Mesa of Lost Women (Ormond/Tevos, 1953)

[david hare]

Could someone recommend which of the currently available Aplha and Image discs is the better of this lost (for me) jewel?

[Tribe]

I have the Image release from the strangely titled Femme Fatale Collection (which includes Devil Girl From Mars, The Astounding She-Monster along with Mesa of Lost Women), I can only speculate that the versions included in this set are identical to the individual Image releases of the same titles. In any event, the transfer appears acceptable to me...it has lots of little specks and tears, as well as a faint line along the left hand side of the screen. It's all likely to be expected with B-fare like this. It also has some degree of what I call "flutter" in the picture...where the screen seems to flit just a tad at some intervals. None of this bugs me, but it might be distracting to others.

Having said all that, the picture is more than acceptable, I think.

[david hare]

A thousand thanx!

Femmes Fatales Collection it is! Whoops - Femme Fatale! A thousand women in one.

[Tribe]

Well, its tough to beat the price on that Femme Fatale package...I thought the Devil Girl From Mars movie was the best looking of the three...The Astounding She-Monster looks exactly as it did when I saw it on black and white tv back in the mid-60s as a kid...which is pretty bad. Let me know what you think after you've taken a look at Mesa of Lost Women...I hope I didn't lead you astray!

[HerrSchreck]

Wow!! How did I miss this topic from you Dave??

MESA OF LOST WOMEN no less! Photographed by an -in-purgatory Karl Struss... and you'd never know it looking at the film.

With an assist by fucking GILBERT WARRENTON!! Who was Paul Leni's man in the USA w THE CAT & THE CANARY, THE MAN WHO LAUGHS... and he also photog'd the blindingly excellent LONESOME by Fejos. He even shot Borzage's visually stunning (but melodramatically insipid) HUMORESQUE from 1920... beautiful location shooting all over the lower east side of NYC, great shots off the main character's tenement fire escape on the old Bowery looking right at the old Third Avenue Elevated subway line. By the time he did the assist on MESA he was waist deep in B Westerns.

The Image disc is from Wade Williams who owns the vault materials on most of these 50's schlocko films, and his discs are always going to be better than Alpha crud, which is always a last resort. I have that FEMME FATALE set that Tribe's talking about above.. and boy, the films are all pretty bad. If you've been battling imsomnia, throw on Devil Gril From Mars, boy. Phew, is that a clunker or what!?

ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER is absolutely positively one of the cheapest, nothing movies ever made. Tick it off in the so-bad-life-is-too-short-to-waste-on-this-goddamn-fucking-shit category. And this is coming from me who nourishes on the tit of these kinds of nutrients. The camp element evaporates within the first five minutes.

Still and all, and for reasons I'm not clear on, I'm glad I have the films.

[Yojimbo]

Wow!! How did I miss this topic from you Dave??

MESA OF LOST WOMEN no less! Photographed by an -in-purgatory Karl Struss... and you'd never know it looking at the film.

With an assist by fucking GILBERT WARRENTON!! Who was Paul Leni's man in the USA w THE CAT & THE CANARY, THE MAN WHO LAUGHS... and he also photog'd the blindingly excellent LONESOME by Fejos. He even shot Borzage's visually stunning (but melodramatically insipid) HUMORESQUE from 1920... beautiful location shooting all over the lower east side of NYC, great shots off the main character's tenement fire escape on the old Bowery looking right at the old Third Avenue Elevated subway line. By the time he did the assist on MESA he was waist deep in B Westerns.

The Image disc is from Wade Williams who owns the vault materials on most of these 50's schlocko films, and his discs are always going to be better than Alpha crud, which is always a last resort. I have that FEMME FATALE set that Tribe's talking about above.. and boy, the films are all pretty bad. If you've been battling imsomnia, throw on Devil Gril From Mars, boy. Phew, is that a clunker or what!?

ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER is absolutely positively one of the cheapest, nothing movies ever made. Tick it off in the so-bad-life-is-too-short-to-waste-on-this-goddamn-fucking-shit category. And this is coming from me who nourishes on the tit of these kinds of nutrients. The camp element evaporates within the first five minutes.

Still and all, and for reasons I'm not clear on, I'm glad I have the films.

What I want to know is: who wrote, and played, that 'hypnotic' guitar riff?

[HerrSchreck]

wut?

[Yojimbo]

wut?

surely you're not telling me you don't remember the flamenco-style guitar riff thats used to heighten tension at key moments?

[HerrSchreck]

Oh, the way you said "riff" I was thinking divebombing electric guitar complete w whammy bar or something.

[Yojimbo]

Oh, the way you said "riff" I was thinking divebombing electric guitar complete w whammy bar or something.

well, I've never looked it up but I think it means something like 'repeated musical phrase', or somesuch: yeah, Hendrix feedback, a la Woodstock 'Star-Spangled Banner' would have been interesting!

[Tribe]

If you've been battling imsomnia, throw on Devil Gril From Mars, boy. Phew, is that a clunker or what!?

True...but isn't Patricia Laffan hot looking in that Martian bondage-rubber suit?

ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER is absolutely positively one of the cheapest, nothing movies ever made. Tick it off in the so-bad-life-is-too-short-to-waste-on-this-goddamn-fucking-shit category. And this is coming from me who nourishes on the tit of these kinds of nutrients. The camp element evaporates within the first five minutes.

Yeah, this thing has no redeeming value whatsoever...but man, when I was a kid in the sixties growing up in Cleveland this thing seemed to always be on heavy rotation on Ghoulardi's (aka Ernie Anderson, father of director PT Anderson) Shock Theater (which, in turn, had an emminent influence on me and my taste for junk pop culture for ever more). I seem to recall, although it could've perhaps happened with some other schlock horror B movie, that Ghoulardi may have inserted himself into the movie on more than one ocassion following the She Monster around, something he often did with other movies...or suddenly insert a clip of some old guy licking his nose to the tune of The Rivingtons' Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow.

In any event, Astounding She Monster fascinated me and scared the crap out of me as I recall. Maybe it was the image of this glowing babe in that outfit that appeared to be worn so tight she looked nude wandering in the woods in the middle of the night...I dunno. Total crap, but its somehow imprinted on my brain.

Edit: See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQcje5pdVGE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for typical Ghoulardi fare.

[Orlac]

Oh, the way you said "riff" I was thinking divebombing electric guitar complete w whammy bar or something.

well, I've never looked it up but I think it means something like 'repeated musical phrase', or somesuch: yeah, Hendrix feedback, a la Woodstock 'Star-Spangled Banner' would have been interesting!

At least it makes sense when appearing in a Latino flavoured flick like Mesa. It's a gangrene thumb when it was reused for Ed Wood's best (technically speaking) feature Jail Bait.

[HerrSchreck]

Just ran across this, and I reallized I never answered this-- only a schlock goon like me would know I guess. But you can catch that 'flamenco' style strumming duplicated exactly--as in same soundtrack-- in Ed Wood Jr.'s glorious JAILBAIT. Same shit repeated over and over throughout the film. Only more incongrous, bless ol Ed.

I don't know if it was recorded specifically for one or the other film, but it does get fuller (not as in Delores, who is in BOTH of these films heh heh) play in Mesa, where our busty Tarantalla does her clip joint dance before Nurse George "Ro Man" Barrows walks in and fucks things up for our protagonist loonie, trying to drag him out and back into the hosp.

[Orlac]

Said music was composed by Hoyt Curtain, later a veteran of many a Hanna Barbera cartoon