'Unapologetic Nonsense'

 

 

 

 

    First off though, an apology. As I am limiting myself to four posts a month, I had to wait to publish this on November 1st, otherwise this post would have appeared on the 28th of October and there would have been five blog posts for the month.

    That said, two days ago (this being as I write, October 30th, the eve of Halloween - would that make it Halloweenween or Halloweenie??) I was watching Aron Ra's latest YouTube video on evolution entitled: 'Triassic Transitions: from Lizards to Crocs'.

    In his post, both on the main thumbnail, and in the video, Aron made reference to producer/director Irwin Allen's 1960 remake of  the 1925, stop-motion, silent film classic: 'The Lost World', itself an adaptation of Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. There is even a point, with respect to the 1960 CinemaScope production, where Aron points out the coincidental resemblance of an extinct Shringasaurus indicus to the Iguana used in the film. 

    However, "coincidental" is as far as the resemblance went, for instead of employing stop-motion animation to recreate the sauropods and theropods of that bygone era, as was initially planned (Willis O'Brien, the master, special effects master from the 1925 production was actually commissioned for the 1960 version) financial cuts by 20th Century Fox, forced Irwin Allen to settle for the derided, cost-desperate use of prosthetic applications and live reptiles. 

    That the resulting fabrications bore little resemblance to the dinosaurs they were supposedly portraying* was the price alas sadly and literally to be paid. With the budget slashed to a third of its original funding [the direct consequence of 'Cleopatra' (1963) and its projected cost overrun] this was the compromise inflicted on the venture. Tossing in a bright green tarantula to boot, some clinging plant tendrils, a carnivorous flower, a volcano, cave people, revenge, a couple of human skeletons, and an oversized fossil rib cage, would have to suffice, plus hoping as Hell for the best, I guess.

     The disaster did modestly upon release. 

    Somehow I don't think this is the fiasco Irwin had in mind when he proudly bestowed the "Master of Diaster" appellation upon himself.

 *Unlike the excellent makeup used to recreate the more convincing dimetrodons featured in 20th Century Fox's blockbuster 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' from the year before. 

 

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    Amazingly, I manage to find footage of a 20th Century Fox sales promotion being pitched by producer/director Irwin Allen for his upcoming 1974 feature 'The Towering Inferno, complete with him standing before a huge diagram! It was just made to suit (to say nothing of Irwin's all salmon-pink jumpsuit! Yep, white shoes 'n' all!)

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    I kid you not about the jumpsuit! Even by early 1970's fashion sensibility, it was considered gauche. Only the  uncool, the unhip - mainly men and moguls in their midlife crisis - would wear it! The wannabe chic that never were with it!

 

 

 

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