No one has dared to come this far.
"The Beast of Hollow Mountain" AKA "La bestia de la montana" was released in 1956 and was directed by Edward Nassour. It is a horror movie and of the weird west sub-genre. This little gem is one of the lesser know dinosaur movies. And I don’t know why since it’s got some street creds. The story is based on a Willis O’Brien idea. And although the dinosaur effects are not O’Brien or Harryhausen the dinosaur is lots of fun. It’s made mostly in Mexico and was filmed back to back in English and Spanish. A couple of the supporting actors you’ve seen in other movies such as “The Black Scorpion” and “The Valley of Gwangi”.
Jimmy Ryan (Guy Madison) is an American cowboy ranching in Mexico along with his Mexican partner Felipe Sanchez (Carlos Rivas). Another land owner views Jimmy as a rival for this fiancé’s affection and is trying to force him out of Mexico. Most of the first part of the movie is Enrique Rios (Eduardo Noriega), the other land owner, trying to sabotage Jimmy’s ranch. If you can get through all that you will finally get to the reason we all are watching this movie… the dinosaur. In this case an allosaurus. Although it takes until almost the end of the movie to get to it once you do the action is non stop. For the last 20 minutes or so it’s all dinosaur all the time. You could always fast forward till you get to the dinosaur part and not really miss anything.
Technically it’s a western with a dinosaur in it. And it’s hard to find. Got mine through the Elvis DVD Collector & Movies Store (elvisdvdcollector.com). It was 10 bucks and 7 bucks shipping. So if you don’t mind waiting for your dinosaur fix this one is worth a look. Just be careful where you get it since there are bootleg versions out there. There is a blu-ray version on Amazon. It’s a double feature with “The Neanderthal Man”. I can’t tell you anything about that version other than it is an official release. There’s also an MST3K version out there too.