ROCK OR RUST - AC/DC hits the road again... and why, exactly?

In the summer of 2010 – June 28, to be exact, as they left the stage at Bilbao, Spain’s San Mamés Stadium, concluding an international tour that began over a year and a half earlier, seeing some 160 shows performed in some 32 countries – Angus and Malcolm Young, the diminutive brothers from Australia, by way of Scotland, who formed AC/DC in late 1973, passed up a singular opportunity that a great many bands wished had even been visited upon them in the first place.

The opportunity was to call it a day, and allow their band to go out on top of the world, in immutable, unassailable style after nearly 37 years of ups and downs worthy of Spinal Tap. AC/DC’s career arc had, by this point, encompassed the whole of the clichéd rock band story: a humble start with a debut album released only regionally, a long, four-and-a-half year slog to the top, the tragic death of their lead singer (choking on vomit, no less), a breakout album after his death, dizzying heights, a slow but steady descent away from said dizzying heights, addictions and line-up changes, and a late, wholly unexpected comeback.

Angus and Malcolm Young could be forgiven for neglecting to seize this opportunity. By the summer of 2010 they had been playing in a rock’n’roll band for 36 years, a very long time for this line of work. There was no retiring and moving on to another career as a consultant; AC/DC was all they cared to do, and more importantly, the only thing they knew how to do. It had been 30 years since their 7^th studio album, Back in Black, sold millions upon millions of copies all over the globe, making them one of the biggest bands in the galaxy. They grew from hungry young scrappers into middle-aged men of good fortune during that time, efficiently replacing a vocalist and two drummers, and becoming millionaires many times over.

But the repercussions of Bon Scott’s death in February of 1980 stretched far beyond Angus and Malcolm just losing their friend, lead singer and writing partner. Perhaps the brothers Young would have been compelled to close ranks and consolidate their control regardless of losing Bon. At any rate, between 1979 and 1985 they fired five managers and become insular to the point of seeming like – for guys who always passed themselves off as jeans-wearing, everyday blokes – mean motherfuckers. “Their management went, roadies, other members of their entourage,” said photographer Robert Ellis. “They were in a state of paranoia, feeling that all eyes were upon them.”

And as they transitioned from a band that reveled in two guitar-bass-drums rock’n’roll into AC/DC Inc., the music slowly settled into an uncharacteristically generic non-groove. Prior to For Those About to Rock, each successive album bettered the band’s previous effort, and at least three songs were instantly canonical, the kinds of songs that served as templates for teenage kids just picking up a guitar. There were few, if any, bands that could touch AC/DC’s output from 1977 to 1981.

Beginning in 1983, however, with Flick of the Switch, listening to each new AC/DC album became an exercise in masochism. Masochism on the band’s part, that they struggled coming up with songs that matched up to the Bon-era catalog or Back in Black. Masochism on the listener’s part, because despite the diminishing returns of Flick of the Switch, Fly on the Wall, Blow Up Your Video, et al, we still obediently bought each new album, hoping they would somehow rediscover the glorious spark that propelled them through the 70s. Instead, the gaps between albums stretched longer and longer, and the songs became more and more juvenile, and even – very strange for this band – forgettable. You get the sense listening to The Razors Edge and Ballbreaker that Angus and Malcolm developed a cynical, almost pathological conviction that the songs simply had to be about Rocking and macho sex – and little else – lest they disappoint all the fans who had no interest in hearing about (in their minds, apparently) anything other than Rocking and macho sex.

Bon Scott’s lyrics could certainly be infantile and sexist, and he was not above deploying a cliché here and there, but he was never, ever dull, he was oftentimes very, very funny, and he had a raconteur’s way of capturing the vibe of young, blue collar kids wanting to escape the drudgery of the industrial city life and indulge in more exciting pursuits, in songs like Rock and Roll Singer, It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll), and Ain’t no Fun (Waiting ‘round to be a Millionaire). He was frequently just as effective exploring darker themes, as he did convincingly on Powerage and Highway to Hell.

Brian Johnson, on the other hand, never had it in him to write about anything other than drinking and being fellated. The words were bereft of humor, and more often than not sounded like they came from the pen of a man who felt pressured - not excited - to produce lyrics for a dozen new songs every time the record label called up, asking for a new album (the lyrics to Sink the Pink may well be the worst lyrics in the whole of popular music). His themes, if they can be called such, grew more and more featureless and sophomoric until he was removed from lyric-writing duties in 1990 with The Razors Edge. It should be pointed out that Angus and Malcolm didn’t do this out of dissatisfaction with their vocalist’s work; their lyrics on The Razors Edge and Ballbreaker are every bit as absurd as anything on Fly on the Wall. Rather, it was one more step in controlling every aspect of the band, making sure the other three fifths of their outfit were simply there to show up and do their jobs as employees (and making sure that royalties from record sales now went solely to them and no one else).

It all became a far cry from the heady Bon Scott years, and even though record sales are never any indication of an album’s greatness (see The Velvet Underground and Nico and Village Green Preservation Society), every new release sold anemically compared to the kind of unit-shifting they achieved between 1980 and 1982. More disconcertingly, the songs simply lacked the chops necessary to grab you. Even the album covers were boring.

