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Pow · Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2024 3:01 pm Post subject: The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)

This was a significant production when it hit cinemas in 1935 and was amongst the most expensive films made up until that point. It was co-produced and co-directed by King Kong makers Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper.

The concept art was by Willis O'Brien and Byron L. Crabbe. One epic scene depicts men swimming with swordfish in a vast arena of water. The sequence was dropped. Obie wanted to flood the arena and have men riding on giant swordfish. It was too costly, so that had to be taken out.

The Last days of Pompeii was not a big box office success.

Harryhausen: The Lost Movies by John Walsh.

Bud Brewster

scotpens · Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2024 7:36 pm Post subject:

The music for The Last Days of Pompeii is credited to Roy Webb, though it's very much in the Max Steiner mode. Some of Steiner's King Kong music cues can be heard in the final 10 minutes.

Bud Brewster · Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2024 8:26 pm Post subject:

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I remember finally getting to see this moviem which I'd raed about in Famous Monsters of Filmland for years!

When I finally did see it, I was disappointed. I suspect we all were. I suspect that O'bren was equally disappointed when he had to work on this movie after he had such great ideas while he'd created King Kong!

It saddens me that Hollywood had no idea that they had such brilliant people at their disposal!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

scotpens · Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2024 11:22 pm Post subject:

Bud Brewster · Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2024 1:03 pm Post subject:

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You're right, Scot. A pyroclastic flow is every bit as terrify as lava — and it's almost impossible to escape from, because it roars down the mountain slope at 200 miles per hour — like a category 2 hurricane with a scalding hot wind and poisonous gas!

But, of course, back in the 1930s the FX portraying a pyroclastic flow would just be thick smoke blown by those large fans which Hollywood uses to create desert storms.

The audience would just think the studio was too cheap to create a "real" volcano. Rolling Eyes

Although tornadoes possess a kind of ominous beauty, a pyroclastic flow has the ominous look of inescapable death as it rushes towards you at almost half the speed of sound! Shocked

Dome collapse and pyroclastic flow at Unzen Volcano

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)