Tyrant Media Guide: The Giant Behemoth -- Obie’s Last Screen Monster Now on DVD
(An Analysis & Review: Part Three, Conclusion)

Per usual, Warner lists generic running times on their DVD packaging -- Behemoth’s lists a '90 minutes’ running time, but the film actually clocks in a few seconds over 79 minutes, as it should. The DVD offers an excellent transfer of the best print of this film I've ever seen: crisp, clean, sharp and vivid throughout; only the removal (“cleaning”) of darkening filters essential to ‘day-for-night’ shots is regrettable. That said, the inadequacies of the film itself are thus brought into sharp focus: the occasional scratches and grain are flaws of the original negative, not a worn print, and the inconsistencies of grain and image texture between the live-action location filming and various special effects sequences are more evident. Some of these crop up amid stop-motion animation on miniature sets, some amid live-action filming of miniatures dominated by water (which, inevitably, ‘beads’ and betrays the tiny scale of the puppet and props).

Left: Warner's 1997 vhs home video release of Behemoth; to be avoided!

Unlike WB's vhs release of this title over a decade ago, the DVD presentation is complete. As I wrote in Video Watchdog #40 a full decade ago (“The Giant Omission,” pp. 6-7, with additional material by editor and amigo Tim Lucas), the WB video offered a sharp but inexplicably abbreviated print, missing the infamous ferry boat attack scene -- the first monster attack of the film! This sequence is notorious among stop-motion fans for the embarrassing crudity of the live-action puppet effects, which arguably (along with the redundant US title) justifies the otherwise inappropriate relegation of this film to “cult camp” status. The puppet head also serves as the Behemoth’s first and final appearance (in a dry-ice bubbling water tank obviously not part of the rugged live-action seascape the insert shots interrupt), as well as a couple of other insert shots, never looking anything but risible.

For the record (and to assure the comment posters on my previous blog post know I was fully informed as to who was responsible for the effects in this scene), here’s the description of the previously missing footage, as it was published in VW #40:

The trouble begins shortly after the sequence in which paleontologist Dr. Sampson (Jack MacGowran) sights the behemoth from a helicopter, which is irradiated by its passage beneath him and explodes -- into nothing. At that moment, his copter disappears from a radar screen being audited by the film’s heroes, Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) and Prof. Bickford (André Morell), and the Warner tape -- instead of cutting to the next scene -- jumps ahead, to a London commissioner advising an associate to “Keep in touch with me by telephone.” He then walks to an adjoining room where Karnes and Bickford are waiting with military personnel for further instructions.

Originally appearing between these two scenes was a 9m sequence... The missing footage is as follows:

* Conclusion of the scene with Karnes and Bickford at the radar station, including brief dialogue concerning Sampson’s disappearance from their tracking screen.

* Stock footage montage detailing the emergency mobilization of military forces by sea and air.

Cue They Might Be Giants: "Put your hand inside the puppet head, put your hand inside the puppet head..."

* Montage dissolves to staged shot of London citizens boarding a ferry. Once the ferry is in motion, the monster attacks. In contrast to the fine work done later in the film by O’Brien, animation assistant Pete Peterson (not “Petterson” as listed in the credits) and miniature designer Phil Kellison, the special effects in this sequence are laughable. Although the monster’s head used in this sequence was built by O’Brien, it was damaged by someone working on this sequence, which is credited to Jack Rabin, Irving Block and Louis DeWitt; as a result, the monster here is nothing more than an immobile head puppet, crudely operated by a stick from beneath the water. Each time the ferry is rocked, or a car falls off into the Thames, enormous beads of water fly up, betraying the true scale of the miniature props.

Cover, Video Watchdog #40, 1997; this issue also features my long review (pp. 55-61) of Fox's laserdisc release of the Ray Harryhausen/Hammer Films classic One Million Years B.C., the only complete edition of the film available in the US. When rereleased the film on DVD, Fox stupidly returned to the cut US theatrical version, missing nine minutes -- including some top-notch Harryhausen animation footage!

* As the ferry sequence ends with a shot of a male victim floating in the river, his radiation-burned face turning slowly toward the camera, we dissolve to a montage of newspaper headlines ("MONSTER ATTACKS LONDON!") and emergency radio broadcasts, accompanied by reaction shots of concerned citizens in the streets and, in one case, in their homes. An old woman listening to her radio cries, “Oh, fiddlesticks!” This montage concludes with a reporter on location, describing into a handheld microphone the military meeting about to occur.

* We cut to a brief sequence introducing the commissioner, who orders the closing of the area around the Thames where the monster wreaked havoc.

