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.

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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 --