /></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJavEFelyidmFE062pd_yGmhCfSpsVS_4UJtJNG0Kli05-sW1Qc2ZjDr9CDAzyKVqpjPtgMq8cp92xo20a1ajZCR4MIlxYY_U-wFG9n_DALpWSxSX2iEEzKuETHj8xql4pBqhgv6G8MCU/s1600-h/PDVD_058.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJavEFelyidmFE062pd_yGmhCfSpsVS_4UJtJNG0Kli05-sW1Qc2ZjDr9CDAzyKVqpjPtgMq8cp92xo20a1ajZCR4MIlxYY_U-wFG9n_DALpWSxSX2iEEzKuETHj8xql4pBqhgv6G8MCU/s320/PDVD_058.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300014356722897842" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0AZNnjpviARjBbkG7OLo74sUjMxoRu0ZCG0Y-cswYSKWcdItP20FJ8pQEKC-332tkjAyk2JfltOD0NZfMPQ2WBqU2U5KhQcWKnG1BvYtswzI1rtZ3ySv2TbW5_GpB3TGTwTOFyAq11r4/s1600-h/PDVD_029.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0AZNnjpviARjBbkG7OLo74sUjMxoRu0ZCG0Y-cswYSKWcdItP20FJ8pQEKC-332tkjAyk2JfltOD0NZfMPQ2WBqU2U5KhQcWKnG1BvYtswzI1rtZ3ySv2TbW5_GpB3TGTwTOFyAq11r4/s320/PDVD_029.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300014357117496402" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdqaOdYQZBKdlOJGova0GgYo34k3AzPEqzEcXsLChAPR61ns2N337HbzbM6lFh8NPlaAt_BzCCo2enfrSCiDWNpFlsM0OaYW7CtgEFYpRmBLkcNq43ZHCt3UXfEXFUldlp0SqzB74W4-k/s1600-h/PDVD_120.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdqaOdYQZBKdlOJGova0GgYo34k3AzPEqzEcXsLChAPR61ns2N337HbzbM6lFh8NPlaAt_BzCCo2enfrSCiDWNpFlsM0OaYW7CtgEFYpRmBLkcNq43ZHCt3UXfEXFUldlp0SqzB74W4-k/s320/PDVD_120.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300014745209111666" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAaAnesWCeOVZI6DaxZucVNX7RO24CvGIr5lWiPhfci_eQknyTv665U6HZfhJtHM3mmrpNU9OQ-htHQQZ0X_fXRRwJLQsTlabLh6WEhO5nSnaMHE0_PkGOCY8DpcH8rY9oMqeNsAiUirg/s1600-h/PDVD_245.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAaAnesWCeOVZI6DaxZucVNX7RO24CvGIr5lWiPhfci_eQknyTv665U6HZfhJtHM3mmrpNU9OQ-htHQQZ0X_fXRRwJLQsTlabLh6WEhO5nSnaMHE0_PkGOCY8DpcH8rY9oMqeNsAiUirg/s320/PDVD_245.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300014743198955202" border="0" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">In each age the exact same story plays-out. Keaton attempts to woo Leahy, who's obviously fond of him in return, but Beery is having none of it. Leahy's parents side with Beery, who is stronger/higher-ranking/wealthier, and Keaton must find a way to prove his mettle to them via a contest of strength and wits. In the end, Leahy's parents switch allegiance to Keaton, but Beery finds a way to discredit Keaton which Our Hero must work desperately to circumvent at the very last minute (usually in the form of a daring rescue attempt-cum-chase scene).<br /></span><br />T<span style="font-size:100%;">he result of all this is that the entire film is somewhat repetitious, since it’s effectively recapping itself in different time periods, but at the same time the joy of the picture is in how the writers have warped the core narrative from era to era. For example, in each era Beery and Keaton face-off in a physical challenge to prove who is fit to take Leahy's hand. So in the Stone Age we have a caveman duel, complete with seconds and a choice of clubs, that ends with </span>Keaton winning only to get railroaded out of town by being tied to an elephant after Beery finds-out Keaton was using a weighted club. In the Roman Age, by contrast, Keaton takes advantage of a heavy snow to win a chariot race by replacing his wheels with skis and hitching his chariot to a team of huskies - which goes fine for him, except that after the race Beery tricks him into falling into a lion pit beneath the colosseum (incidentally, when declaring Beery the loser Leahy's dad gives just about the best "Thumbs Down" I have ever seen). And in the Modern Age, the pair play-off against each other at football (a scene ripped-off by more Goofy cartoons than I can count), with Beery going all Forest Whitaker on Keaton's butt until Keaton flips-out and scores a touchdown by dint of his cowardly gymnastics - only to have Beery frame him with a bottle of sly hooch and get him locked away after the game.<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivXVzjsDpK7QX9v5e9HPmyfd8yGBKxNJMLOsakEQHvXBzil6dmYU-Sgfq2GWhSjgnxLELwlJk9SZOmLPSnUXUKZm8Iclyo88nlIffiBNTsP459c6rcm1WAuOgwkD2U47e9MFg8df8VYOc/s1600-h/PDVD_027.jpg"> </a><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivXVzjsDpK7QX9v5e9HPmyfd8yGBKxNJMLOsakEQHvXBzil6dmYU-Sgfq2GWhSjgnxLELwlJk9SZOmLPSnUXUKZm8Iclyo88nlIffiBNTsP459c6rcm1WAuOgwkD2U47e9MFg8df8VYOc/s1600-h/PDVD_027.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivXVzjsDpK7QX9v5e9HPmyfd8yGBKxNJMLOsakEQHvXBzil6dmYU-Sgfq2GWhSjgnxLELwlJk9SZOmLPSnUXUKZm8Iclyo88nlIffiBNTsP459c6rcm1WAuOgwkD2U47e9MFg8df8VYOc/s320/PDVD_027.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300013464486457570" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRzPypuNx3ig4LUXG7nHUgsxqV9-BN6vN7KCPx6GQcnuDFKHWkhtcE-uQf5pmQ3ZvT3Cica3DNNOPAWhG0eUTIEaGNj7Mx39VdvCpcMcAFfLzQJn1fjKXt0vgD6DnJFMb9uZ2C9InfvGY/s1600-h/PDVD_043.jpg"> </a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1dookkgzYl0rmDd4M8vGqeTzkez3a2_KQcVgwYshskuAVO9iZ_vw9ym-YCWBcigBp01LUrG-eE1v7obxptfrDJOe8cF9Tqsrg9GCbjuEZ7n746FPvKslPqJaZY7RN53FyxMhW5mTkAdk/s1600-h/PDVD_257.