Line #6 Film/TheBeastOfHollowMountain


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/beast_of_hollow_mountain.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:300:"[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 I was expecting something hairier, like a yeti, or a chupacabra]]...."]]
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4	''The Beast of Hollow Mountain'' is a 1956 WeirdWest film starring Guy Madison. It was the first-ever [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant monster movie]] in color, beating out the Creator/{{Toho}} blockbuster Film/{{Rodan}} by a matter of months.
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6	Amidst rumors that the eponymous mountain outside a small village in Mexico may be cursed as farmers and their cattle never return from it, American rancher Jimmy Ryan (Madison) butts heads with the hard-headed Enrique (who believes that Jimmy is trying to steal away his fiance, Sarita), pals around with fellow rancher Pancho and his son Panchito, and attempts to solve the mystery of why people and animals who wander into Hollow Mountain never seem to return. He and his friends eventually discover that a Tyrannosaurus Rex lives there, and havoc ensues.
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8	This movie was featured in the fifth episode of the reboot of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000.'' Tropes pertaining to said episode can be found [[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S11E05TheBeastOfHollowMountain here]].
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12	!!Tropes found in this movie include:
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14	* AnimalStampede: A cattle stampede is caused by the T. Rex shortly before the climax.
15	* TheAlcoholic: Pancho "drinks to forget his wife"...but it's likely he'd drink anyway. This is PlayedForLaughs.
16	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: The theropod dinosaur is seen lifting a man... indeed, it appears to be ''strangling'' him... with its tiny little arms.
17	* BeefBandage: After his fight with Enrique, Felipe hands Jimmy a raw steak which he puts on his black eye while talking to Don Pedro
18	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Enrique is willing to do anything to undermine Jimmy's business. Even when he actually wins and Jimmy plans to leave town at Sarita's insistence, he still tries to cause a stampede to steal Jimmy's cattle.
19	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[spoiler: Enrique is ''strangled to death'' by the dinosaur. [[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S11E05TheBeastOfHollowMountain Gypsy]] remarks that it must be the only instance of that sort of death in all of Hollywood.]]
20	* DeathOfTheHypotenuse: While it's hardly uncommon for a western LoveTriangle to end with one of the competitors dying, this film is the first to have one of them ''[[spoiler: choked to death by a dinosaur.]]''
21	* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: Much like fellow ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000''-riffed movie ''Film/{{Avalanche}},'' the movie is mostly spent on introducing the characters and their relationships with each other before the eponymous beast actually appears in full in the last act. In fact you could cut the monster out ''entirely'' and the only plot hole would be how Pancho and Enrique died.
22	* DiabolusExNihilo: The titular beast. The film is a typical generic Western for the first three quarters, and then, out of nowhere, a dinosaur attacks. If one wasn't aware of the title or pitched premise one would be left with the impression that some crazy [[ExecutiveMeddling meddling executive shoehorned a T rex]] into an otherwise ordinary Mexican romance.
23	* EnemyMine: When the dinosaur pops up during Jimmy and Enrique's climactic showdown, they immediately call an unspoken truce.
24	* GenreShift: The first two thirds of the movie is a standard western drama. It doesn't become a monster movie until the final act.
25	* GratuitousSpanish: Almost every sentence, ''especially'' from Jimmy. Which wouldn't be too bad if he didn't have about 8 different ways of pronouncing his best friend Felipe's name, all of them wrong (usually settling in somewhere around "Fellupy", as in rhymes with Penelope).
26	* HairTriggerTemper: Enrique's main problem. While Jimmy is legitimately doing things like undercutting Enrique's business and hitting on his fiancee, Enrique massively overreacts to all of it. He screams at his fiancee just for talking to the guy, starts fist fights in the middle of town, and at the end plans to start a cattle stampede in the middle of town just to get the better of his rival. Sarita probably wouldn't even be tempted to spend so much time with Jimmy if Enrique wasn't such a complete ass.
