Cowboys being the archetypal movie hero for many previous movie generations, it's surprising that no one even seemed to try to combine a "real" Western with a monster movie and done it "straight" before this. And no, I'm not counting tripe such as "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" - gimmicky novelty movies wearing Western trappings." "Beast" plays fair with the audience of its day - it is a Western through and through and really is built around all the standard Western trappings of its time. And when the monster comes out to play in the final 20 minutes, it's a genuine surprise and gives the movie a badly needed jolt of energy.
It's just too bad that the use of Western screenplay staples is so clichéd - except for the actual monster plot elements ("who is stealing or eating the cattle?"), nothing that any character says or does will surprise you in any way. And someone needed to throttle the soundtrack guy down a bit - it's simultaneously overbearing and overdone.
And the special effects aren't all that great, although I can respect the amount of back breaking work that must have gone into using "replacement" animation for some of the dinosaur sequences(as opposed to the more well known stop motion techniques mastered by Harryhausen.) "Replacement animation" involves creating a new wax figure for each and every frame of the stop motion sequences (as opposed to just changing limb placement, expressions etc on several models) and it must have made such demands on the production budget that they could only use a very limited amount...and it still doesn't look very good to eyes accustomed to Harryhausen.
A devoted fan of the Western genre (and Mexican movies) will probably like this movie more than I did...but I give it credit for trying something interesting and playing it straight instead for exploitation value. (All the exploitation is in the title, nowhere else in the film).
It's just too bad that the use of Western screenplay staples is so clichéd - except for the actual monster plot elements ("who is stealing or eating the cattle?"), nothing that any character says or does will surprise you in any way. And someone needed to throttle the soundtrack guy down a bit - it's simultaneously overbearing and overdone.
And the special effects aren't all that great, although I can respect the amount of back breaking work that must have gone into using "replacement" animation for some of the dinosaur sequences(as opposed to the more well known stop motion techniques mastered by Harryhausen.) "Replacement animation" involves creating a new wax figure for each and every frame of the stop motion sequences (as opposed to just changing limb placement, expressions etc on several models) and it must have made such demands on the production budget that they could only use a very limited amount...and it still doesn't look very good to eyes accustomed to Harryhausen.
A devoted fan of the Western genre (and Mexican movies) will probably like this movie more than I did...but I give it credit for trying something interesting and playing it straight instead for exploitation value. (All the exploitation is in the title, nowhere else in the film).