march9hare Review of The Beast of Hollow Mountain

The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956)

hay-ulp, hay-ulp. Ay mawn-ster is lewse.

[6 November 2004]

!! WARNING - MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!! An American cowboy in Mexico battles a rubber dinosaur in a film every bit as bad as it sounds, with stop-motion animation so awful it would make Gumby cringe. To give you some idea of just how bad this movie really is, we first saw it on free TV many, many years ago on the "Zacharly" show, and even the normally unflappable Zach had a hard time keeping a straight face. About the only good things that we can say about this cowpie, aside from its relatively short running time, is that Guy Madison looks and sounds very professional, the female lead rides her horse well, the actors manage to hit their marks, and there are lots of location shots (ie; outdoors. Somewhere.) That's it. We mean it. In the end, the creature expires in a pool of quicksand almost as quickly as the careers of most of the other actors do. To the best of our knowledge, this five-alarm stinker is not currently available on any format, which is probably just as well. This film, like "Dinosaurus" (which see review), are best left for very young children and/or very uncritical older viewers. For anyone else: feh.