* A second montage of mobilized military might. Trucks pull out, infantrymen pour out of trucks, go to doors and round up citizens, evacuating the city. This is followed by shots of the empty London streets, which fade to black. Fade in on the commissioner, saying, “Keep in touch with me by telephone.”

Oddly enough, this ferry attack had comprised most of the film’s 8mm version from Ken Films back in the ‘60s -- both the 50 foot and the longer (approximately 12-15 minutes) 200-foot Ken Films 'cut downs' were constituted primarily of the ferry boat sequence; since I owned that puppy, and it remained until my college years the only portion of the film I’d ever seen, the sequence is burned into my memory and carries all kinds of nostalgic baggage it shouldn’t.

The Black Scorpion insert shot puppet, used for closeups -- and always drooling! The use of insert puppets for monster movies was typical, and not only in stop-motion animation monster flicks; note the hokey spider puppet cut into the otherwise live-action Clifford Stine effects sequences in Jack Arnold's Tarantula (1955)

The ferry boat mayhem was always a clumsy fit with the film’s Pete Peterson and Willis O'Brien stop-motion animation, and must have provoked hilarity in theaters back in ‘58. The use of live-action model shots integrated with stop-motion effects was a familiar tactic, initiated by Obie himself in The Lost World (1925) and, to great effect, in King Kong (1933); in O’Brien-related ‘50s films alone, consider the rod-puppet inserts of the Brontosaurus [sic], Allosaurus, Triceratops and Ceratosaurs in The Animal World, the phony-baloney Allosaurus fake hand and crumpled ‘dino boots’ inserts in The Beast of Hollow Mountain, or the anatomically ludicrous ‘drooling scorpion’ closeups of The Black Scorpion. Even the best live-action puppetry usually meshes poorly with stop-motion puppetry; Behemoth’s broken rod puppet fails to convince even momentarily, lacking any animation whatsoever and incompatible with the animated Paleosaurus puppet’s design -- they look nothing alike!

The ill-used Paleosaurus head Obie constructed for Behemoth, as it appears in the film twice: as the first head shot we see via Karnes's binoculars, and as the last shot we see of the Behemoth's death throes, in placid water bubbling with dry ice 'fog.' The patently fake shot is rendered more risible by the shots of choppy ocean waves framing both inserts -- a typical Block/DeWitt/Rabin effects gaffe (photo source: www.animalattack)

Behemoth’s special effects are credited on-screen to Irving Block, Louis DeWitt and Jack Rabin as well as O’Brien and Peterson; Block, Rabin and DeWitt likely handled the matte paintings (including shots of ‘cooked’ soldier victims) and optical effects (e.g., the animated Paleosaurus outline seen swimming in the ocean from above, the glowing radiation ‘halo’ effect superimposed over the Behemoth). Despite the low regard many fans hold for their work, Block, Rabin and DeWitt were expert in their field -- note Muren's commentary track anecdote -- but they were also businessmen. When low-budget producers contracted them to create effects for very little money, the producers got what they paid for and B,R &DW made their dime, too. This meant that a lot of cheap films with the team's credit byline sported tacky, obvious special effects, but Block, Rabin and DeWitt worked on a lot of films and TV series for over two decades, and even produced their own features, like the very unusual Kronos (1957); they were clearly capable of solid work, when time and budget allowed, which was almost never. They were the Hanna-Barbera of '50s and early '60s special effects: economical, efficient, but uninspired corner-cutting craftsmen filling screen time as and when contracted, and doing so for as little money as possible -- to ensure they and their employers made money. The team were subcontracting any and all stop-motion animation needed on their projects during the ‘50s (e.g., Monster from Green Hell, 1958), or landing sole special effects credit on stop-motion monster pix for which they only provided physical live-action and optical effects while others executed the animation (e.g., The Beast of Hollow Mountain, 1956). The clumsy friction between the live-action and animation effects diminishes the whole of Behemoth. O’Brien and Peterson had given their all as a team to Edward Ludwig’s The Black Scorpion (1957), the last great non-Harryhausen stop-motion monster movie of the ‘50s; on Behemoth, they clearly had less to work with in terms of time and money, reflected in the fact the Paleosaurus commands far less screen time than Black Scorpion dedicated to its lively arachnids.

O'Brien and Peterson's formidable stop-motion arachnid star of The Black Scorpion (1957), Obie's last great monster movie in terms of special effects -- not to be missed!

