Beast Of Hollow Mountain / The Neanderthal Man (Bluray/DVD Combo) [Blu-ray]

I've been desperately searching for YEARS for a decent legit copy of THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN. Sadly, I could never find one, even back in the day on VHS tape! Well now, thanks to those cult-loving kids at Shout!Factory, we not only get this fun dinosaur-on-the-loose movie, we also get it in beautiful hi-def Blu-ray to boot! Woot! And although a rather odd pairing, we get the wacky Robert Shayne caveman film, THE NEANDERTHAL MAN, too! :-DTBOHM is a rather slow-moving film, for those who've never seen it, so don't expect lots of constant, over the top monster action. The title creature only shows up in the final reel. Guy Madison is suitably rugged, if a little bland, as fish-out-of-water white cowboy stud, Jimmie Ryan, trying his luck as an independent cattle rancher south of the boarder. Carlos Rivas plays Felipe, Jimmie's likable Mexican buddy who works with him as a partner in the ranch. Local cattle baron and all-around A-hole, Enrique Rios (Eduardo Noriega), controls most of the goings on in the small village, and he wants hunky honkey heartthrob Madison out of the picture... Now! Enrique's crazy jealous and cannot stand the way 'ol Jimmie boy has been making goo-goo eyes at his lusty, busty fiancee, Sarita, (Patricia Medina). Sarita feels trapped in what is presumably a prearranged marriage-to-be and when she's not-so-secretly pining for a piece of white meat, she takes care of Pancho & Panchito, a drunken but good-hearted old vaquero and his cute little ragamuffin son. Interesting tidbit for trivia buffs: Carlos Rivas (Felipe), Pascual García Peña (Pancho) and Mario Navarro (Panchito), also worked together the following year in another Willis O'Brian-based south of the boarder stop-motion horror film, The Black Scorpion.The animation is hit or miss and most of the stop motion work here is, to be brutally honest, very crude. Ray Harryhausen's work looks like ILM-level CGI stuff compared to the shaky stop motion animation footage on display in TBOHM. But to be fair, this wasn't a Harryhausen effort and they likely had only a fraction of the budget Ray usually worked with, not to mention animators with no where near the level of expertise and sophistication that Mr. Harryhausen had. Ray Harryhausen was an true artist who not only had the ability to infuse his rubber & steel puppets with life, but give each one a personality and a "soul" - something most other stop-mo animators were never able to achieve. Still, the Allosaurus (Not, as the boxart blurb incorrectly states, a T-Rex) looks pretty dang cool. He's got a nice blue-ish tint to his skin, ala Gwangi, and a cute little fin on the back of his head. His tongue, however, is laughably distracting since in some scenes it appears to be as long as the dinosaur is tall! LOL! But to give credit where it's due, there are actually some truly beautiful animated composite shots found here too, including two terrific shots of the Allosaurus running alongside Guy Madison as he tries to escape the dinosaur on horseback. Those look great! The animators also used Harryhausen's trick of having an air bladder buried inside the stop-mo puppet that could be inflated & deflated to simulate chest expansion/breathing; a nice touch for such a low budget effort.THE NEANDERTHAL MAN is a rather pedestrian film; a sort of cheap knock-off of Universal's much-better MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS. But where TNM really shines is in the stuffy scientific mumbo-jumbo dialogue the characters have to choke through, and the way that star Robert Shayne just tears it up - delivering his lines like his life depended on it! Shayne rocks this movie! He chews more scenery than the deadly Sabre Tooth Tiger he creates and then sets loose on the local yokels. The sabre-tooth tiger is achieved by using a mixture of stock footage of at least two very different-looking Bengal Tigers wandering around in the woods looking bored, and a hilariously awful miniature puppet head for close-up shots, complete with ridiculously long fangs/tusks and stuffed doll's eyes! I about spit out my drink when the deadly killer kitty leaped onto the hood of the local Game Warden's Nash station wagon and the filmmakers cut to this obviously stuffed Tiger head, filling the entire screen for a full two seconds, (not even bothering to move it a bit in an attempt to simulate life) and then dubbing in a lion roar! HA!Shayne's cave-man make-up is equally stiff and fake-looking, but it's a silly programmer monster movie, not Gone With The Wind. And besides, it's all in good fun! Robert Shayne appears to be having a great time here, overacting the hell out of his part. God bless him. It's nice to see him get a big chunk of screen time instead of the usual background Colonel/General roles he played in a zillion sci-fi flicks during the 50's, and of course his brief appearances in almost every episode of George Reeves' beloved "The Adventures of Superman" TV series, as gruff but lovable Inspector Bill Henderson.The Blu-ray has both films packed onto one disc and also includes a standard definition DVD of the films set up the same way. The slipcase cover artwork is quite nice, featuring reproductions from both films' theater posters, slightly tweaked to fit side by side on the cover. The artwork continues on the inside of the insert, one side for each film, with various stills and a credits list for each movie. A nice touch here, too. The transfer used from the MGM vaults for TBOHM is glorious! The hi-def picture is sharp, as it should be, and the rich colors are eye-poppingly bright & beautiful. There are some vertical scratches (apparently on the film element itself), and since this movie was not restored in any way the scratches made the jump, too. Slightly disappointing I'll admit, but certainly not a deal breaker by any means. The sound is strong and consistent, with no noticeable fading or hissing/popping.I have THE NEANDERTHAL MAN on a 2005 DVD from Cheezy Flicks and that transfer is gawd-awful compared to the one Shout!Factory used here to master their hi-def Blu-ray. Also again, from the MGM vaults. The black & white photography is pretty good for a low budget quickie and the focus, although not as sharp as I'd like, is still light years beyond the murky, scratched all to hell transfer found on the Cheezy Flicks DVD. That crappy copy can go out with the trash now! Thank you Shout!Factory, for yet another awesome genre-pleasing double feature release of two obscure, fun, goofy old school monster movies from the good old days! A great way to spend a rainy/snowy Saturday afternoon. Pop some popcorn and enjoy!!! 5 stars!

