I've been burning some rubber through these things and it's always nice to start an evening with THE GIANT BEHEMOTH and end it with Hawks' LAND OF THE PHARAOHS.
Having never seen either of them, it's pretty great to be treated to a wealth of cinematic excess - particularly of Jack Hawkins overacting and demanding that his tomb be built to keep the damned kids out. Then there's Joan Collins, with a weird faux beard on her, or maybe it was just the caked-on makeup, but either way, she had this odd minute-5 o'clock thing going on. While the entrance into the city isn't as spectacular as say CLEOPATRA, it does have Dimitri motherfreaking Tiomkin banging out some beats like he owned a pair. Hawks is clearly more fascinated with the spectacle than some of the other moments - didn't he say "nobody knew how a pharaoh talked!" to the naysayers? - and in all fairness, I think it's a enjoyable flawed film.
Anyway, THE GIANT BEHEMOTH. Great, solid film. Totally with it all the way. Especially the blasts of radiation doom it shoots out of its face that turns the victims into charred corpses. That was truly wonderful. For some odd reason I am confusing the sound effects and thinking the BEHEMOTH shoots 'WAR OF THE WORLDS' alien-type lasers, but I don't think this is so. Either way, I implore the few and the proud to engorge themselves on this.
Even crazier was QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE. Laughable, but semi-enjoyable. Completely un-PC, but the make-up effects of the Queen were fairly shocking, even more so for the time period it was made.
Anybody else checking these out?
Having never seen either of them, it's pretty great to be treated to a wealth of cinematic excess - particularly of Jack Hawkins overacting and demanding that his tomb be built to keep the damned kids out. Then there's Joan Collins, with a weird faux beard on her, or maybe it was just the caked-on makeup, but either way, she had this odd minute-5 o'clock thing going on. While the entrance into the city isn't as spectacular as say CLEOPATRA, it does have Dimitri motherfreaking Tiomkin banging out some beats like he owned a pair. Hawks is clearly more fascinated with the spectacle than some of the other moments - didn't he say "nobody knew how a pharaoh talked!" to the naysayers? - and in all fairness, I think it's a enjoyable flawed film.
Anyway, THE GIANT BEHEMOTH. Great, solid film. Totally with it all the way. Especially the blasts of radiation doom it shoots out of its face that turns the victims into charred corpses. That was truly wonderful. For some odd reason I am confusing the sound effects and thinking the BEHEMOTH shoots 'WAR OF THE WORLDS' alien-type lasers, but I don't think this is so. Either way, I implore the few and the proud to engorge themselves on this.
Even crazier was QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE. Laughable, but semi-enjoyable. Completely un-PC, but the make-up effects of the Queen were fairly shocking, even more so for the time period it was made.
Anybody else checking these out?