The Paleosaurus model was also less forgiving or durable than the scorpions, spider and ‘screaming worm’ of Black Scorpion. Vertebrate forms are inherently more problematic to animate than invertebrate forms, and Peterson’s creature designs and models never had the lifelike versimilitude, personality or proportional grace of either those constructed by Marcel Delgado (Obie’s modelmaker of choice from 1925 to 1949) or Harryhausen. Consider his test footage for the never-produced The Las Vegas Monster, a reptilian baboon mutation with two prehensile ‘clawed’ nasal protrusions, like a double-trunked mastodon: though unusual, the creature isn’t convincing, the dual ‘trunks’ look odd rather than threatening or viable, and the anatomy of the whole is oddly proportioned. In this, Peterson’s work anticipates the grotesque anatomical distortions inherent in some of the Projects Unlimited animation models of the 1960s, like those featured in Dinosaurus! (1960, sporting animation models by Delgado) and Jack the Giant Killer (1962) -- another film quite consciously patterned after a successful Harryhausen hit (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad), its monsters crudely aping the far more elegant and believable creatures Harryhausen had created. This isn’t meant as a pejorative, mind you, as those critters have their own charm, especially for those of us who grew up with Jack the Giant Killer, and the quality of Jim Danforth’s animation (always superior to that of his Projects Unlimited collaborators Gene Warren and Wah Chang) enhances their presence.

The climactic Behemoth attack on London

That said, the Paleosaurus’s adaptation of the Rhedosaurus body type for Behemoth is quite good, and the model looks terrific in most of the ‘land’ shots, offering a nifty streamlining of generic saurian characteristics. The handful of animation shots in Behemoth are for the most part more imaginatively staged than most reviews acknowledge, with deft illusory depth-of-field and use of lighting throughout, save for the underwater shots of the Paleosaurus. However, the model’s limitations are self-evident to even a casual viewer; it just looks wrong. The swimming Behemoth model poses and brace work look stiff and unconvincing (though nothing is as stiff as that damned puppet head!); it clearly was not designed for this activity. The act of animating the model took quite a toll: note in the repeated shots of the Paleosaurus crushing cars/the car (Chapter 17, “Ashore in London,” 1:01:30-1:02:40), in the second repetition of the action and fullest view of the monster’s stride, you can clearly see the model ripping apart at the heel of the rear foot (at precisely 1:02:20)!

Muren and Tippett note in their commentary that the wear, tear and repairs to the model are evident to the trained eye, and the Behemoth offers none of the distinctive touches of personality Harryhausen (or O’Brien, in his heyday) spiced his creations with. The reptilian texture of the Paleosaurus’s skin enhances the closeups, but the creature looks most alive in the far and medium shots of its metropolitan attack footage and its encounter with the power lines. Even at its best, it’s a pale shadow of what O’Brien and Peterson were capable of -- and was indeed the last of O’Brien and Peterson’s team efforts.

The relative speed and economy which Ray Harryhausen had introduced to the industry in 1953 had irrevocably changed how such films were made, and Obie and Peterson were floundering in what was now a young man’s game. Harryhausen could accomplish more working alone than Obie and Peterson could as a team, and by 1958 Obie’s protégé had left the giant-monster-trashing-cities subgenre behind to elevate his venues to full-color fantasy features, breaking boxoffice records in the bargain with The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Harryhausen's efforts were contemporary, innovative and novel in ways no other stop-motion animation features had been since Obie's Kong -- the film that had inspired Harryhausen on his path in life. Sans any relationship or sponsorship similar to the shared proprietorship and partnership Harryhausen now enjoyed with producer Charles H. Schneer, Obie was beached, high and dry.

Less than a year after The Giant Behemoth opened theatrically, producer Irwin Allen -- who had hired O’Brien and his former protégé Harryhausen to create the stop-motion and insert live-action puppet dinosaurs for the opening passage of the documentary The Animal World (1955) -- engaged O’Brien to work on Obie’s long dreamed-of color widescreen remake of his debut effects feature, The Lost World (1925). O’Brien was utterly dejected to find himself relegated to being an ‘effects technician’ on Allen’s embarrassing fusion of miniatures and rubber-customized live lizard effects.