A fun baby boomer movie worh getting!!

Let's face facts, folks - most of us have purchased this delghtful double feature for THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN. A grade C western with the inevitable Mexican stereotypes- 1. Pancho, the fat, tequila-swilling goofball 2. His little, obnoxious kid named Panchito, who you know is just going to be more trouble than he's worth. 3. Sarita, The inevitable attractive woman, who is equally as obnoxious and 4. Enrique, The hot tempered troublemaker who is no good at all. By the end of the film, you're rooting for the "Beast" (which looks like an Allosaurus) to get all of them! Enter our square-jawed hero, Jimmy, played by Guy Madison, who makes you wonder why he even bothers hanging around this group of losers until the end of the movie, since the townspeople in this pathetic little Mexican burb, treat the "gringo" badly. A fair chunk of the film is padded out with some "touristy" footage of some stupid local celebration -consisting of people wearing giant papier-mâché heads dancing around, while firecrackers are going off. When the inevitable cattle stampede comes roaring through town, I was hoping to see the cows trampling over the "giant papier-mâché head people"!Things start picking up about 55 minutes into the film, when we see our first "victim" get his (I was cheering!) , screaming as the shadow of the "Beast" covers over him. Finally, a few minutes later, a pair of ne'er-do-wells meet their fate as we finally get the first look at the star of the picture - a delightful, snarling dinosaur! (looks like an Allosaurus to me folks, but then I still use the incorrect title, Brontosaurus, for those other big fellas, so don't take my word for it!) After that, we get a lot of excitement that made it well worth the wait to see what happens next! I've never seen a dinosaur of this size run so fast in this type of movie, and I love the way he snarls and wags his tongue, in anticipation of his next meal!If you love enjoyable bad movies, you're in for a real treat, and I'm so happy that a decent 2.35:1 release of this film has finally been put out on DVD. (I still have my previous, frequently-viewed copy on Laserdisc).Also, as an added treat, we get NEANDERTHAL, but that's for another review.