27	* HesJustHiding: In-universe: Panchito adamantly refuses to believe that [[spoiler: his father is dead and goes into the Hollow Mountain in search of him]]. It nearly results in him being killed by the dinosaur. It's not helped by Jimmy outright lying to him,[[spoiler: insisting that his father is still alive and wandering the swamp, but that Panchito can't go look for him.]]
28	* ImprobableInfantSurvival: Despite coming close to it several times, Panchito is able to survive all of his encounters with the dinosaur.
29	* KarmaHoudini: Subverted, but only barely. For all of Enrique's {{Jerkass}} tendencies throughout the movie, and even at the end when he bluntly (and remorselessly) confesses to his outright villainy, the other characters never give him more than a mild rebuke. He even seems on the verge of making peace with Jimmy during their EnemyMine moment at the climax. [[spoiler:The dinosaur thinks differently. Exit Enrique.]]
30	* LeftHanging: The movie abruptly ends after the defeat of the dinosaur, with no details about what happened to the surviving main characters [[spoiler: (such as Jimmy, Sarita, or Panchito)]] afterwards, or how the people back in town react to [[spoiler: Enrique's death]] or even if Panchito ever accepted [[spoiler: his father's death]].
31	* LivingDinosaurs: Turns out that a Tyrannosaurus Rex was living in Hollow Montain.
32	* TheLoad: Pancho is such a pathetic waste of a human being that Panchito, his young son, takes care of him rather than the reverse.
33	* LoveTriangle: While Sarita is marrying Enrique, she also grows more and more attracted to Jimmy, who wants her for himself.
34	* MightyWhitey: Jimmy is the most competent and rational member of the cast and the only one who believes that there is a reasonable explanation behind the mystery of Hollow Mountain. Most of the locals are too afraid to check. In the end, he is the one who ultimately does the monster in as the rest of the cast watches. [[spoiler: He also hooks up with Sarita after Enrique is killed by the dinosaur]].
35	* MissingMom: Panchito's mother passed away some time before the events of the movie, and Pancho [[DrowningMySorrows drinks heavily because of it]]. [[spoiler: Then Panchito's father dies as well.]]
36	* NiceJobBreakingItHero:[[spoiler: Jimmy is afraid of hurting Panchito by telling him the truth about his father's death, and instead insists that Pancho is still alive and searching the swamp for his lost cattle, and tells everyone else to tell him this too. As a direct result, Panchito runs into the swamp to search for his father and almost becomes the Beast's lunch. By the time someone does finally tell him the truth, he's become so convinced in the lie that he can't possibly believe it. To be fair, Panchito might have refused to believe it even if he wasn't lied to, but Jimmy's lies certainly didn't help.]]
37	* QuicksandSucks: The tar pit equivalent, which threatens both the human and non-human occupants of the area. [[spoiler: Jimmy tricks the T-rex into stepping into it and drowning to death in the film's climax.]]
38	* {{Rancher}}: Jimmy and Felipe own their own ranch, a point of tension with fellow rancher Enrique.
39	* RunawayBride: Sarita is in the middle of enacting this trope straight before the wedding is interrupted by the monster-induced stampede and Panchito's escape to try and locate his father.
40	* TheSevenWesternPlots: This movie would be an unremarkable, run of the mill Ranch story if it wasn't for the dinosaur.
41	* ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks: Jimmy throws a knife at the dinosaur while hanging from a rope in the swamp. He nails it ''right between the eyes''.
42	* VillainBall: Enrique essentially wins the feud between himself and Jimmy when Jimmy decides to cede the girl to his rival and leave town after finishing this year's cattle drive. But Enrique decides he can't live with Jimmy having any sort of profit from his time in Mexico and sends some of his men to stampede Jimmy's herd so that he can't sell it. [[spoiler:This puts Enrique and his men in a position to be attacked by the dinosaur.]]
43	* WeirdWest: An early entry in the genre, and the first to feature a dinosaur.
44	* WhatADrag: When Pancho's horse is startled by firecrackers, it bolts and Pancho falls off. He gets his foot caught in the stirrup and is dragged along behind the horse until he is [[MightyWhitey saved by a passing American]].

Context Film / TheBeastOfHollowMountain