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1dookkgzYl0rmDd4M8vGqeTzkez3a2_KQcVgwYshskuAVO9iZ_vw9ym-YCWBcigBp01LUrG-eE1v7obxptfrDJOe8cF9Tqsrg9GCbjuEZ7n746FPvKslPqJaZY7RN53FyxMhW5mTkAdk/s320/PDVD_257.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300013467096585586" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRzPypuNx3ig4LUXG7nHUgsxqV9-BN6vN7KCPx6GQcnuDFKHWkhtcE-uQf5pmQ3ZvT3Cica3DNNOPAWhG0eUTIEaGNj7Mx39VdvCpcMcAFfLzQJn1fjKXt0vgD6DnJFMb9uZ2C9InfvGY/s1600-h/PDVD_043.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRzPypuNx3ig4LUXG7nHUgsxqV9-BN6vN7KCPx6GQcnuDFKHWkhtcE-uQf5pmQ3ZvT3Cica3DNNOPAWhG0eUTIEaGNj7Mx39VdvCpcMcAFfLzQJn1fjKXt0vgD6DnJFMb9uZ2C9InfvGY/s320/PDVD_043.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300013467403713442" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXH-axIo88Ve7A0eUxfSmPNacIjH8i-g0VtR_oVlr4Ozb4aoXzktjiJp7n-04Wloa9nmTSPmESsJwjP7X2cUmwDA7s2a4DQSekfxSP3-7HG7yEVrUT6Usxpp87zO8ZLyPk8G4YQDXM7c8/s1600-h/caesar.gif"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXH-axIo88Ve7A0eUxfSmPNacIjH8i-g0VtR_oVlr4Ozb4aoXzktjiJp7n-04Wloa9nmTSPmESsJwjP7X2cUmwDA7s2a4DQSekfxSP3-7HG7yEVrUT6Usxpp87zO8ZLyPk8G4YQDXM7c8/s320/caesar.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300013460151469698" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivXVzjsDpK7QX9v5e9HPmyfd8yGBKxNJMLOsakEQHvXBzil6dmYU-Sgfq2GWhSjgnxLELwlJk9SZOmLPSnUXUKZm8Iclyo88nlIffiBNTsP459c6rcm1WAuOgwkD2U47e9MFg8df8VYOc/s1600-h/PDVD_027.jpg"> </a><br /></div>There are a lot of other neat contrasts like this - for example, in each era Beery is shown driving a much newer and <span style="font-style: italic;">much</span> nicer vehicle than Keaton. In the Stone Age, Beery rides a mammoth while Keaton is stuck with a dinosaur, and in the Roman Age Beery's chariot is drawn by snow-white thoroughbreds while Keaton's is drawn by mules and jackasses (as Leahy's father aptly puts it - Beery is one of the highest ranking men in the Imperial army, while Keaton is one of the rankest). The real pay-off, though, comes in the Modern Age, where Beery drives a shiny new auto and Keaton is stuck with a clapped-out model T. Not that funny? Well, when Keaton hits a speed bump and his model T disintegrates into its constituent parts, that's funny.<br /><br />As you might be able to guess, a lot of the humour in this film comes from the deployment of creative anachronisms by Keaton's character. In fact the 'Stone Age' segment of the film could almost be seen as a grandiose one-upping of Chaplin's 'Martini-Making Monkey Man" act from His Prehistoric Past, with the exception that Keaton generally preferred to play nice guys. As a consequence in the Stone Age you get stuff like caveman golf, caveman business cards, and caveman secretaries taking dictation with a chisel, while the Roman Age provides such curiosities as sundial wristwatches, chariot wheel-locks, Latin "No Parking" signs and husky-pulled snow-chariots complete with spare tires (he keeps a border collie in the trunk). The humour in theses two segments is funny but hardly groundbreaking, though it does have a few moments of surreal brilliance. For example, in both the Stone Age and the Roman Age Keaton visits a soothsayer to find-out if Leahy loves him. In the first of these segments, the caveman clairvoyant has a ouija board set-up, but instead of using a glass he and Keaton must put their hands on a tortoise and let it wander around the board. The sheer ludicrousness of the sequence is beautiful.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYguna661w9dXkLBt-M90Px8V1wHtQbgoYHzfQm0NxsAzYI1nCWgXxT6Gas0QIC8LaLjhX91rDiQzIaUkLm29XpAZEoPzEM_x4LnXjh31EYUnUH3y3kvZFQSGuxJBglqV_FhvYDo0FmoY/s1600-h/PDVD_071.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYguna661w9dXkLBt-M90Px8V1wHtQbgoYHzfQm0NxsAzYI1nCWgXxT6Gas0QIC8LaLjhX91rDiQzIaUkLm29XpAZEoPzEM_x4LnXjh31EYUnUH3y3kvZFQSGuxJBglqV_FhvYDo0FmoY/s320/PDVD_071.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300015819776542018" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha2r2kWAyM-fm7J47IHeeogzzJRZwq-vGznX3zIkbXmgIOEkLbLnjuJ22gm3JiJzAaI8AFKOMeWAitW0EPxScHL-34cR0TNxMOeDUf1GEkM0M0G-JDNFgTMiPTl3lHdx2m6-bokjLYWPg/s1600-h/PDVD_169.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha2r2kWAyM-fm7J47IHeeogzzJRZwq-vGznX3zIkbXmgIOEkLbLnjuJ22gm3JiJzAaI8AFKOMeWAitW0EPxScHL-34cR0TNxMOeDUf1GEkM0M0G-JDNFgTMiPTl3lHdx2m6-bokjLYWPg/s320/PDVD_169.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300015820499673378" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIKNldRP-8mTfHeC3MO5zLDS9k0islMJ8OnJrrXK4leO7ZL_EPlz6lyJnFmmt6RbSv5mIh2LR8YuC6wNDnA22StpRwIpjkzUcQM_9-sM2N7NiHwdniihltPR3aJ-pFD5O_IdBVPTMdm18/s1600-h/PDVD_044.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIKNldRP-8mTfHeC3MO5zLDS9k0islMJ8OnJrrXK4leO7ZL_EPlz6lyJnFmmt6RbSv5mIh2LR8YuC6wNDnA22StpRwIpjkzUcQM_9-sM2N7NiHwdniihltPR3aJ-pFD5O_IdBVPTMdm18/s320/PDVD_044.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300015816949120162" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqKLwm2HWchl6DPFE7CCpevzXSaz2wE4Mb3-hobEOlyuDJOtspfWp61AmRtc7bLTDC_mNcC2SEMe7e1VILd0S6gHj_u7PUk89dtdd7lj6SP1KoBBoFzUdE5JWdZW-5JQ28lJjjlrF4U5c/s1600-h/PDVD_132.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqKLwm2HWchl6DPFE7CCpevzXSaz2wE4Mb3-hobEOlyuDJOtspfWp61AmRtc7bLTDC_mNcC2SEMe7e1VILd0S6gHj_u7PUk89dtdd7lj6SP1KoBBoFzUdE5JWdZW-5JQ28lJjjlrF4U5c/s320/PDVD_132.