***

So there was no reason to get any more excited than usual in 2008 when the track list for AC/DC’s fifteenth studio album, Black Ice, made the rounds on the interweb. Eight years had passed since the band’s last lackluster effort, Stiff Upper Lip, and the new song titles didn’t exactly inspire anticipation; four songs had the word “rock” or some variant in the title, Big Jack called to mind Big Gun, Money Made called to mind Money Talks, and Anything Goes looked like it would this album’s rock-and-roll-all-night-and-party-every-day song, a tradition that only underscored the creeping suspicion that this band had somehow sadly run out of things to write about.

But then Black Ice arrived at Wal Marts across America on October 20^th, and AC/DC surprised everyone by sounding like they’d somewhat found their muse again, at least on a few tracks. Nothing on the order of a Powerage or a Highway to Hell, of course; the less-than-stellar songs on Black Ice – and there are plenty – could’ve fit into the anonymous generica of the previous five albums with no effort at all. For instance, the chorus of She Likes Rock’n’Roll actually goes like this: “she digs rock’n’roll, she likes rock’n’roll, you want rock’n’roll, I need rock’n’roll everyday.”

All things being equal, that there’s one serious deal breaker. But for the first time since 1981’s For Those About to Rock, the band had some genuine hooks. Tune out the gloomily pedestrian lyrics of Rock’n’Roll Train and the band is doing what it always did best after the loss of Bon Scott: a nice upper mid-tempo beat, tuneful backing vocals, an Angus solo inaugurated by a pick slide. Better than anything on the previous three albums. A great hook with Cliff Williams’ bass nicely up in the mix saves more terrible lyrics in Skies On Fire. Check out those changing octaves! Fun stuff.

That made for two good songs in a row on a new AC/DC release, something that hadn’t happened in some twenty-seven years. By itself, that would’ve made Black Ice an accomplishment, something the band could rightfully be proud of. But there’s more to like – Stormy May Day is a poor man’s In My Time of Dying, and the Spinal Tap-esque lyric “the moon doth rise” isn’t doing anyone anywhere any good at all, but the slide guitar playing is fiercely gorgeous, and Brian is finally given the opportunity in the song’s final seconds to sing in his normal voice. You might be surprised to hear that the man actually has a really nice voice, well-suited for singing about more noteworthy goings-on outside the realm of getting one’s hood ornament polished or partying with the boys (pretentious ego-boy Sting invited him to guest on a few tracks in recent years; how’s that for street cred?). His years in Geordie were always proof of this, even though most people buying AC/DC records nowadays have never even heard of them.

Rock’n’Roll Dream is further evidence that the Youngs were enjoying themselves for the first time in eons, taking time with a moody, melodic intro where Phil Rudd doesn’t even hit his snare until the 1:12 mark. Hallelujah! They’re changing things up! What had gotten into these guys? The band photo in the CD booklet showed five graying elder statesmen grinning contentedly, perfectly comfortable with their age and place in the world, a picture that would have been, along with the album and tour, a perfect – and even touching – farewell address.

***

And indeed, the Black Ice tour was enormously successful. The Back in Black AC/DC line-up that electrified the world back in 1980 hit the road for eighteen months, grossing more than $440 million. Here was the opportunity of opportunities, after years of artistic misfires and ennui, to go out on top of the universe and always be remembered as the legends they deserve to be remembered as. And then stay busy anyway; record solo albums, work or on side projects with different musicians, and finally accept the fact that sixty year-old men look kind of ludicrous hobbling around in schoolboy outfits.

For a couple of years after the Black Ice tour, the predictable pattern played out: an interview every now and again about a possible new studio album and tour, but nothing solid. Seasoned fans did the math: since 1990, a new album every five years, give or take. See you guys in 2013 or so…

But then in 2014 disturbing rumors surfaced about Malcolm’s health. In standard AC/DC operating procedure, the band said absolutely nothing, leaving the interweb boiling over with rumors and gossip – had Malcolm fallen off the wagon? Did he have cancer (again)? It was weeks before the horrible news surfaced that Malcolm was suffering from dementia, and even then it was a leak from a family member, not an official statement from the band.

With band and fans still reeling from the news that the band’s anchor would never play again, drummer Phil Rudd – a head case since Bon Scott’s death in 1980 – was arrested in New Zealand and charged with attempting to procure a murder and possession of methamphetamine. The murder charge was quickly dropped, but Rudd was clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic; angry about his 2014 solo album Head Job going nowhere (“Phil Rudd of AC/DC to give fans Head Job” said noise11.com’s headline), he behaved, in between courtroom visits, cheerily unconcerned about his legal predicament, reiterating he would join AC/DC on tour, and generally behaving like a petulant teenager. His obliviousness to the severity of his situation finally evaporated on July 9, 2015, when he was sentenced to eight month’s home detention and ordered to pay $120,000.

If there had ever been a sign that maybe it was time to call it a day and give some thought to trying something different for a change, here it was, writ large. Instead, the band doubled down, obdurately wrapping up the new album with nephew Stevie Young playing rhythm guitar.

And so, instead of being left with Black Ice, we’re left with Rock or Bust.

