Update on Roger Corman's Terrific Cult Movie "The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent"

"Viking Women and the Sea Serpent" (1957): Garden of the Gods

I ran this screen shot a while back in a blog post I did about Roger Corman's 1957 movie "The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent." You can see the original post by clicking here.

The same location as it appears today

On a recent visit to the Iverson Movie Ranch, I spotted the site of the "Viking Women" shot in Garden of the Gods. The above photo shows what the place looks like today.

The two photos are not taken from exactly the same angle, but the main rock features can still be easily identified.

The tree noted here wasn't in place yet when the movie was filmed.

This screen shot from "Viking Women" adds a little context to the shot at the top, including offering a wider view of the angular rock on which many of the Vikings are sitting and standing.

Viking whipping sequence in the Garden of the Gods

In another screen shot from the same sequence, one of the Vikings' captors whips a Viking prisoner. The whipping takes place in front of the same rock the Vikings are sitting and standing on in the shots above.

The rock's prominent vertical crack is noted here. The rock also has a smaller, more or less horizontal crack, visible near the top right corner of the frame. If you scroll back to the second photo in this post, above, you can see these same two cracks near the lower left corner of the frame. The cracks also appear again in the photo below.

The Viking whipping rock today

The prominent vertical crack and the smaller, more or less horizontal crack, help to identify the location in its contemporary setting. This same rock appears in all of the photos in this post.

Hangin' around Hangdog: Great Iverson Movie Ranch scene found in the 1941 Republic serial "Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc."

The 1941 production "Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc.," starring Ralph Byrd, is considered by many fans to be among the best serials ever made. It was the fourth and last of Republic's four Dick Tracy serials — a series that also included "Dick Tracy" (1937), "Dick Tracy Returns" (1938) and "Dick Tracy's G-Men" (1939). The last three installments all included sequences shot at Iverson.

I recently got my first look at "Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc." and ran across a particularly compelling Iverson sequence — including the above view of a dynamic rock I call Hangdog. The rock was at the center of a big shootout sequence, with one guy picking people off from on top of the rock and a bunch of other guys shooting at him from behind cars, as seen above. The shot really shows the scale of the rock, with a normal-sized man positioned atop Hangdog and dwarfed by the rock.

Hangdog is still intact, and looks like this today. Other views of the rock give a better idea of why it's called Hangdog. Click here to see a previous blog entry featuring additional shots of Hangdog.

 Stunt jump off Hangdog, Part 1

Stunt jump off Hangdog, Part 2

Stunt jump off Hangdog, Part 3

Stunt jump off Hangdog, Part 4

Included in the sequence is the above stunt jump off Hangdog — off a rock that looks to me like a shoulder — into the covered bed of a truck.

Here's what that same "shoulder" of Hangdog looks like today.

Scene from "Spy Smasher" (1942)

In a mildly amusing example of cross-promotion, the above shot from the 1942 Republic serial "Spy Smasher" includes a plug for "Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc." in the form of a set of posters on a gate.

Here's another shot of Hangdog in recent times, which I think shows the rock's two main "faces" — I tend to see it as a lion on the left and a Scooby-Doo-type dog on the right. Or another lion.

Ruh-roh! (Catch phrase often attributed to Scooby-Doo, 

above, but in fact originated by Astro on "The Jetsons")

The thing that really elevates the "Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc." shootout sequence, in my opinion, is its bird's-eye views, including the above shot of a frequently filmed area known as Devil's Pass or Vultura's Pass. That's Hangdog again at top right, above the car, although the angle makes it hard to recognize. The pass itself starts to the right of the truck and continues east, behind Hangdog.

Vultura's Palace, in "Perils of Nyoka" (1942)

The same site turns up again the following year as the location of Vultura's Palace in the seminal Republic serial "Perils of Nyoka." That's a portion of Hangdog — including the shoulder, again — at the right in the above shot. You may notice the similarity between the rock directly above the palace entrance (at top center in the above shot) and the one seen in the "two-faced" shot of Hangdog a few shots up (above the Scooby-Doo cartoon), in the top-left corner. That's because it's the same rock in both shots. For more about this location, click here.

Another bird's-eye view from the "Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc." sequence, this one shows the guy posted atop Hangdog in the foreground, with an unusual angle on Bill Rock, the large rock at left center, near the car. The road where the vehicles are parked, which would pass by the front of Vultura's Palace the following year in "Perils of Nyoka," is sometimes called Vultura's Trail. Also visible here, in the background — and not in much detail — are the Devil's Doorway Cluster and Devil's Doorway Wall, in the top-left corner. The low, horizontal rock all the way in the corner is Devil's Doorway Wall.

This shot shows the same general area from a lower angle, with a portion of Bill Rock again seen at the left, the cars parked along Vultura's Trail, and Cactus Hill in the background. The flat area below Cactus Hill is where much of the Cal West Townhomes development now stands.