This primeval double feature is highly recommended for Jurassic junkies who love 50's sci fi flicks. The Beast of Hollow mountain boasts beautiful color and sub par special effects with an Allosaurus that has a tongue that would make Gene Simmons envious. Its a western with a dinosaur in it. Unfortunately the beast does not show up for an hour but after he does its non stop Regis scope for the next 20 minutes. Whether its tearing the roof off a log cabin or chasing cowboys across the terrain the beastie never is dull , and that wagging tongue is a feature no other dinosaur before or since has ever exhibited. The Neanderthal Man stars the amiable Robert Shayne as a bombastic, pig headed scientist out to prove that cavemen were smarter than modern man because they have larger craniums and therefore could house more brain matter in their heads. Even a 5 year old child could see the illogic in that. However to prove his point he turns his house cat into a sabre tooth tiger and himself into a primitive murderous beast man. Its Jekyll and Hyde with Jekyll being an unsympathetic ignoramus. The transformation scenes are done in the standard lap dissolve process. The final transformation is accomplished by using a mask with painted on eyes, this is how they disguised the stunt man substituting for Shayne for the more strenuous sequences. Actor Robert Shayne must have been getting tips from John Carradine on how to act in a bad movie. When he is not over the top he is obnoxious but he is never boring. The quality of the dvd on both movies is excellent and the sound crisp. So pull up a rock and sit down to enjoy these two primitive potboilers.

邦題「原始怪獣ドラゴドン」として以前にテレビでも放送されていた作品です。人形アニメーションによる恐竜が見所の作品ですが、ハリーハウゼンやジムダンフォースに比べると、デザインも動きも大変素朴で手作り感満載の微笑ましい仕上がりです。ただ、恐竜の歩行、走行シーンは人形の置き換えによるコマ撮りととのことで、その動きは一見の価値ありのシーンです。日本語字幕はありませんが、画質も良く（マニアにとっては）コストパフォーマンスに優れた楽しめる作品だと思います。

It is always a crap shoot when buying American BluRays as to whether they actually are Region 1 encoded. Some are advertised as such, but turn out to be region free. This one definitely IS Region 1 encoded, so may not play on all British BluRay players. Anyway, I'm sucker for fifties sci-fi and horror pictures, but even my heart sinks when I see that a film has been made in Mexico, as this is invariably a sign that it will be an "el cheapo" production. Surprising, therefore, that "The Beast of Hollow Mountain" was filmed in both colour and Scope. True to form, once we have learnt that there is a legendary beast in what is thought to be a hollow mountain, inaccessible as it lies beyond a patch of quicksand, the first fifty plus minutes before the beast makes its first appearance are padding. Whilst the beast's animation is not up to the standard of O'Brien or Harryhausen, it is nevertheless great fun to watch and worth the wait. (In fact, I didn't wait. I fast forwarded without losing the plot, which is pretty much non-existent.) Apart from a few scratches at the beginning, the BluRay print is excellent. "Neanderthal Man" is just one of many man-into-monster films, all basically a variation on "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". The plot line is thin and the tiger in the stock footage bears no resemblance to the close-ups of the sabre tooth tiger - for a start the stock footage tiger has no sabre teeth. The one redeeming feature is the very effective transformation of man into monster, which makes use of the coloured make-up and coloured lighting effect used in the 1932 "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". The transformation of monster into man at the end is abysmal and the final line, "Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad", is as cringeworthy as the usual "He dealt in matters best left to God". Not a bad print, though.

One of my favourite early monster movies.Remember watching this on television some years ago and it has never really surfaced on vhs or dvd since then.O.k.by today's standards of c.g.i. and special effects it would appear dated to many people but bearing in mind this is a Willis O'Brien vehicle from the 1950's which is when I first saw it at the local cinema-even in those days stop motion photography was in its infancy and slightly before Ray Harryhausen's brilliant contributions to fantasy cinema.The bluray is the best version of this movie with slight negative scratching at the beginning.Apart from this minor hiccup the colours and definition especially of the monster are outstanding with sharp imaging.The plot is basic good versus evil with fine performances from Guy Madison and Patricia Medina( and I had a soft spot for her in my youth-ah-those were the days) and of course the title villain The Beast Of hollow Mountain.Most people will know the plotline so I will not reiterate on what other viewers have said but this is added to my fantasy collection and recommended to anyone who loves the older type of monster movies.

Good product and quick delivery.

very good