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300015820163498866" border="0" /></a></div><br /><br />The other scene I really love takes place in the Roman age. Keaton is trapped in the lion pit with just about the most loveable man-in-suit lion I've ever seen. Recalling that "... somewhere - sometime - somebody made friends with some lion by doing something to some of its paws" Keaton proceeds to take-up a human bone and give the lion a manicure. This is funny enough, but at the end the lion pauses, holds both his paws out at arm's length to inspect them, and then shakes Keaton's hand for a job well done.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the Roman period also plays host to the only real blemish on the film. Keaton goes to visit a soothsayer yet again, except that this time he has to roll dice to determine if he has Leahy's heart (incidentally, he does). The punchline comes when a bunch of African slaves show-up and start shooting craps (Keaton loses and storms off in a huff). It's funny, I suppose, but it's not very edifying, and anyway why on earth are all the slaves in this vision of ancient Rome black? It's almost as bad as in the Garbo version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Anna Karenina</span> when all the bath houses are manned by black guys. Yes I know that this is a comedy and it was all meant in jest but still - think a little, Hollywood. To Keaton's credit, though, he doesn't have the black guys bug their eyes out and act all lazy and cowardly, and so by the standards of 1923 this is a pretty dignified portrayal.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKBroUJTgtxB1LOOu3tp9UmDlE-TPEi1VO4sT7TtUs-5BDGHxnvl0KGFb0vDTz28sVqa8GVdY5mjyLi7GV27VWO1XKyBv5MCHMoc1LzgCbVMEWU10UzghqebVva4fHsAaFDh3ep0PJ6Y0/s1600-h/PDVD_024.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKBroUJTgtxB1LOOu3tp9UmDlE-TPEi1VO4sT7TtUs-5BDGHxnvl0KGFb0vDTz28sVqa8GVdY5mjyLi7GV27VWO1XKyBv5MCHMoc1LzgCbVMEWU10UzghqebVva4fHsAaFDh3ep0PJ6Y0/s320/PDVD_024.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300016982467442178" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmOqUUgKJnOHJhSQoQxoHfeSbN0Sz3TM0g3Cnc7Z_fcduUY92fVTkERuowpeVDrCHzT7YtUo3dHaB92R4UvzO_vYWVkMy4W5Nz8N93efRhZGCcubfyUazBvdgk06KfK1p2IKHCha1P2o/s1600-h/PDVD_064.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmOqUUgKJnOHJhSQoQxoHfeSbN0Sz3TM0g3Cnc7Z_fcduUY92fVTkERuowpeVDrCHzT7YtUo3dHaB92R4UvzO_vYWVkMy4W5Nz8N93efRhZGCcubfyUazBvdgk06KfK1p2IKHCha1P2o/s320/PDVD_064.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300016989095539410" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRy6TnLgq_VQk5KalG4UatQPjerjCAPH1VEJTjntfLpTzVR3Xi-oY5rRNaKcV1TMlJT5mFXZf8s-DUzyv926T5AcaDNqD5aq_WGJJv744yxk0bAAfR3mfIsvt1l7E_Ru7_luaoU43HWA/s1600-h/PDVD_080.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRy6TnLgq_VQk5KalG4UatQPjerjCAPH1VEJTjntfLpTzVR3Xi-oY5rRNaKcV1TMlJT5mFXZf8s-DUzyv926T5AcaDNqD5aq_WGJJv744yxk0bAAfR3mfIsvt1l7E_Ru7_luaoU43HWA/s320/PDVD_080.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300016983860393362" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiBmP-82R5htaV62t6EbZbm3Vua6EC9reyYZK2DHDb9sP4IHYozC31rhZgOnC7Q2FG_Tfbl5lo2KFGNFQPNMy4wAjTiG56azRBbEzqrCuYMyV-C-1IquR9_2Nf5SltjsfR0_GyAzVHBYo/s1600-h/snapshot20090207124055+copy.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiBmP-82R5htaV62t6EbZbm3Vua6EC9reyYZK2DHDb9sP4IHYozC31rhZgOnC7Q2FG_Tfbl5lo2KFGNFQPNMy4wAjTiG56azRBbEzqrCuYMyV-C-1IquR9_2Nf5SltjsfR0_GyAzVHBYo/s320/snapshot20090207124055+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300016987244925074" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br />The Modern Period probably hangs together the strongest, coming across less as and excuse to string together bizarre sight gags than as an honest attempt at storytelling. In this respect, it most resembles Keaton's later features - movies like <span style="font-style: italic;">The General</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Our Hospitality</span> weren't<br />always riotously funny, but they had a wealth of subtle humour and some intelligent observations to make about society. The Modern Era of this film is nowhere near at that level, but it does have the "restaurant scene", which is certainly the best extended sequence in the film. A man who looks alarmingly like HP Lovecraft is on a date at a restaurant. He and she are enjoying a bit of bootleg liquor when the appearance of a detective forces Lovecraft to dump the hooch in the water carafe at the next table over. A few minutes later Beery and Leahy enter on a date, and Keaton follows them at a distance and takes a seat at the table with the spiked drinking water. He gets thirsty, ends-up unwittingly drunk, and starts hitting on Lovecraft's girl when the guy goes to the loo. She ignores him, powdering her nose at the table, and Keaton takes his cue from her and takes-out his shaving kit and begins freshening up. It's all very simple and silly stuff, but it works wonderfully with Keaton playing off of the familiar setting and being his own unflappable self rather than draping himself in props and outlandish situations (not that those aren't great, too).