Village Of The Giants (1965) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Starting this Giant Monster March with one of the lesser discussed Bert I. Gordon flicks, Village Of The Giants, which also marks the first time our notorius B.I.G would harass poor H.G. Wells, specifically his novel The Food Of The Gods, which would later adapt again in a slightly “less loose” manner with 1976’s Food Of The Gods, spawning a fittingly loose sequel 13 years later, Food Of The Gods Part 2, which didn’t see Bert I. Gordon involved at all, and has somehow even less to do with H.G.Wells’ book.

Good old Bert this time basically used the book reference only so he could crib the idea of people turning into giants… this time via a generic “goo” chemical substance that falls in the hands of a group of teens, making themselves gigantic and decide to rule over the town and its grown ups using this newfound size, because they’re teens, and this movie has a lot more to do with Horror At Party Beach than Food Of The Gods, since it has a lot of elements from the “beach party film” which was indeed quite en vogue at the time, and also about to fizz out before the 70s came to be.

I haven’t strong feelings about the genre, it gave us Beach Blanket Bingo but also Arch Hall Jr. strumming his fuckin guitar while his face looks like they embalmed a Elvis impersonator in wax, and also the classic MST3K episode riffing his ass and teaching the evergreen lesson of watching out for snakes, even when the dub is off sync and the movie might not even have snakes at all.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #7: Valley Of The Dragons (1961)

Stock footage. The quintessence of cheap filmaking since its very beginning, the saviour of many low budget productions for decades, constantly growing over time and often very fuckin free, etc.

It’s and always will be a constant for visual media, but there are case when you can take it too far, like the infamous Gamera Super Monster, the final Showa era Gamera film, composed almost entirely of stock footage from previous movies in the series. Sometimes you can indeed go even cheaper, but shouldn’t, unless you wanna risk destroying any goodwill, fanbase or prospects.

Though this isn’t the case, with Valley Of The Dragons we have instead the story of trying to adapt the Jules Verne novel Off Of A Comet/Career Of A Comet, which was actually not published in US territories at the time, due to it being very anti-semitic.

A very loose adaptation mostly made to chase the success of previous film adaptations of Verne’ stories…. and because producer Donald Zimbalist wanted to have it heavily based around the stock footage from One Billion BC, as he owned the rights to that.

In its own way, this is also pure cinema at heart.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #2: King Dinosaur (1955)

Ah yes, time to slip back into the comfy territory of “featured on MST3K” old 50 movies about dinosaurs, and of course when talking about MST3K featured flicks, Bert I. Gordon (or Mister BIG, as he was nicknamed by good ol’ Forrest J. Ackerman) is bound to be involved somewhat.

This is actually his first directed movie, followed 2 years later by Beginning Of The End, aka the one about giant locusts and “mantises in pantises”.

Sorry, getting back on track. Yeah, King Dinosaur marks Mister BIG’ first feature length work, after some television commercials, and let’s just say that its first step it’s already a good indication of him being incredibly cheap and fast in making a movie. And i mean both, as the movie was shot in a week, and was indeed cheap, since it has only 4 actors and it uses stock footage, not only for the scene of the mammoth’s attack it’s lifted from 1940’s One Million BC, but the army and the atom bomb explosions are just military stock footage, and there’s no cheaper than free.

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