Cover art for the Warner Bros. DVD release of The Black Scorpion: don't let the bogus ad art steer you away, this is an essential companion to The Giant Behemoth, and Obie's last great effort

In the decade after Mighty Joe Young (where Peterson first worked with Obie, as 2nd animator), O’Brien and Peterson had, individually and together, desperately sought venues and/or funding for their own pet projects, never again tasting the resources they’d had at their disposal on Joe. Peterson completed test animation footage for at least two projects which turned up in the Los Angeles trunk Dennis Muren mentions in Behemoth’s commentary track, and that footage can be seen on the Warner Bros. DVD release of The Black Scorpion (“never-before-seen test footage of The Las Vegas Monster and Beetlemen,” running a little over four minutes); note the same DVD offers the only legal release of Harryhausen and O’Brien’s complete 10-minute animated The Animal World dinosaur sequence, making it an essential addition to any Obie and/or Harryhausen fan’s collection (note: the Animal World footage is also excerpted as the troglodyte's 'dream/memory' in Freddie Francis and Herman Cohen's truly abysmal Trog, 1970, featured in the Volume 2 'brick' of Warners' Cult Camp Classics, "Women in Peril," a set worth picking up for John Cromwell's excellent women-in-prison classic Caged!, 1949).

Shunned by the studios, freelancing for indy producers and special effects subcontractors seeking more for less, and unable to get any of their own projects off the ground, Obie and Peterson found themselves unwillingly put out to pasture. O’Brien’s only subsequent animation to reach theatrical audiences after Behemoth was a fleeting, near-invisible bit he completed for the climactic ladder sequence of Stanley Kramer’s Cinerama comedy epic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963; note Obie had worked on scenic effects for the original Cinerama opus, Merian C. Cooper's This is Cinerama, 1952). Obie never saw his contribution on the big screen; he had quietly passed away in his home the year before. Among his unfilmed pet projects, two eventually reached fruition: his King Kong vs. Frankenstein proposal was hustled by producer John Beck to Toho Studios and transmuted into the 1962 international blockbuster King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963), and Obie’s beloved cowboys vs. dinosaurs Gwangi -- which had almost reached the screen in the late ‘40s -- was realized by the Harryhausen/Schneer team as The Valley of Gwangi (1969). Harryhausen did justice to his much-loved mentor's pet project, but due to strict Writer's Guild rules, Obie was never credited.

Obie and Peterson's subterranean realm of The Black Scorpion: the most terrifying and evocative stop-motion setpiece of the 1950s

Stop-motion animation fans are an odd breed, savoring careers sometimes measured in mere minutes, even seconds, of screen time -- tracking, tracing and obsessively focusing on years and entire lives poured into fleeting cinematic moments.

Obie was among the true pioneers, and there are riches to be found in a film like Behemoth. The grandfather of all special effects films was revisiting one of his crowning achievements: after all, most of Behemoth after the one hour mark is a revamp of Obie’s glorious Brontosaurus-trashing-London climax of The Lost World (1925). Agreed, it was a pale shadow (though not as pale as Allen's 1960 Lost World remake), but it provided -- provides -- a glimpse of, a taste of, the imagined movie Obie unreeled in his fertile imagination, the only remnant we can see of what might have been. Whatever the conditions, however dire the paucity of money, time and empathy from his contractors and producers, Behemoth is Obie’s final movie monster, and he and Peterson put it through its paces with all the skill they could muster.

Obie fans and old-timers eager to revisit an era long past will find much to enjoy in The Giant Behemoth’s DVD release. Younger viewers should consider, too, that films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Black Scorpion and The Giant Behemoth were precursors to today’s high-octane CGI-fueled summer blockbusters like Transformers. The CGI feasts of the 21st Century simply wouldn’t exist without the groundwork laid by creators like O’Brien, Harryhausen and Peterson; Phil Tippett’s Imperial Walkers for The Empire Strikes Back and ED-209 for Robocop, and the late David Allen’s fine stop-motion animation work for Stuart Gordon’s Robojox are the bridges between 1957’s Black Scorpion and 2007’s Transformers.

It’s true that Behemoth is a lesser vehicle, but it’s still a treat to savor the last animation the creator of Kong had a hand in, and a pleasure to reassess the vehicle that hosted that final fusion of art, commerce and illusion on its own terms. It’s taken almost half-a-century for Behemoth to resurface complete, in a sharp transfer, sans commercials or TV broadcast cuts. However ungainly its association with Cult Camp Classics, let’s count our blessings.

"Behold . . . the behemoth!"

______________________

All images are copyright their proprietors.

For more on The Secret of the Loch, see http://www.missinglinkclassichorror.co.uk/loch.htm
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/genres/fiction/filmography/023.html

Eugène Lourié’s autobiography My Work in Films (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich., New York., 1985) is readily available for $1-$7.50 (a steal!) from

abebooks.com (click this link)

Video Watchdog #40 is still available

here at Tim and Donna Lucas's Video Watchdog site -- click this link!