<br /><br />There's actually a fair bit of subtlety in this film, too - particularly in the way that Keaton shows the gradual shifts in attitude, and in power and gender relations, through the years. This is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, there's the way that Keaton in progressive ages is able to rely less on brute force and more on his wits, as the balance of power shifts away from mindless physicality. On the other hand we have such contrasts as Caveman Dad and Roman Dad being masters of their domains, while Modern Age dad is at the mercy of his penny-pinching martinet wife.<br /><br />However this all really pays-off in the final shot of the film, in which we are treated to the one true example of how little love has changed through the ages:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQOz72EhanXgDC6ctFc8OSEuA5YBoSIImY7PBGyhLSyffNg5CowjmfU9wV15QvUbhAqM9bo7OgFMluOJFLcIAJM8dkhDVq26FPYZzwIptvNSJRD_co7zxSVc2CZG6RjRqEoH98O2XKJWo/s1600-h/b2.jpg"> </a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pH2ksf1rt9hXyFidj1ruOO8-80ie9yoRSQMyMPkbWNbatJqJNzym2LXvyWFKKgxrRooQmn4S6Oio3rvfu348EtzbO83Z18mJsuodcHGXSc4vH3CoDylyL2dh5v73uVCukH5pKyv9Ma0/s1600-h/b1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 149px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pH2ksf1rt9hXyFidj1ruOO8-80ie9yoRSQMyMPkbWNbatJqJNzym2LXvyWFKKgxrRooQmn4S6Oio3rvfu348EtzbO83Z18mJsuodcHGXSc4vH3CoDylyL2dh5v73uVCukH5pKyv9Ma0/s320/b1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300011301232474834" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQOz72EhanXgDC6ctFc8OSEuA5YBoSIImY7PBGyhLSyffNg5CowjmfU9wV15QvUbhAqM9bo7OgFMluOJFLcIAJM8dkhDVq26FPYZzwIptvNSJRD_co7zxSVc2CZG6RjRqEoH98O2XKJWo/s1600-h/b2.jpg"> <img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 149px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQOz72EhanXgDC6ctFc8OSEuA5YBoSIImY7PBGyhLSyffNg5CowjmfU9wV15QvUbhAqM9bo7OgFMluOJFLcIAJM8dkhDVq26FPYZzwIptvNSJRD_co7zxSVc2CZG6RjRqEoH98O2XKJWo/s320/b2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300011301065883698" border="0" /> </a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfHIENoTjs1Geb2o087PtblRlIz_r0BB-n5aKOnPPdMnCwWWzwcSL4CN07mq7Eog9N6lDbuHL1dymtoo0wTTXMMHSA7rJXoqC-TWfa56kNvR52x0DUAguH0-orn2ybTZcCqF6BgObAgIM/s1600-h/b3.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 149px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfHIENoTjs1Geb2o087PtblRlIz_r0BB-n5aKOnPPdMnCwWWzwcSL4CN07mq7Eog9N6lDbuHL1dymtoo0wTTXMMHSA7rJXoqC-TWfa56kNvR52x0DUAguH0-orn2ybTZcCqF6BgObAgIM/s320/b3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300011301892305506" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />So, he may have been casually racist, but at least Buster Keaton supported birth control.<br /><br />In any case, I may have a few quibbles, but they shouldn't take away from what is ultimately a very clever and extremely funny (albeit rather slight) film.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I'm No Scientist, But...</span><br /><br />Once again, this is a comedy and critiquing the science in it seems pointless at best. However, I feel that I should point-out to all those people who grew-up watching the Flintstones religiously that NO! GOD! DINOSAURS did NOT live alongside CAVEMEN! You would think that everyone knew that already, but my dad and sisters still get confused by it a little. In the case of films, especially fantasy films, it's of course a moot point since it's either 1) for laughs or 2) just so that John Richardson can spear an allosaur - and I think we can all agree that a rigorous scientific approach should take a backseat in both instances. Still, it's actually gotten me curious now as to when exactly paleontologists figured-out that humans and dinosaurs didn't co-exist. I realise that humans have never been found in layers dated at the same time as dinosaurs, but way back in the early days of paleontology it was a lot trickier to date discoveries - part of why evolutionary timelines up until the 50s were, if I recall correctly, still pinning the KT extinction at between 20 and 40 million years ago. My dates are probably off, but in any case we have <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost World</span> coming up soon and in the book Arthur Conan Doyle is fairly sincere when he claims that the world is only a few million years old. I'm a little less certain of what to make of a title like <span style="font-style: italic;">One Million B.C.</span><br /><br />I'm also a little perplexed as to why there are stones everywhere in the Stone Age. I mean, literally <span style="font-style: italic;">everywhere</span>. I have no idea where they shot these exteriors but it looks like a marble rink for cyclopses. Look:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzAj18kqHB1Bac-O2slOF8e6ys2cpKnBRayONdVMd5mM2Lw3AfJ6p60qa-ZpJEDbSJklMLCKuM8xWY6oW9_inpTq0aj31NwzQrxX1Gdp5TkThAOwIyyiBkyTKwdLtu79uIWMFL3tsHK_E/s1600-h/PDVD_005.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzAj18kqHB1Bac-O2slOF8e6ys2cpKnBRayONdVMd5mM2Lw3AfJ6p60qa-ZpJEDbSJklMLCKuM8xWY6oW9_inpTq0aj31NwzQrxX1Gdp5TkThAOwIyyiBkyTKwdLtu79uIWMFL3tsHK_E/s320/PDVD_005.