Land Before Time and Time Before Now

[Duncan Edwards]

This discussion has it's roots in a topic begun by PM2K in Nuggets. It kind of led me to some thoughts of days gone by when we would wait for years to get one look at even a modest scene. Anybody else have an experience like this?

Land that Time Forgot Lobby Card.jpg

Did she do this before or after her best-known work, "Bucket (as we called it) Of Barbed Wire"?

This was actually shot a couple of years before "Bouquet of Barbed Wire"(1976). Must be a winner.

I saw this lobby card at the Plaza Theater in West Nashville right before the movie was released. They did show one of those "the making of" things before the feature that day. It never occurred to me to look for it until now -

The Land That Time Forgot - Making of Featurette

I had seen the lobby card so my twelve year old brain was already racing and when the preview came on I was all over it like white on rice. There's a moment near the end where you see the caveman chasing Susan and they are headed downhill toward a swampy area. My "Q" meter was pegged at absolute max and then it cuts away. I was back in the theater the first Saturday after this movie opened and loved both movie and scene.

A year later I had seen the trailer for At the Earth's Core where Doug McCLure gets bogged while running from a dinosaur. Just as before I was in my seat at the first opportunity hoping that Caroline Munro might find a way but...thhpppp!

Trailer for At the Earth's Core

Even though it was a male scene it left me with high hopes for yet the next summer when The People that Time Forgot was released. Despite the complete lack of a quicksand scene this was a better movie for three reasons -

1. Patrick Wayne - Son of John - Being sober all the time made him much better at pulling off this kind of movie. Enjoyable guy to watch.

2. and 3. - Dana Gillespie - Caroline Munro was a world class knockout and a decent actress but when you're 15 years old there are just some things that escape your attention. And some that don't.

dana gillespie Amicus 10.jpg

Three years - Two scenes. That's what it was like in the old days, children. Appreciate what you've got. I was fortunate to be among the last to grow up with a single screen neighborhood movie theater within bicycle distance of home. Saw a lot of great awful movies there looking for things that would interest us.

[Fred588]

This is a reply strictly to your mention of the last single screen theater in town. Would you believe that in the nearby town of Marshall, county seat of Searcy County, with a population of around only 2000, there is STILL an operating DRIVE IN theater? Living proof that here in Arkansas we are advancing as fast as humanly possible toward the 20th century.

Even crazier, I left the town of Canyon, Texas in 1997. There was a single screen theater there that was a complete throwback to the theaters I occasionally went to as a teen in the early 60s in Massachusetts. Besides the single screen, it had the same very stale popcorn, about the same percentage of broken seats, fallen ceiling tiles, and bubblegum under the seats that still worked, but you could get in for a Friday afternoon matinee for $1.00. Crazier yet, I looked it up before typing this and it IS STILL THERE and STILL operating. I even found a picture of it and true to type the first three letters of THEATER are missing from its exterior façade. I think the last movie I saw there was "Anaconda" which was an absolute disaster of a movie that could have been saved if it had had a quicksand scene.

[Duncan Edwards]

This is a reply strictly to your mention of the last single screen theater in town. Would you believe that in the nearby town of Marshall, county seat of Searcy County, with a population of around only 2000, there is STILL an operating DRIVE IN theater? Living proof that here in Arkansas we are advancing as fast as humanly possible toward the 20th century.

Would you believe there is still a drive-in theater operating on the highway in rural Tennessee as you head to Camp MPV? Must be the kind of area that quicksand studios tend to inhabit.

... I think the last movie I saw there was "Anaconda" which was an absolute disaster of a movie that could have been saved if it had had a quicksand scene.

I saw that one as well hoping against hope only to be disappointed yet again. When Kari Wuhrer's character had "disposable" written all over her so when she got off the boat and was roaming around in the dark jungle I thought we might get lucky. Of course not. I think the last thing I saw at my place was Star Trek - The Motion Picture. As the years went by I was pulled away to fancier places like everybody else.

Of course today the real missing ingredient is the lack of appropriate good "B" to "Z" grade movies in such venues. You don't find low to medium budget movies where everyone looks like they are really trying to do something good like you used to. This was always fertile ground for quicksand scenes. Great lousy epics like Frogs or Swamp Thing might give you hope even if they missed the target. Just the regular "popcorn" grade fare on the screen was entertaining. At least it was for unsophisticated 9-16 year old boys who only had the three network channels at home. Martial arts movies, Viva Knievel!, Godzilla vs Megalon, Godzilla vs the Smog Monster, Godzilla...you name it. Any of Burt Reynolds redneck epics like Gator, White Lightning, Smokey and the Bandit, W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings were huge. Empire of the Ants had about a dozen missed opportunities in it but was so stupid we didn't care. The Giant Spider Invasion was much the same. Now kids have 200 channels and everything everywhere online. My development as a human being probably would have stopped at about age 14 if I had access to the stuff I do now.