($10 US, $13 outside of the US)

Image sources include:
Biblical behemoth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziz
http://www.animalattack.info/PmWiki/BehemothTheSeaMonster
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/blackscorpion/
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/genres/fiction/filmography/023.html
http://www.fantascienza.com/cinema/drago-degli-abissi/index.html
http://www.monstrula.de/filme/ungeheuervonlochness/ungeheuervonlochnessplakate.htm
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

Tyrant Media Guide: The Giant Behemoth --
Obie’s Last Screen Monster Now on DVD

(An Analysis & Review: Part One)

[In the Tyrant year or two, I enjoyed writing and publishing the following kind of in-depth review or article on dinosaur films that few other publishers would offer a venue for; only Mike Dobbs at Animato and, more often, Tim and Donna Lucas at Video Watchdog would indulge such lunacy. Here's a two-parter, running today and tomorrow; Tyrant and dino movie fans, enjoy; DVD collectors, check it out. Enjoy!]

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: The Giant Behemoth (1959; UK title: Behemoth, The Sea Monster) is one of those titles -- like Manos, Hands of Fate (manos, natch, being Spanish for ‘hands’) -- one simply resigns oneself to. Yes, it means “The Giant Giant” (see Bob ‘Hemlock Man’ Smith’s comment to my first Giant Behemoth post, last Wednesday; duly noted, Bob). Given the presence of Behemoth in both the UK title (arguably the original title, since this is a British film, though it was initially released in the US) and better-known US title, I’ll just call the film Behemoth for the purposes of this essay. Cool?

Behemoth has been slighted for generations, which is too bad. To my mind, it’s a significant work and quite enjoyable in and of itself. It’s widely acknowledged -- and mourned -- as the last monster movie from the father of King Kong, Willis O’Brien. “How the mighty had fallen” is the consensus view, an unfair assessment of the film, O’Brien’s career, and his fellow (and the film’s chief) animator Pete Peterson, whose work here and in the equally impoverished Warner Bros. animated-monster opus The Black Scorpion (1957) remains extraordinary, given the conditions O’Brien and Peterson labored within. [Tyrant fans, note: I wrote at length about another O’Brien-related film from this period, The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956), in Tyrant #3; note a recent issue of Filmfax offered a remarkable reconsideration of that film, O’Brien’s role in its creation and its producer Edward Nassour, via an interview with Nassour’s son; I’ll not get into that film here.]

Biblical Behemoth: "Behemoth and Leviathan," by William Blake

This dismissal also short shrifts Behemoth’s peculiar stature in its genre. "And the Lord said, 'Behold . . . the behemoth!'" the pre-credits voiceover thunders. Biblical references in ‘50s giant monster movies had been de rigueur since Edmund Gwenn’s penultimate line of dialogue at the end of Them! (1954): “We may be witnessing a Biblical prophecy come true: the beasts will reign over the earth...”

Behemoth certainly invited a more direct Biblical context via its title; the Behemoth remains (with Leviathan and the whale that swallowed Job, directly referenced by the preacher reading over the grave of the Behemoth’s first Cornwall victim) among the most-cited of Old Testament monsters, sans the iconic presence and personality of Lucifer.

Nevertheless, Behemoth soft-pedaled the calculated Biblical resonance of its own titular monster (the wholly imaginary “Paleosaurus”), sublimating that into its first human victim’s dying words; Behemoth had bigger fish to fry, folding the Atomic Age dread of every other giant monster movie of the decade into the environmental consciousness and fears of the next.

Biblical Behemoth: illustration from Ungeheuer Leviathan, Behemoth und Ziz Bibelillustration, Ulm, 1238 (Picture taken from German Wikipedia, uploaded on 8. Okt 2005, 12:53 by de:Dr. Meierhofer).

For more on the Biblical behemoth, click this link.

Rachel Carson, not the Old Testament, defines Behemoth’s narrative catalyst and thrust. In Danse Macabre, Stephen King cites Del Tenney's The Horror of Party Beach (1964) as the nominal spearhead of the ecological/environmental horror film, but Behemoth was there five years earlier, explicitly citing the deadly conjugation of food chains and H-bomb tests: the lethal condensation of radioactive pollution (from nuclear bomb tests) in ever-larger oceanic life forms was the new harbinger of doom. Destructive as the Behemoth was via traditional ‘big beast’ mode, crushing buildings and stomping vehicles, its scorching radioactive ‘aura’ is far more toxic, killing every living thing in its wake. Slow Death, here we come!