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300010592187310354" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />As for Roman times, there's little to critique but I am confused as to what sort of rank is held by Margaret Leahy's father. I'm assuming events take place in the actual city of Rome (which, in the film, appears to have been backed by a series of very Californian-looking cliffs), but if so then that means that Leahy's dad must be the Emperor, since he presides over big chariot races and gives orders to all and sundry. And yet, if that's the case then the decision Roman Beery takes to kidnap Roman Leahy is suicidal at best. I suppose Beery is shown to be an important general or some such, and if Leahy's dad is actually just a prefect or accountant or something then I suppose he could use his military muscle to defer the consequences of his actions. Otherwise, it seems like a relatively small thing to go all Praetorian revolt over. In any case, the Roman <span style="font-style: italic;">mis-en-scene</span> looks <span style="font-style: italic;">great</span>. Apparently Keaton had a much bigger budget to work with this time out, and he milks the locations for all they're worth. The attention to detail is great and, save for the jokes, it's very easy to forget you're not watching an actual sword and sandal film.<br /><br />In the Modern Age, I'm mainly curious about how the hell Keaton and his team rigged what is to all appearance a perfectly functioning automobile to disintigrate mid-traversance into its constituent parts. My guess would be that there's actually a smaller vehicle concealed under a trick chassis, and that it's wheels are attached loosely enough to come off when they hit the speed bump - the trick chassis, in the mean time, falling to bits and spilling prop parts all over the place. I suppose the answer is probably out there on a Buster Keaton fan site, but I couldn't be bothered to check.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Overall:</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNqEfWAvOI-yV0AGcHnS3nAZPWdZAz9KQr-01ksRwUun8wwPfe0sZ-qMYMkzZcN6DDK1sZwjELYN86O_ZmEeQ5yt0phqqBFcpHWkg9i6iyux1pzb-3yg-cI5pes415DfHBY0SwmeYSQyo/s1600-h/3half.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 237px; height: 65px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNqEfWAvOI-yV0AGcHnS3nAZPWdZAz9KQr-01ksRwUun8wwPfe0sZ-qMYMkzZcN6DDK1sZwjELYN86O_ZmEeQ5yt0phqqBFcpHWkg9i6iyux1pzb-3yg-cI5pes415DfHBY0SwmeYSQyo/s320/3half.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300032953868654546" border="0" /></a><br /><br />3 1/2 McClures out of five<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghh4Y0_fsDi6pRVzuh8dOegEury1ZOufhYKqAIn7FsG4Wnu3eHzp6LGcv-yd7tO0AWwNoz2lBjYsKqxX8XMv3vY0D0keejXzrclqgNZtyP72_IqWANeLymxKAgY_rmm1m91tLCaiTAYUE/s1600-h/PDVD_216.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 186px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghh4Y0_fsDi6pRVzuh8dOegEury1ZOufhYKqAIn7FsG4Wnu3eHzp6LGcv-yd7tO0AWwNoz2lBjYsKqxX8XMv3vY0D0keejXzrclqgNZtyP72_IqWANeLymxKAgY_rmm1m91tLCaiTAYUE/s320/PDVD_216.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300017699119869010" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Weeeeeeeeeeeee!</span>Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-85720601354466022492009-01-31T12:34:00.000+11:002009-02-01T08:56:17.248+11:001. His Prehistoric Past (1914)<style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >Director:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Charlie Chaplin</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >Cast: </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Charlie Chaplin, Mack Swain, Gene Marsh </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b style="">Caveman Quotient:<br /></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">This movie is non-stop caveman from word go, although it does feature a cop-out ending.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b style="">Analysis:<br /></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I don’t know if <i style="">His Prehistoric Past</i> is the very first caveman film ever made, but it’s certainly the earliest on which I could find any information. What’s interesting, therefore, is just how many of the clichés of the genre are already in place right here at the beginning. You see, when it comes to caveman movies there are generally two types. The first consists of those that take place entirely in a distant past, and purport to present a sort of documentary-style “life of the savage” overview of the daily hardships involved in fighting dinosaurs and running for caveman mayor (see: <i style="">One Million BC </i>and its progeny). The other, arguably more popular approach involves a guy or guys penetrating a lost world or being shipwrecked on a mysterious island, only to find that it is home to a race of (generally female and more often than not rather shapely) cave people. The latter approach is certainly less scientifically accurate, but on the other hand it lets guys in U-boats or Tarzan get in fights with pliosaurs, and that’s hardly something to argue with.