There are worse ways to go out, if this winds up being AC/DC’s swan song. Play Ball, Miss Adventure and Emission Control have catchy riffs. Cliff Williams gets funky on Got Some Rock & Roll Thunder. But it’s hard listening to this album and not confusing it with any of the five albums that preceded it. Bland music, stupid lyrics. Once again, four titles have the word “rock” in them. Once again, the lyrics are drowning in clichés, and are about rocking and/or getting laid. The exception is Dogs of War, the worst song on the album.

And therein, finally, lies the crux of the issue with this band. This is why carrying on after the Black Ice tour is so damned maddening. This is ultimately what bugs: talking about the worst song on an AC/DC album. Discussing the “worst” song on an AC/DC album wasn’t even conceivable prior to 1983; there were no “worst” songs.

Even when something beyond the pale wound up on a new album, like Squealer, or Given the Dog a Bone, it was easily forgiven because there were three, four, even five other tracks that were absolutely blowing our minds. Songs so unbelievably awesome that we listened to them every day for weeks. For Those About to Rock was the last album where that was the case. That was thirty-four years ago. What’s the point in carrying on when you’re more a caricature than a real band?

***

There is no reason on earth that Angus Young should care one bit about the opinions of any critic, especially some yahoo blogging from Snyder, TX. Like everyone else randomly dropped into this life, he should make his own decisions based on what’s important to him, and not out of fear of being judged by some twit who’s never even met him. And certainly AC/DC has been playing to sold-out audiences everywhere they go on the current Rock or Bust tour. If ticket sales are the one true marker of success, then Angus and co. stand proudly validated, still living the dream – even as 60 year-olds – of every kid in the world who saved for months to buy a shitty guitar so he or she could start a rock’n’roll band. So I’ll just say this:

For those of us who love this band, who’ve loved this band for decades, and became so passionate about them as young boys and girls that we memorized every guitar note, every bass line, every drum fill, and every lyric on every AC/DC song on every AC/DC album, for those of us whose lives were even saved by this band during our darkest moments, for those of us who read every interview with the band, who could’ve told you the month and year of every lineup change, and who left and why, for those of us who could always tell you what our top-3 AC/DC albums were and exactly why:

The events of the last two years are thoroughly depressing. The release of the Malcolm-less Rock or Bust and subsequent Malcolm-less world tour are not the actions of a band heroically persevering in the face of overwhelming odds. They are the actions of un-circumspect men who would rather be directed by a longstanding inertia, instead of giving this some serious thought. They are the actions of men who actually do fear, in a strange, abstract way, being judged if they throw in the towel.

And for us, ticket sales are not the one true marker of success. Justin Bieber has sold veritable mountains of tickets in his time; he sucks. We are not the ones who think it’s absolutely worth it paying $100 to see an AC/DC sans Malcolm and Phil, so long as they perform You Shook Me All Night Long. We are not the ones who think it’s acceptable for an eviscerated lineup to make the expected rounds, with an AC/DC-by-numbers set list to appease the fleeced fans. That’s the purview of what John Lydon once called “the great, ignorant masses,” and I’m not surprised that they’re happy to engage with life on such a superficial level.

You’re thinking I’m a Scrooge-ish, pedantic snob. That may be accurate. Probably I need to lighten up. It’s just a rock band touring and having fun. People are digging it, and that’s what life is all about. AC/DC soldiered on after the Bilbao show in 2010, lost two key members, and will probably still go out on top anyway.

This much is inescapable, though: the band touring right now is barely AC/DC. Barely. They are almost unrecognizable compared to the crazed, barely contained energy you see in the Let There Be Rock movie.  And Rock or Bust sounds exactly like what it is: bits and pieces hanging around from previous sessions, by Angus' own admission, cobbled together for a new album, in the absence of half their songwriting team. It doesn't compare on any defensible level to Powerage or Highway to Hell. Or Back in Black, for that matter.

But hey, it’s just a band touring and having fun, and people are digging it. I need to lighten up.

It’s hard understanding, with the frame of reference set in place by their early albums, why everyone’s happy to settle with that.

OF DINOSAURS AND EXPLORERS - a Lost Worlds primer

“It’s hard keeping these goddamn movies straight.”

            - Van Bigola

We had a very entertaining discussion two weeks ago here in the Ranting Russell offices, when staff writers Josè Huesca and Van Bigola got into an argument about “lost world” movies. What began as a discussion about Willis O’Brien, Marcel Delgado, The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933) somehow devolved into bickering about the latter day movies that stole freely from O’Brien’s vision – namely, Unknown Island, Lost Continent, and ultimately, King Dinosaur. Van got all over Josè for confusing Unknown Island with Lost Continent; Josè insisted it was Lost Continent that was hindered by the worst man-in-a-dinosaur costume special effects ever. Van probably spent a good five minutes mocking Josè for mixing up the movies (it was, after all, Unknown Island that featured actors in dinosaur costumes attacking the likes of Phillip Reed and Richard Denning). He then quickly lost all credibility after bringing up a scene he remembered from a similar movie where Hugh Beaumont (“Ward Cleaver himself” as Van stressed) is suppressing his laughter while funnyman/foil Sid Melton is being hoisted onto a rocky ledge by his ass. Van insisted this occurred in King Dinosaur; in fact, this unintentional bit of comedy is found in Lost Continent.