Behemoth is now on DVD from Warner Home Video, available individually or as one of three titles in Volume 1 of the 4-boxed-set Cult Camp Classics treasure chest just released last Tuesday. Fans of giant monster, dinosaur and Willis O’Brien (aka ‘Obie’) movies have long awaited this film arriving on DVD, having to satisfy themselves with bootlegs to offset the highly unsatisfactory Warner Home Video vhs release of 1997. That version was inexplicably incomplete, shorn of a full 9 minutes (more on that tomorrow); this has been at last rectified with Warner’s DVD edition.

Behemoth also completes the DVD release of the seminal ‘50s ‘dinosaur trilogy’ of director Eugène Lourié, which began with the influential Ray Harryhausen effects classic The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and culminated in Lourié’s melancholy, oddly moving ode to motherhood Gorgo (1961); only Lourié’s non-saurian sf gem The Colossus of New York (Paramount, 1958) has yet to see light of day in any legal home entertainment format. These are all reasons enough for me to celebrate Behemoth’s DVD release.

The entire Cult Camp Classics lineup is of interest, each boasting a worthy highlight or two. The companion films in this first volume ‘brick,’ Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Queen of Outer Space (both 1958) -- all three titles were originally Allied Artists productions and releases -- are venerable chestnuts beloved by cheapjack sf film fans and camp-lovers alike, alone justifying the unwieldy and not entirely apropos Cult Camp Classics moniker (few of the films in the sets are cult, camp or classic).

How ‘cheapjack’ were these films in their day? According to no less an authority than Arthur Knight (one of America’s premiere critics and film historians of the ‘50s and ‘60s, author of The Liveliest Art), “producers... calculate that the margin of safety -- the production cost for a film on which profit is assured -- has dropped to around $150,000. For this kind of money it was possible to turn out the innumerable rock’n’roll musicals, teen-age delinquent melodramas and gimmicked science-fiction thrillers that crowded the American screen in 1957-58, films as elementary in their themes as in their production techniques” (Knight, “The American Scene, 1957-8”, International Film Annual No. 2, edited by William Whitebait, aka G.W. Stonier; John Calder Ltd, London/Doubleday, New York, 1958; pp. 12). Knight cites “a modestly budgeted picture” from the major studios then “costing between $250,000 and $750,000 to produce,” and “most problematical” at that; thus, the three films in the Cult Camp Classics volume under consideration here were clearly in the $150,000 or less budgetary range. Keep that in mind as you read on.

Attack of the 50-Foot Woman was among the cheapest of the pack, and as such has, like Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outer Space, earned its stature as one of the worst and most entertaining of all 1950s sf films via decades of late-night TV broadcasts and home video exposure. Like Plan Nine, it has also resisted all attempts to profiteer from its uncanny chemistry, including Christopher Guest’s made-for-cable remake and Fantagraphic’s planned Monster Comics adaptation (an aside: when I questioned the wisdom of such a venture in a phone conversation with Monster Comics editor Gary Groth lo those many years ago, noting what made the film entertaining simply could not be translated to a comicbook, he replied, “Well, Dave Stevens will do the cover” -- the sole opportunistic reason for the enterprise; thankfully, I don’t think the comic ever saw light of day, and Fantagraphics’ disdain for and misunderstanding of the genre as a whole soon brought the Monster Comics line to its demise). Queen of Outer Space is the ideal co-feature, and if possible even an odder duck. It’s possibly the first calculated studio ‘camp’ creation, though that conceit flew well under 1958 pop radar: Queen was sold as just another sf opus, milking all the box office it could from the merger of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s inexplicable celebrity and the waning popularity of space travel sf movies. It would take the even stranger fusion of Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes on Camp,” producer William Dozier, screenwriter Sterling Silliphant, 20th Century Fox and Batman to thrust camp into mainstream acceptance and marketability a few years later.

Unlike the black-and-white 50-Foot Woman, Queen remains a colorful romp with the added Three Stooges association of director Ed Bernds (having directed their early shorts and key 1960s features) to spice the brew for diehard fans; both movies are great fun on their own terms, and they’ve never looked better. These two discs also benefit from commentary tracks hosted by the venerable Tom Weaver, interviewer extraordinaire, whose knowledge, insights and ability to keep his subjects on task and fully engaged have made many a DVD purchase worthwhile. Weaver and ‘50s sf femme fatale Yvette Vickers spice Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, and the Queen of Outer Space herself Laurie Mitchell sweetens that DVD. Tom is an always-generous co-host, gracing his conversations with readings from the original scripts of deleted sequences (something Laurie Mitchell indulges with pleasure), trivia and tidbits about the casts and crews, and even the reappearance of key props (e.g., the rocketship and giant spider in Queen) in other films. Weaver’s generosity in Queen manifests unexpectedly in his presenting Mitchell with a replica of the Queen mask, a gesture Mitchell is audibly touched by, enhancing the experience for the listener, too, with its warmth. For the commentary tracks alone, I cannot recommend these two discs highly enough to fans of either film or ‘50s sf in general, but I must emphasize the image and audio transfers are stellar, transcending any and all prior releases in any format.