</span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMMFkc0seS2afAcFJNu-mCONua38kmxC21PbUX1uDQUmuL4zh4SHuN_xAiMbgFPEDsLS671Y6d7NnfZb0FGCHtkagbWg_uDnHfLdn8tuyW3938zAYXfWe5lGtrNgQ6OUdWdUsreAPb_o4/s1600-h/hisprehistoricpast1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMMFkc0seS2afAcFJNu-mCONua38kmxC21PbUX1uDQUmuL4zh4SHuN_xAiMbgFPEDsLS671Y6d7NnfZb0FGCHtkagbWg_uDnHfLdn8tuyW3938zAYXfWe5lGtrNgQ6OUdWdUsreAPb_o4/s400/hisprehistoricpast1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297284683080492786" border="0" /></a></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="">His Prehistoric Past</i> appears to be set way back in caveman times, but it nonetheless follows the Lost World formula pretty squarely, albeit playing it entirely for laughs and satirising the salacious, club-em-and-drag-em-back-to-the-cave mentality captured so well by the Jimmy Castor Bunch's "Troglodyte". The setting is the Solomon Islands, a place “South of 53 – where the man with the biggest club has all the fun”. The inhabitants of the Solomons consist, in finest caveman movie tradition, of a fat old king named Low-Brow who looks alarmingly like Francis Greenslade, a bearded jester named Ku-Ku who spends all his time mincing about like a coked-up chorus girl, a scrawny assistant who does nothing much of anything and a gross of sexy cavewomen who spend their time fawning over the king and looking deeply dissatisfied with their lot. So, right from the outset we have the standard Neolithic sex fantasy – something which has persisted down through the ages and seems to be the principle impetus around most of the genre.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Of course, this being a Chaplin film, the Tramp shows-up to take advantage of the situation, by immediately scheming to take advantage of the women. This translates into things like chatting-up the King’s favourite wife, Sum-Babee, behind his back and then trying to kill Low-Brow by pushing him off of a cliff. If this gives you the impression that the Tramp is kind of a dick, then you’d be right – the king befriends him, invites him into his house, gives him martinis and takes him hunting for turkeys, and all the Tramp can think to do is pretend to shoot him with an arrow and then throw him off his cliff and steal his wife? What a nasty character. And it’s nothing compared to his behaviour after seizing the throne, which consists of using the sexy cave-girls as foot stools and stealing kisses from Sum-Babee.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJBw0c0jJga6njz0GVvHItbi5o214ZsUSsZRdv72l_MTW_4XwpVFiB_4vpQIId-LuM0sXhxsTWMyzvcgfKAKm2Njk1MpLsWsVJSLzI-CKr3C_hLjtYrCSm-nKbRdbNqdHCei1BsAlTGg/s1600-h/hisprehistoricpast2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJBw0c0jJga6njz0GVvHItbi5o214ZsUSsZRdv72l_MTW_4XwpVFiB_4vpQIId-LuM0sXhxsTWMyzvcgfKAKm2Njk1MpLsWsVJSLzI-CKr3C_hLjtYrCSm-nKbRdbNqdHCei1BsAlTGg/s400/hisprehistoricpast2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297285023429380882" border="0" /></a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Of course the Tramp gets his come-uppance when Ku-Ku, who the Tramp had replaced as Low-Brow’s favourite, rescues the king from the canyon into which he’d tumbled, thus allowing the Tramp to get smashed over the head with a rock just as he’s declared how happy he is. This has the peculiar effect of rousing the Tramp from his slumber on a park bench, where he was dreaming until he got hit on the head by a spoil-sport copper.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">As entertainment goes this is mildly entertaining, but regrettably a lot of the humour is pretty prehistoric (ahaha). The comedy mostly comes from the idea of the Tramp, a twentieth century wise-ass, wandering about in caveman times doing things like mixing martinis and lighting a rock against the heel of his boot like a match. Admittedly the image of a pipe-smoking caveman in a bowler hat is a pretty neat one, but it’s not really enough to raise this to classic status. The cheerfully misogynistic tone of the humour is another curious aspect (although sexism is par for the course in caveman flicks), and I’m not really sure what to think of a line like “We catch’em young, treat ‘em rough and tell ‘em nothing”. At the same time the Tramp is such a good-natured arsehole that it’s pretty clear we’re not supposed to be taking these things to heart, and it mostly seems to play into the “put-upon woman” style of comedy that was ever so popular back then. It's just more of that "Oh we we're such uncivilised savages" comedy, where it's funny because we haven't changed all that much - something roughly analogous to that TV show where the chimpanzees starred in a soap opera.<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_THNqf0RArQBsxUGdtlnJQgwm8UHsHEU4EzF-mkqugLcOKujimqFouRFY9-i7tgWn4nzLXRqkRn1eoc7elt5KHAXYR5P_wK7zCxRRfLYsR6sP7Q1OO99iz_0MLtcBQSwf3VqkMN24M68/s1600-h/hisprehistoricpast3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_THNqf0RArQBsxUGdtlnJQgwm8UHsHEU4EzF-mkqugLcOKujimqFouRFY9-i7tgWn4nzLXRqkRn1eoc7elt5KHAXYR5P_wK7zCxRRfLYsR6sP7Q1OO99iz_0MLtcBQSwf3VqkMN24M68/s400/hisprehistoricpast3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297285320184556434" border="0" /></a></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Unfortunately while there’s good stuff here, most of the film is just blandly diverting in a sort of flat, vaudeville style. The Tramp is constantly mugging and chattering, and it actually really made me wish that the film could have been shot in sound. As it is, Chaplin wagging his caveman furs like a tail as he chats to Sum-Babee may be a pretty cute concept, but it’s not exactly riotous comedy. Similarly, Mack Swain’s mugging may be truly awe-inspiring, but that doesn’t really make it all that funny. And what am I to make of an exchange like </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">King: In the Solomon Islands, every man has one thousand wives</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The Tramp: I should have brought a bigger club!