Another factor compounding our puzzlement was everyone on staff having hazy recollections of lost island movies with volcanoes blowing up all the time. Did that happen in King Dinosaur? In Unknown Island? Staff writer Sally Handly threw Two Lost Worlds into the pot; didn’t a volcano blow up in that movie? Staff editor Sheridan Rowan pointed out too, that the two-word titles lend themselves to confusion.

We figured if we were having this much difficulty distinguishing the films, surely our readership must be in a comparable predicament. So we put together the below helpful primer. No need to thank us. Really.

With notepad and pen, we sat down and identified eight movies containing at least one scene that we mistakenly attributed to a different film: Unknown Island (1948), Lost Continent (1951), Two Lost Worlds (1951), King Dinosaur (1955), The Land Unknown (1957), The Lost Continent (1968), Planet of Dinosaurs (1977/1981) and The Last Dinosaur (1977). We then watched all of them, got everything down for posterity, and now, two weeks later, still can’t remember which movie fucking Sid Melton is in.

UNKNOWN ISLAND (1948)

Unknown Island opens with a bar scene. That alone is enough to forever endear it to the hearts of everyone on staff. This staff loves bar scenes. Truly. Staff writer Isabella Stamps routinely puts on Blade Runner and goes straight to the scene where Deckard confronts Taffey Lewis in his own bar and watches it three or four times in a row. Part-time writer Nolk Landen can recite every word of dialog in the Star Wars cantina scene without skipping a beat. Unknown Island’s bar is packed and smoky, and even has a coarse ship captain (Barton MacLane as Captain Tarnowski) manhandling a bunch of sailors and their prostitutes. We couldn’t ask for anything more.

Writer Jack Harvey borrows heavily from King Kong here, following an expedition to an island that doesn’t appear on any maps to find prehistoric monsters, plus the obligatory lone woman on board. On the island they find a bunch of actors in Ceratosaurus suits. Again, just the sort of thing this staff loves; Harvey and director Jack Bernhard wanted dinosaurs, and weren’t going to be hindered by budgetary concerns. It’s worth noting that they opted out of abusing and killing animals, unlike Bert I. Gordon (see King Dinosaur). And anyway, Ray Corrigan’s monster costume is pretty damn cool, in our estimation.

Unknown Island’s obviously tiny budget reveals itself in non-dinosaur scenes, too. At the beginning of the film, Phillip Reed seeks to convince Barton MacLane of the island’s existence by showing him a photograph he snapped when his plane was blown off course during World War II. The aerial shot of a Brontosaurus and some trees is plainly – painfully – a (not at all good) painting. Later, when the expedition lands on the island, they are clearly walking around a cheaply constructed set that looks like a giant bathtub.

And we don’t care. Director Jack Bernhard also helmed the brilliant 1946 film noir Decoy, so we’ll always give him the benefit of the doubt. Throw in an attempted mutiny, Barton MacLane’s wonderfully sleazy role as Captain Tarnowski, and a climactic fight to the death between Corrigan’s monster and a Ceratosaurus, and you have our favorite on the list.

ACTORS OF NOTE: Ray “Crash” Corrigan (tons of low budget monster movies), Phillip Reed (5 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, plus an Elvis movie), Richard Denning (Gov. Paul Jameson in Hawaii Five-O).

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Heavy King Kong influence. Shot in Cinecolor.

VOLCANO: No.

ISLAND BLOWS UP/SINKS TO BOTTOM OF OCEAN: No.

ANIMAL ABUSE: No.

F/X: Guys in monster suits.

MST3K: Not sure why not.

LOST CONTINENT (1951)

Lost Continent is the movie with the aforementioned Hugh Beaumont blooper, and is probably much better than it should be, considering Sam Newfield directed it. Newfield, who directed some of our favorite Poverty Row movies including I Accuse My Parents and The Monster Maker (both 1944), and also helmed the infamous the-return-of-Lila-Leeds-and-no-one-gives-a-shit vehicle She Shoulda Said No (1949), had Cesar Romero, High Beaumont, Whit Bissell, and even Hillary Brooke (Jimmy Hunt’s mother in Invaders from Mars) at his disposal here, but just eleven days and a tiny budget to bring to life the tale of scientists and military men looking for a lost atomic-powered rocket on a remote tropical island inhabited by dinosaurs. Newfield’s ingenious solution was rock climbing. Lots and lots of rock climbing. Lost Continent is 83 minutes long, and features 20 minutes of actors climbing rocks. That’s one quarter of your movie – from 28:58 to 48:03 – spent climbing rocks. Truthfully, the rock climbing sequence helps you forget how many other scenes drag on endlessly. For instance, earlier in the movie we are treated to a very long sequence of the men flying to the island. There’s even a totally superfluous scene of Cesar Romero landing the plane so they can refuel. No point to it. It’s just there because Sam Newfield didn’t know what else to do. The history books tell us that Philp Cahn (who worked on staff favorite House of Frankenstein) edited Lost Continent, but we’re convinced that Newfield simply pasted his name into the credits in a feeble attempt to beef up his resume. Cahn probably wasn’t aware the movie was being made.