But my first love for stop-motion animation in general, and the work of King Kong animator Willis O’Brien in particular, is what made this boxed set an essential purchase. The Behemoth -- by any traditional critical standard, easily the ‘best’ (but not the most entertaining) film in the set, which may sound like damning with faint praise -- finally receives a proper home theater release via this DVD. Behemoth has been restored to its full running time and format, with a commentary track by stop-motion/CGI and all-around special effects gurus Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett.

Alas, Muren and Tippett, though personable, don’t come prepared as Weaver always does. The Behemoth’s commentary is what it is, two now-seasoned veteran special effects professionals chatting over a film neither evidences much knowledge or affection for, though Muren is clearly familiar with the film (he anticipates the repetition of the car-crushing shot, and the extension of the few animation sequences via optical blowups and such). As a lifelong fan (I saw Equinox -- twice! -- at my local drive-in) of both Muren and Tippett and their work (I had the rare pleasure of interviewing Tippett for my good friend G. Michael Dobbs’s tenure as editor of Animato, in conjunction with the release of Dragonheart), I found much to enjoy in the commentary, including the rapport these longtime friends enjoy, but couldn’t help wincing at times. Factual errors and constant oversight characterizes the conversation, offset by the preparation Muren did see to, his reading of the relevant passages in Eugène Lourié’s autobiography My Work in Films (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York., 1985) provide fleeting insights; we could have used more of this! Both men recall working early in their careers with veteran animator (and recently deceased) Phil Kellison, who indeed was part of Willis O’Brien and Pete Peterson’s team on Behemoth. As both Muren and Tippett note, Obie’s team constructed some very inventive shots incorporating effective camera movements, and Kellison’s miniature constructions enhance these setpieces with great economy and visual skill.

Commentary highlights include Muren’s anecdotes about an expedition with Jim Danforth into a backyard in Los Angeles, where a trunk filled with animator Pete Peterson’s memorabilia malingered -- including the Behemoth model itself!

British film industry and beloved Hammer Films thespian André Morrell as Behemoth's Atomic Commission official Professor Bickford

Still, these are rather inchoate observations and memories, randomly touched upon, and the lapses sadly carry the day. In the opening minutes of the commentary track, neither Muren nor Tippett can recall when the film was made (their best guess, 1957, is off by two years: the film opened in the US in the spring of 1959, and the UK that fall), nor when they might have first seen it, nor do they recognize any of the actors in the film. The latter is most unfortunate, given the rich cinematic heritage associated with stars Gene Evans (Sam Fuller’s favorite lead and surrogate in Fuller’s key ‘50s films, and costar of the 1953 Donovan’s Brain), André Morrell (a solid British character actor who played Professor Quatermass in the original BBC serial Quatermass and the Pit, and frequent Hammer Films vet who graced gems like Hound of the Baskervilles, Shadow of the Cat, She, Plague of the Zombies, etc.) and support players like Jack MacGowran (Roman Polanski made optimum use of MacGowran in Cul-de-sac and as the eccentric vampire hunter of The Fearless Vampire Killers). This is the meat of most commentaries, the kind of opportunity an experienced film historian like Tom Weaver would have had a field day with.

Muren and Tippett come across as old pros, not fans -- they’ve been too busy making films, not watching and studying them, to serve a fan’s needs on any but their own incredible bodies of work. As busy, active working professionals, they’re talking off the top of their heads throughout, having done little or no ‘homework’ to sharpen memories or provide some context for their chat. Thus, they misremember many tidbits of our generation’s shared sf film heritage, the kind of trivia fans cling to. These lapses include complimentary narrative points with as primary a film as Lourié’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (both the Beast and Behemoth are radioactive ‘Typhoid Marys’, the symptoms quite different: once spilled, the Beast’s blood contaminates those exposed to it with radiation sickness, whereas contact with the Behemoth literally cooks any who cross its path). Tippett at one point conflates the two actors who played the scientists in Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Them! (Cecil Kellaway and Edmund Gwenn, respectively), fudging his point in the bargain; Muren and Tippett often let their conversation wander and drop (“Shouldn’t we be saying something?”), lapsing into repetitive derision of the film’s padding (worth noting initially, indeed, but not interminably) and mocking both adherence to the period/genre clichés and deviation from those clichés -- a lose/lose proposition for the film and any serious viewer/listener. Though this never degenerates (or soars) into MST3000 turf, and is tolerable enough coming from such seasoned filmmaking professionals. Less excusable are their shared assumptions -- that the viewer/listener knows of the participation of Willis O’Brien in Behemoth, where this film fit in Obie’s sad autumn career years, Pete Peterson’s role in this phase of Obie’s career, etc. -- which are rarely articulated coherently enough to inform the uninitiated animation fans listening in. Indeed, how many younger viewers will even know who O’Brien is? Though Muren and Tippett do note the effectiveness of many on-screen highlights, offering informed judgment calls on how some shots were accomplished with limited money and means, they bring little real insight to the table. As Muren notes at one point, it’s too bad their former Cascade (the 1960s/’70s animation studio which offered many animators vital training and experience doing commercials and effects) associate Phil Kellison is no longer with us, he could have illuminated much about the making of Behemoth.