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Ah yes, dick jokes. The common bond between all peoples across both space <i style="">and </i>time.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b style="">I’m No Scientist, But...<br /></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Okay so the idea of critiquing the science in a movie like this is ridiculous. I’m not even sure when the damned thing is supposed to be taking place! I do have a lot of questions about how the society in the Solomon Islands sustains itself, though – namely, despite the king's "one thousand women" line, there are about half a dozen sexy cave women, one old guy, one fat guy, and one guy who is just a little too “Rip Taylor”. There are no children present, and no other men, and no old women either. The only possible explanations for how such a society could arise are either 1) some kind of deadly plague that took all but the most stereotypical of the inhabitants or 2) the king kidnapped a bunch of ladies and then took-off to a new island along with a couple of guys who could never possibly present him with any real competition.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">On the other hand, while the cave girls here are of a sexy persuasion it's the sort of sexiness that you might actually encounter in an ordinary woman in your supermarket or place of work. In addition to this, all the cave-girls have awful hair and dress in these lumpen, unappealing fur togas that actually look like something a chilly primitive might wear. This unexpected touch of realism puts <span style="font-style: italic;">His Prehistoric History</span> ahead of practically every single other caveman film ever made.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Other questions which arise include the ever-popular trend of having the cavemen all live in a desert for some reason or other. Why is this always the case (aside from the fact that it’s cheap to shoot footage in Bronson Canyon)? The prehistoric era was just as heavily foliated as our current times, if not more so, and in general people don’t like to live in noxious wastes unless they have to. I suppose this might be a misunderstanding arising from the fact that fossils are often found in what are now barren deserts, but it’s more likely just laziness on the film makers’ parts. In any event, the habitat of the Solomon Islands, rather than sporting lush forests full of cuscuses and wild pigs, seems to consist entirely of one tree with a turkey in it. And given the lack of skill the natives display in catching that turkey, I’m surprised they were alive at all when the Tramp washed-up, let alone that they didn’t conk him on the head and devour him.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Say, that’s an idea – maybe the reason there are so few people is because the king and his brides have been eating them all. After all, Low-Brow did say that <i style="">everything</i> was permitted.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p>Overall:</o:p></span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFXs_Lq49Ugc-ljUlxIkoxKZT2xZ7wtVkiqI8rpdbWKagnkaIVtm6GkMF7JRXj7Uniwqs2cuhdXAVBd9e21i26Dlqs7XROudTl6EfLxAM-IKbTpBeA9FJmxa7HkG4ANZSV7n6iTQi_Zr4/s1600-h/2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 140px; height: 65px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFXs_Lq49Ugc-ljUlxIkoxKZT2xZ7wtVkiqI8rpdbWKagnkaIVtm6GkMF7JRXj7Uniwqs2cuhdXAVBd9e21i26Dlqs7XROudTl6EfLxAM-IKbTpBeA9FJmxa7HkG4ANZSV7n6iTQi_Zr4/s200/2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297272615840106706" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Two McClures out of five.</span><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.archive.org/details/CC_1914_12_07_HisPrehistoricpast">Download His Prehistoric Past from archive.org</a><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8990388893147125717.post-39302777310245742632009-01-30T03:28:00.001+11:002009-01-31T16:11:40.702+11:00Mission Statement.<span style="font-weight: bold;">What Are You Doing Here?</span><br /><br />The plan is to post regular reviews of various caveman films produced throughout the ages, thus producing a systematic and comprehensive overview of the genre <span style="font-style: italic;">in toto</span>. I imagine that the reviews will average once per week in regularity, but given that I am a notoriously inconstant character it is more than probable that I will increase or decrease the frequency of my posting with a complete disregard for the interests of any readers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How Exactly Do You Define A "Caveman Film"? It Seems A Bit Vague.