After 20 minutes of rock climbing, the expedition reaches the top of a plateau and it’s another nine minutes before they see their first dinosaur, a crudely animated Brontosaurus, who chases a member of the expedition up a tree… just like in King Kong. A couple of triceratops gore each other, our heroes find their missing rocket, and the whole island blows up for no reason. “A world coming to an end,” John Hoyt says bafflingly, after everyone escapes in a canoe. “Better this way than to have it go on living with us.” No idea what that means, considering the island would’ve been a treasure trove for scientists to explore and study.

ACTORS OF NOTE: Cesar Romero (The Joker), Hugh Beaumont (Ward Cleaver), Whit Bissell.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: 20+ minutes of rock climbing. Owes a heavy debt to The Lost World (1925) and King Kong with prehistoric creatures and natives sharing a remote island. Tinted green during the scenes on top of the mesa. Intrigue with the Russian member of the search party.

VOLCANO: No.

ISLAND BLOWS UP/SINKS TO BOTTOM OF OCEAN: And how!

ANIMAL ABUSE: No.

F/X: Dodgy stop-motion dinosaurs.

MST3K: Yes, episode 208.

TWO LOST WORLDS (1951)

A period piece set in 1830, Two Lost Worlds is James Arness’ first leading role, and has nothing whatsoever to do with lost worlds or “dinosaurs” until 46 minutes into its 61-minute running time.

Arness (that’s Mr. Gunsmoke himself, all you ignorant youngins) plays all-American KIRK HAMILTON, first mate on American clipper ship The Queen. Recuperating from an injury suffered at the hands of pirates, KIRK HAMILTON falls in love with Elaine Jeffries (Kasey Rogers) in Australia, who is already engaged to local rancher Martin Shannon (played with a stunning lack of depth by Bill Kennedy). However, Elaine cannot resist KIRK HAMILTON’s giddy charms, and very quickly we got ourselves a good old-fashioned love triangle. The pirates come back and kidnap Elaine, prompting KIRK HAMILTON and Martin Shannon to sail after them. Cannons boom, guns blaze, some hand-to-hand combat gets everyone’s heart rate up, and fire breaks out. Up until this point, the movie is boilerplate good guys vs. pirates stuff, and even a little fun at that. But then Two Lost Worlds’ narrator pays a return visit, and the pirate movie transmogrifies in a matter of thirty seconds into a lost world picture. “KIRK HAMILTON’s small boatload of survivors slipped away from the doomed vessels into the darkness,” our narrator intones, “as the savage battle roared to a flaming climax behind them. Into the immense arms of the dark sea, through the cold night they rowed and drifted aimlessly, without compass or chart, at the mercy of wind and current.”

Like Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Two Lost Worlds sports a superfluous, jarringly intrusive narrator who happily tells us what we’re already seeing onscreen. Unlike Kubrick’s The Killing, Two Lost Worlds’ narrator (Dan Riss, who appeared in film noirs Panic in the Streets and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye) deserves an award for Most Florid, Ostentatious Narrator of all time. After the small boatload of survivors lands on an island, the narrator has more dialog than the actors. Some examples:

“Then on the second day they sighted land. Only an island perhaps, but land. Wearily they managed to bring their small boat through the turbulent surf of a strange shore.”

“And KIRK’s judgment was correct. There, just ahead, was wild fruit and berry bushes – food, at last! They rushed forward like any famished animals, as fast as their weary legs could carry them. They raced to the growing food with hungry eyes, as though fearful that the bounty might vanish like a desert mirage. Greedily, they crammed the tasty morsels, grabbing eager handfuls right and left; the simple fruits were the most royal feast they had ever known.”

“Even in the midst of their dreadful trials, the old human emotions made themselves heard.”

“Tragically at the site of the small isolated waterhole they forgot their weariness and dashed headlong to the precious liquid. But even wearier than he was thirsty, Shannon stopped in his tracks to rest. The others flung themselves feverishly down the slope, to quench the agony of parched lips and swollen tongues, threw themselves avidly at the edge of the pool – WATER. They plunged their burning faces to the wonderful water and drank with delirious joy.”

“Children know no danger. The whole earth is their playground.”

Our favorite bit comes right after they land on the island, in a shot of the survivors surveying the landscape in front of them:

NARRATOR: “Grimly his eyes met the glowering, forbidding aspect of a barren and desolate landscape. Harsh and cruel, it conveyed a silent, brooding menace.”

JAMES ARNESS (very un-grimly): “Well let’s move inland.”

Criswellian.

At any rate, the castaways wind up on an island populated by dinosaurs battling each other to the death. Like King Dinosaur, the “dinosaurs” are real reptiles tearing each other to shreds in an unsimulated fight. Unlike King Dinosaur, this footage was lifted directly from One Million B.C.

One Million B.C. was a Hal Roach production from 1940 starring Victor Mature, Carole Landis, and Lon Chaney, Jr. It is not nearly as well remembered as its remake, 1966’s One Million Years B.C., starring Raquel Welch, but was still very popular in its day, garnering two Academy Award™ nominations for Best Musical Score and Best Special Effects. The “Special Effects” in question were real mammals and reptiles being abused and killed onscreen, using processing shots and rear projection. This grotesque technique is known in fandom as “slurpasaur,” and the slurpasaur footage from One Million B.C. has been raided for use in other movies numerous times since.