Thus, the commentary is a lost opportunity: two active 21st Century special effects experts -- the very men whose careers in fact bridge the stop-motion effects era & legacy of O’Brien and Harryhausen with the CGI era that refined and supplanted that legacy -- took time to discuss the last monster movie Willis O’Brien, the founding father of the art and genre, had a hand in. Banter between beloved effects creators like Muren and Tippett sharing half-remembered anecdotes and vague references while ridiculing the film we’re watching may tantalize and even engage old timers like yours truly, but -- no offense intended to the participants -- the Behemoth commentary provides little of interest or merit for any but the diehard stop-motion animation fan and veteran Cinefex reader, willing to forgive the errors and fill in the many missing gaps.

Per usual in this sort of situation, one can only regret what the involvement of an informed third participant -- a Tom Weaver, for instance -- might have brought to the table, and what further might have been coaxed from such otherwise experienced and knowledgeable pros given willingly of their time to chat over a chestnut like Behemoth. It was very conscientious of Warner to pursue this, and of Muren, Tippett and all involved to follow through; kudos to all and an ‘A’ for effort. Too bad the results weren’t more coherent, cohesive and reflective of that effort. (I’ll emphasize, though, as someone who has participated in a few DVD extras over the past few years, it’s important to remember neither Muren or Tippett were paid for their time: DVD bonuses are ‘freebies’ when pros are involved, and it’s fortunate for those of us who care that Muren and Tippett even had 80 minutes+ to give to this project!)

So what is of interest and value here? Well, the film, first and foremost, as it should be.

[To be continued... tomorrow!]

Have a grand Friday, one and all...

Monsters and More Post-MoCCA Mortem --

MoCCA Post-Mortem continues at

the most excellent blog of the most excellent Joe Lambert, and Joe has posted variations on the same at

the Sundays Anthology blog/site and

I Know Joe Kimpel --

-- and Bryan Stone posted very different pix on his blog, check 'em out, too!

Check 'em all out, I'll post more here later as time permits.

________________

Now that I'm no longer plugged into the First Run Video circle (though I'm still a shareholder in that business), I have to track down my DVDs same as everyone else -- no more preorders, 5% above cost, special order insider cherry-picking. So it was yesterday morning that I was calling every DVD venue in driving distance to track down the new Warner Bros. Cult Camp Classic quartet of boxed sets; by 9:10 AM, I had scored paydirt, and by 11:45 I was driving home with all four sets.

I've only had time to screen one so far: The Giant Behemoth (1958, original UK title Behemoth: The Sea Monster -- less redundant, that), with the commentary track by stop-motion/CGI and all-around special effects gurus Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett.

Per usual, WB lists generic running times -- the box says '90 minutes,' but it clocks in a few seconds over 79 minutes. It's an excellent transfer of the best print of this film I've ever seen -- and it's complete, which was my reason for popping this undernourished radioactive saurian opus into the player first (instead of the film I most eagerly anticipate watching, Sergio Leone's The Colossus of Rhodes -- but more on that later!).

Unlike WB's vhs release of this title over a decade ago, this print is complete: the WB video was a sharp print but inexplicably missing the notorious ferry boat attack scene -- notorious among stop-motion fans for the embarrassing crudity of the live-action puppet effects in this (and other) sequences. The ferry boat attack supplanted the Pete Peterson and Willis O'Brien stop-motion animation with what is literally a dino head on a stick knocking at a miniature ferry, spilling Matchbox-sized tin cars into the drink; the water splashes are identical to those you'd create in your bathtub, the beading on the prop dino head further betraying the six-inch-plus scale of the foolish thing.

Ut! My contractor just arrived. More work on the basement library/office ahead.
OK, More later today --