</span><br /><br />Well it is actually a bit vague, yes. There are a number of problems with this sort of list, the most obvious of which is 1) what exactly counts as a caveman? and 2) where and when must they be located and with what intensity for the film to qualify as a "caveman picture"? Well as to the first, I have decided that I probably <span style="font-style: italic;">won't </span>count Italian cannibal films, or films about modern day "primitives" in general. Even though I suppose that the lifestyle of a bunch of modern tribesmen probably isn't all that different from what a caveman would have gone through, it's quite clearly not the sort of thing that people think of when they hear the word "caveman". Caveman implies a little distance from reality, I feel. It also implies a cave. This is also why I have decided that I probably <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> count movies about lost colonies of primitive Amazons, as they have absolutely no bearing in real life (if located outside of ancient Eastern Europe, anyway) and it allows me to review <span style="font-style: italic;">Fantasy Mission Force</span> at some point. The main proviso is that the cavefolk preferably not use any technology more advanced than a bow and arrow.<br /><br />As to the second point - both the where and the when and the just how much - I suppose that, as long as they look scraggy enough, and aren't just a throw-away gag, it's a free for all in terms of time and place. This encompasses "caveman of the future" post-historical films such as <span style="font-style: italic;">Teenage Caveman</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Yor, The Hunter from the Future</span>, as well as more traditional prehistoric fare like <span style="font-style: italic;">Clan of the Cave Bear</span>. Again, this is just an excuse for me to be allowed to review <span style="font-style: italic;">Fantasy Mission Force</span> at some point, but I don't really care. Does this mean that <span style="font-style: italic;">Planet of the Apes </span>can somehow be interpreted to count as a caveman film? What about <span style="font-style: italic;">2001: A Space Odyssey</span>? To be honest, we'll just have to wait and see.<br /><br />The can of worms that is lost world pictures is something that will probably remain unopened, since thankfully most of such films seem to include at least one monkey man in the proceedings. I suppose, thinking about it, that caveman-free films set in a prehistoric era might count, but anyone expecting reviews of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Valley of Gwangi</span> is going to be sorely disappointed by the end of this thing.<br /><br />Ultimately, I'm just gonna wing it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why Caveman Films?</span><br /><br />One day, many years ago, when men were men and women were something somewhat more than women, I stayed home from school for no good reason at all and caught <span style="font-style: italic;">One Million Years BC</span> on television. I was hooked! The Grandure! The Spectacle! This, my friends, was the greatest film since <span style="font-style: italic;">Dune</span>!<br /><br />Or maybe not.<br /><br />In any case, some people have the capacity for enjoyment of a thing wired into them. Myself, I didn't really grow out of dinosaurs until I was almost twenty. It was a mania, although not of the type that ever led me to be dumb enough as to think that I could find being a paleontologist interesting. Now, of course, I can barely spell "parasaurolophus", but during my late teens I went through a period of devouring everything from <span style="font-style: italic;">Walking with Beasts</span> to Edgar Rice Burrough's extremely silly but highly entertaining <span style="font-style: italic;">Caspak</span> series, and it's left me with an enduring fondness for prehistoric shenanigans.<br /><br />It's that "silly but highly entertaining" quality, actually, that really sums-up why I'm doing this. I'm long past the stage of considering <span style="font-style: italic;">Battlefield Earth</span> high art, and I'll freely admit that I've yet to see a caveman film I'd describe as better than fair (N.B. I'm also yet to see <span style="font-style: italic;">Quest for Fire</span>), but at the same time there's a great source of fascination to be had for me in the idea of the movie caveman. Yes, in real life prehistoric man spent his life wandering around on tundras spearing elks, but that is boring. Give me action! Give me excitement! Give me a giant stop-motion turtle menacing John Richardson! I may not have seen all caveman films, or even particularly many, but damn it if I don't have a half-hearted desire to rectify that.<br /><br />And so it is with a spring in my step that I wander out across the rippling veldt of filmdom, eager to see where my feet (and wallet) take me in my quest to see as many caveman films as I can before I lose interest and start writing Lovecraft pastiches again.Rod McBanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13540475555064426483noreply@blogger.com3