Two Lost Worlds’ director Norman Dawn, whose short cinematic career was spent mostly in the silent era, grabbed Million’s footage of an alligator and iguana destroying each other and inserted it into the last reel of his pirate yarn. He may not have been responsible for the footage initially, but Dawn still has blood on his hands. A pox upon him, and everyone involved in this and One Million B.C.

ACTORS OF NOTE: James Arness. Also, female lead Kasey Rogers (of Bewitched fame) looks pretty fetching during the island scenes.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: High seas pirate tale that inexplicably morphs into a dinosaur movie in the last ten minutes.

VOLCANO: Yes.

ISLAND BLOWS UP/SINKS TO BOTTOM OF OCEAN: Pretty damn close.

ANIMAL ABUSE: Heaps.

F/X: Footage of reptiles mostly taken from 1940’s One Million B.C.

MST3K: No.

THE LAND UNKNOWN (1957)

Normally, this sort of thing would be right up our alley. Scientific helicopter expedition goes down during a storm in Antarctica, landing in a tropical environment populated with dinosaurs? Genius. Give writer Jerome Bixby, who wrote four episodes of Star Trek, including “Mirror, Mirror,” a rubber cigar. It makes absolutely no sense, is scientifically preposterous, and we are delighted. These are the kinds of movies that fired our imaginations as kids. Consider our disbelief willingly suspended, and divvy up the popcorn.

Yet, despite already having an actor lumbering around in a ridiculous T Rex suit and a sham of an Elasmosaurus at their disposal, the filmmakers still went the Bert I. Gordon route and filmed two monitor lizards tearing each other to shreds. Two magnificent creatures forced to destroy each other for the sake of making a buck. At 38:51, as one of the monitor lizards menaces Shirley Patterson, a stagehand even throws a hapless loris to the ground.

Director Virgil Vogel gave us 1956’s The Mole People, but he can blow us all the same. Did you know Jack Arnold was originally tapped to direct this movie? Maybe it wouldn’t have been a snuff film under his tutelage.

ACTORS OF NOTE: Jock Mahoney I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Filmed in CinemaScope. Giant flesh-eating plant five years before The Day of the Triffids was made into a movie.

VOLCANO: No.

ISLAND BLOWS UP/SINKS TO BOTTOM OF OCEAN: No.

ANIMAL ABUSE: Loads.

F/X: Actor in a dinosaur suit; thoroughly unconvincing model of an Elasmosaurus.

MST3K: Lord knows it should've been.

KING DINOSAUR (1955)

King Dinosaur is actually the easiest of these movies to keep straight for one key reason: it is far and away the worst movie we watched for this article. Its premise – that a rogue planet (“Nova”) drifted across the galaxy and fell into orbit around our sun – is asinine. Its special effects are perhaps the worst we’ve witnessed in our lifetimes; Sally Handly pointed out that the rocket ships in the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serial looked like CGI compared to the opening shots of King Dinosaur.  Its music score, courtesy Louis Palange and Gene Garf, made us all want to drive thick, rusty nails into our skulls. Despite the fact that it clocks in at barely 60 minutes, it makes extensive use of stock footage, padding a script that is, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent.

The puzzle pieces begin falling neatly into place when you realize King Dinosaur is the directorial debut of Bert I. Gordon, the auteur responsible for The Amazing Colossal Man. Ah yes, Bert I. Gordon. “Mr. B.I.G.” The man who dragged Peter Graves into his career nadir (Beginning of the End), the director whose singular vision gave us Attack of the Puppet People, War of the Colossal Beast, and Earth vs. the Spider in 1958 alone. No wonder the four scientists in King Dinosaur flying a rocket ship to planet Nova behave nothing at all like scientists. No wonder none of them points out that EVERYTHING on Nova – fauna and flora – is so exactly like Earth as to be unbelievable. No wonder a chemist, Dr. Patricia Bennett (Wanda Curtis, in apparently the only film she ever made) screams hysterically at the sight of a snake. No wonder they kill the snake, even though it’s not a threat. No wonder that, even though she and her colleagues are the first human beings to ever set foot on an alien planet, Dr. Bennett is dying to go home after a few hours. “Look, let’s get outta here and get back to the ship. I’m scared to death and I don’t mind admitting it,” she says. Then: “let the next people pay it a visit. Let’s get back to the ship and get outta here before something awful happens to all of us.”

Of course all of this is happening. Bert I. Gordon directed this movie. Of course. He even helped write what passes for its screenplay. Now it makes sense that four scientists, the proverbial cream of America’s scientific crop, are sent to explore an alien planet and somehow get lost on their first expedition outside their ship. Of course Dr. Richard Gordon is such a misogynist that he refuses to let either of the women scientists take a guard shift at night. This is a Bert I. Gordon movie. They kill a gigantic, evil bug and no one has any interest whatsoever in examining it. Of course. Bert I. Gordon directed it. Makes sense now.

