When you have that hankering for beef!
Some genre fusions are a little more successful than others, but The Beast Of Hollow Mountain (1956) is a shade indifferent to the entire debate. A Mexican village plays hosts to a powerful Don and his son, Enrique, the latter soon to marry the beautiful Sarita. But an Americanos, Jimmy, and his partner, Felipe, who together own a herd of cattle, also live here, and when Sarita engages in some innocent conversation with the Americanos, Enrique is enraged. Fisticuffs are not enough, and soon there are plans afoot to stampede the herd into the hills.
Meanwhile, the herd is also suffering attrition, and Jimmy and Felipe, along with their last workers, Pancho and his little boy Panchito, track down the carcasses – or, more precisely, the disarticulated heads – in the swamp that borders on Hollow Mountain. The blame falls on Enrique. Eventually, Pancho, the town drunkard, ventures into the swamp for fairly unsatisfying reasons of his own, and becomes a breakfast nugget for the … well, the storytellers were wise enough to have Pancho shoot wildly (and quite amateurishly) while screaming as a shadow pans over him. Nicely done.
But soon enough Pancho’s son bullheadedly runs away, in fact on the day of Sarita and Enrique’s marriage, and Sarita, not quite yet clasped to Enrique’s bosom (there’s a bad visual), rides in pursuit. Naturally, they soon encounter the Beast, a clay stop-motion T-Rex with a really really long tongue. After a lot of pointing and laughing and falling down and being afflicted with hiccups
Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyways, Jimmy shows up after Sarita and Panchito take refuge in an abandoned house, and the Beast demonstrates its skills in disassembling stone and wood structures. Does Mr. T-Rex win an award? Noooo! Distracted by Jimmy, who nicks his snout (it’s good to see a dinosaur who’s not completely proof against six-shooters), Sarita and the kid make a break for the horses (which at this point should have been crossing the Canadian border, if they had any sense) and go for help, while Jimmy plays a little hide and seek with a dinosaur which is really awfully damn fast on his feet.
The funny things you find in a Cracker-Jack tree!
Enrique shows up, ready to pick off Jimmy, but has an unpleasant encounter with our dino. But once again, no awards for the dinosaur as Jimmy helps Enrique slip through the dinosaur’s claws. A dash to an empty tree and, for a brief moment, the dinosaur has a bit of success, with Enrique dangling in his clutches, but, damn, he must have ADD or something, because the rescuers have arrived and are busy trying to puncture that hide of his. Tossing lunch aside, he chases the rescuers, but to no effect.
Finally, Jimmy tires of the fun and lures the dino into the swamp, where it takes a bad step, forgets its swimming lessons, and drowns. The actress playing Sarita, ever the professional, hides her head in Jimmy’s bosom so the laughter doesn’t ruin the scene.
I cannot say that this cross between a romantic Western and a monster-horror story really did anything for me. The problem lies in the failure to expose some moral question for a good examination, as the best Westerns (think The Good, The Bad And The Ugly) do so well. Add in the amateuristic dinosaur and predictable and bland village conflict, and it’s a bit of a yawner until the climactic scene. The movie makers made some good decisions, such as not showing the beast until near the end, but the title gives the game away, and leaves us with nothing more than distasteful treacle.