But then we arrive at the movie’s final reel and find that the title character, residing on an island in the middle of a huge lake, is not a dinosaur at all, but a hapless iguana that Gordon glued a horn onto to make look fearsome. The rookie director didn’t have the budget for stop motion creatures, or even actors in dinosaur suits, so he used real reptiles for the climactic battle scene; a real iguana (you can see a stage hand holding its tail briefly) and a real baby alligator are sicced on each other and rip each other apart in an unsimulated battle, all for the benefit of Bert I. Gordon making a buck. Disgusting and unforgivable.

And if watching a bona-fide snuff film isn’t enough for you, Dr. Ralph Martin then says, “I brought the atom bomb. I think it’s a good time to use it.” Say what…? The four scientists sail back to the mainland and the bomb goes off, destroying everything – for no reason whatsoever – on the island that the scientists flew months to see and explore during humankind’s first trip to an alien planet.

“Well,” says Dr. Martin, “we’ve done it.”

“Yeah,” says Dr. Gordon, “we sure have done it. We’ve brought civilization to planet Nova. C’mon, let’s get home.”

Fuck Bert I. Gordon.

ACTORS OF NOTE: Narrator Marvin Miller (Robby the Robot’s voice).

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Bert I. Gordon’s first movie. Only four actors appear, none of whom can act. Godawful musical score. Worst dialog you’ll ever hear. Static, moribund direction. Characters are romantically involved. Liberal – nay, gratuitous – use of stock footage. Only one hour long.

VOLCANO: Yes.

ISLAND BLOWS UP AND/OR SINKS TO BOTTOM OF OCEAN: Yes.

ANIMAL ABUSE: Tons.

F/X: Absurd.

MST3K: Yes, episode 210.


THE LOST CONTINENT (1968)
No, not "Lost Continent" - this is "The Lost Continent."

Hammer's foray into the Lost World Idiom has caught a lot of flak over the years. Contemporary reviewers were wholly unimpressed, and even Tom Johnson's and Deborah Del Vecchio's dispensable Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography calls it "...a stylistic mess, totally absurd..." That it most certainly is, but we can see an upshot to it all. In what other movie do you find a distraught lounge pianist who has just that day sworn off boozing - because his drunken actions in a lifeboat the night before resulted in one man being eaten by a shark and another shot in the stomach with a flare gun - infuriating a beautiful young woman by spurning her romantic advances? "You want to know something, Harry?" she asks him after he hurls a glass into the wall (nearly killing a third man, the bartender). "You're a bore when you're sober. Did you hear me? You'd better start drinking again, and pretty soon! It might make a man out of you!" She then goes to get it on with a South American despot's henchman, but he is attacked and eaten by a wondrously fake killer octopus. This is the sort of entertainment the Ranting Russell staff can get solidly behind.

You needn't be embarrassed if parts of The Lost Continent seem wholly confusing to you. At no point during its 91-minute runtime does this movie make a shred of sense. To escape their sordid pasts, A group of malcontents and miscreants board a ship loaded with barrels whose contents explode when exposed to water. Ship springs a leak, the crew jumps into a lifeboat, anticipating the ship will blow up, and the captain and the malcontents hop into a different lifeboat (except for the bartender), drift aimlessly for a time, experience the aforementioned shark/flare gun debacle, and wind up back at the ship they deserted, where vessel and bartender are no worse for wear. It was a good five minutes before anyone on staff understood what was going on. "Wait a minute - are they back on the same ship...?" Indeed they are. Man-eating seaweed pulls the ship into an area of the Sargasso Sea littered with other shipwrecks, and our antiheroes find a group of 13th century spaniards (we think?) worshipping a boy-God, "El Supremo." Who comes up with this kind of shit? (Lovable arch-conservative, commie-bashing English writer Dennis Wheatley, it turns out, whose book Uncharted Seas is the basis for this movie.)

"That's all well and good," you say, "but is this film innovative?" Indeed it is. We meet El Supremo as he's executing one of his minions by throwing him into a pit where he's eaten by a monster that is so cool, George Lucas and Richard Marquand stole it and put it in the opening of Return of the Jedi. The Lost Continent's impact on popular culture resonates even now.

Did we mention that a monster crab and and monster scorpion that look like they wandered off the set of a Showa-era Godzilla movie duke it out near the end? Our intrepid miscreants use their deadly cargo to blow up the Spaniards, and it turns out El Supremo is the long-lost son of one of the women passengers. He dies and they bury him at sea. And there is no lost continent - just an island, of which we see about 20 square feet.

Run - don't walk - to watch The Lost Continent.

ACTORS OF NOTE: This is the movie where singer/songwriter Dana Gillespie appears in her legendary plunging neckline/cleavage-exposing blouse. Not to be missed.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: One of three Hammer films based on Dennis Wheatley books, the others being 1968's The Devil Rides Out, and 1976's To the Devil a Daughter.

VOLCANO: Nope.

ISLAND BLOWS UP AND/OR SINKS TO BOTTOM OF OCEAN: Does our heroes' setting everything on fire count?

ANIMAL ABUSE: None whatsoever. Jeebus bless Hammer Films.

F/X: Did Teruyoshi Nakano proud.

MST3K: No need.

PLANET OF DINOSAURS (1977; released 1981)

There’s no way around it: director James Shea’s only movie is really, really terrible. Painfully awful dialog, a cast of non-actors, baffling edits, gaping plot holes, day-for-night shots that are clearly day… Planet has all the main ingredients for 80+ minutes that you simply will never get back. And yet, we love this movie. Unashamedly and unabashedly.

In a setup unnervingly similar to King Dinosaur, a group of human space travelers crash on a distant planet populated by dinosaurs. They say and do dumb things but somehow carve out an existence in a hostile land millions of years behind our own. Did we mention this thing goes on for over 80 minutes?

Like Equinox, Planet of Dinosaurs was a project by several young men with movie business aspirations, including Doug Beswick, who later worked on The Empire Strikes Back, The Terminator, and Aliens. But for a still of the brief but very memorable spider sequence in the 144th issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland, most of us on staff would never have known about Planet of Dinosaurs (sometimes erroneously called Planet of the Dinosaurs). It quietly slid into the realm of a gaggle of obscure stop motion pics from the same era like Laserblast and The Alien Factor. Unlike those films, however, Planet has some genuinely outstanding special effects, and enough dinosaurs to make the rest of the film’s stark imperfections well worth muddling through. Watching 70s sexpot Derna Wylde fight dinosaurs in an inexplicably skimpy outfit doesn’t hurt, either. An anniversary edition put out by Bayview Entertainment in 2014 features a pretty decent commentary track by the four main principles, plus a couple of early shorts by The Master himself, Willis O’Brien. All in all, one of the more entertaining movies on this list.

ACTORS OF NOTE: Harvey Shain is credited as “Ponytail Guy” in Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. No shame there. And Max Thayer’s first role was in Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. Kinda cool, if you think about it.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Wonderful stop-motion dinosaurs besieged by a movie you wouldn’t otherwise piss on.

VOLCANO: No.

ISLAND BLOWS UP/SINKS TO BOTTOM OF OCEAN: If only.

ANIMAL ABUSE: None, thankfully.

F/X: Far and away the best thing about it.

MST3K: Nope, but showed up on Rifftrax.

THE LAST DINOSAUR (1977)

If you’re looking for someone to confirm your simplistic judgment that The Last Dinosaur is amateurish and silly – what with its men-in-dinosaur-suits and puppet special effects – you’ve come to the wrong asinine blog. Truly, blogs are the dregs of civilization. Truly. We understand this.

Nevertheless, we love The Last Dinosaur for a number of reasons. It’s a Rankin/Bass movie, an American/Japanese co-production with Tsuburaya Productions, sort of like King Kong Escapes, that they did with Toho. And you see, we love all Rankin/Bass efforts. Each and every one, from Mad Monster Party to Wind in the Willows. They were inescapable if you grew up in the 60s and 70s, and your heart is cold indeed if you don’t still love Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.

There are other reasons, too:

1) This movie stars Richard Boone.

2) Richard Boone’s character’s name is Maston Thrust. ‘Nuff said.

3) A deliciously awful The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly-esque musical queue sounds throughout the movie to force drama onto scenes that need serious help. A staff favorite, mocked many weekend nights after a few beers.

4) Our explorers are underneath the polar ice caps, but there’s still sunlight and blue sky. With no explanation. A continuity issue that directors Alexander Grasshoff and Tsugunobu Kotani thought irrelevant. Brilliant.

5) Our intrepid heroes use a ship called the “Polar Borer” to drill through the polar ice caps into a valley populated by dinosaurs. They leave the Polar Borer in a lake, whereupon the T-Rex discovers it, picks it up and hauls it off to his bone field. Later, a member of the expedition happens upon it, explaining to his colleagues that it’s a mere two miles away, and he can get it up and running again. A couple of short scenes later we cut to him pushing it into the water. He has somehow transported a five-ton steel drill two miles from the bone field to the lake. No explanation, and no need for an explanation. Writer William Overgard wanted to keep the story moving forward, and we appreciate his thoughtfulness in sparing us a long scene that would probably have been tedious anyway.

6) Luther Rackley, who appeared only in this and The Fish that Saved Pittsburg, plays Bunta, Maston Thrust’s longtime African partner, whose height makes everyone at a press conference gasp in amazement (indeed, Rackley stood an imposing 6’10”). Later, in an eve-of-the-expedition dinner, Bunta appears in full stereotypical African regalia, replete with a paisley design. ‘The hell…? 70s = Godhead.

ACTORS OF NOTE: Richard Boone. Joan Van Ark. Steven Keats. A veritable who’s-who of 2^nd-tier 70s actors.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Goofy looking Rankin/Bass dinosaur that makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside because we love all things Rankin/Bass.

VOLCANO: Yes. The whole land, hidden under the polar ice caps, is heated by one.

ISLAND BLOWS UP/SINKS TO BOTTOM OF OCEAN: Nah.

ANIMAL ABUSE: At one point some dead chickens are tossed around in jest, and they look real. Hallelujah humanity.

F/X: See “Distinguishing Characteristics.”

MST3K: Perhaps in the new season, now that Joel Hodgson’s kickstarter campaign succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.