Reggie Lanning, at far right, operating the camera 

for the 1930 movie "The Big House"

The cinematographer on "Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc." was the great Reggie Lanning, a Republic stalwart who was responsible for some of the best camera work at Iverson from the late 1930s through the 1940s — not the least being the serials "Zorro's Fighting Legion" (1939), "Jungle Girl" (1941) and "Perils of Nyoka" (1942). He also did some nice work at Iverson for the Roy Rogers movies "Cowboy and the Senorita" (1944) and "Song of Arizona" (1946). For more about Lanning's incredible track record at Iverson, please read this blog entry. And please click here for more about the forgotten legacy of the great cinematographers of the B-movie era.

In the above promo still for the 1930 movie "The Big House," Lanning — who was uncredited on the production — works alongside cinematographer Harold Wenstrom shooting the film's star, Chester Morris. It's a rare glimpse of Lanning at work.


If you're interested in getting your own copy of "Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc." on DVD, you should be able to buy it off Amazon by clicking on the image above.

One of Ray Harryhausen's monsters goes on a rampage at the Iverson Movie Ranch — Harryhausen died today in London at 92

Ray Harryhausen was the king of the Hollywood special effects guys in the pre-CGI days, known for the classics "Mighty Joe Young" (1949), "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (1958) and "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963), among many other movies from the 1940s into the 1980s. His stop-motion monsters were his calling card — he called his process "Dynamation" — and as it turns out, at least one of those monsters went on a rampage at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif.

It all went down in the 1957 sci-fi movie "20 Million Miles to Earth," which filmed at Iverson in late 1956.

In the monster's first appearance at Iverson, it surfaces in the Upper Gorge. The two rocks behind it can still be found at the site today: Crown Rock on the left and the Devil's Doorway Wall on the right.

Crown Rock appears again in this shot, where the hapless authorities are setting up to try to kill the monster with a flamethrower. That's Crown Rock filling up the bulk of the left half of the screen. You can also catch a glimpse of Minisub in the background, toward the right, directly above the guy in the suit. Both Crown and Minisub can still be found at Iverson. Well, technically, only about half of Crown Rock survived the Cal West Townhomes development that now fills the site — the same half seen here. The original rock extends farther to the left, as noted below.

Here's what's left of Crown Rock, which is now sort of a decoration among the condos. The rest of it was hacked away to make way for the driveway. You may notice the similarity in the shape of this rock and the one in the photo above it. The round part of the rock in the black-and-white shot, framing the guy with the flamethrower, is now concealed behind the foliage at the right of the above shot.

Detouring momentarily from the monster movie, this is what a hacked-up famous movie rock looks like. It's another view of Crown Rock in recent times, from what might be called the front of the rock. This view shows the pockmarks left when a portion of the rock was hacked away to make it fit the plan for the condo development. The rock is adjacent to one of the development's main driveways. (You may want to click on the photo to enlarge it for a better look at its hacked-up face.)

Sadly, they destroyed Crown's "twin," which was at least as interesting as the part that survived. Above is a shot of the two Crown Rock twins as they appeared in 1957 in the TV show "Have Gun, Will Travel" — each with its own Indian warrior on top. The shot is from the episode "The Yuma Treasure," which first aired Dec. 14, 1957. The twin on the right is the piece of the rock that remains today.

Back to the rampaging monster. This shot was probably one of the things the creature wound up rampaging about. The flamethrower scene takes place on the plateau at the top of Iverson's Upper Gorge, with the rock feature known as The Wall (not to be confused with the Devil's Doorway Wall) seen at the right, and Elders Peak in the background, to the right of the monster. The plateau in the foreground is now filled with condos, and The Wall was torn down to make room for them.

Another shot from the flamethrower showdown has the monster again positioned with its back to the Devil's Doorway Wall, center. At the left is Crown Rock, and the tall rock toward the right is part of the Devil's Doorway Cluster. In the background is Cactus Hill. All of these features remain in place today.

Fleeing the flamethrower, the monster emerges from the back side of Zorro's Cave, at the right. The tall rock toward the left is another familiar Iverson feature, which I call Heroes Tower because of its appearance in the NBC TV series "Heroes."

Here's a look at some of those same rocks in the summer of 2008 — including Heroes Tower and the rocks behind Zorro's Cave. This shot was taken when "Heroes" was being taped at the site, and the show's producers had added paintings to a number of the rocks.

Another pic from summer 2008 offers a better look at some of the rock paintings used in "Heroes," including the one on Heroes Tower at top right. The paint was all cleaned up as soon as the shoot was done, although I did find a couple of traces that hung around for a short time on some other rocks. Click here to see more about the "Heroes" shoot.

The pursuit of the monster in "20 Million Miles to Earth" eventually leads to another part of the Iverson Movie Ranch, where the Indian Hills Mobile Home Village now stands. In this shot a helicopter closes in as the monster is enjoying a snack in the approximate spot where the mobile home park's swimming pool is now located. Flanking the chopper are End Rock, on the left, and Corner Rock, just to the right of the helicopter, with Smooth Hill in the background.

End Rock as it appears today, near the foreground (behind the smaller rock in front),

with Corner Rock in the shadows behind the lamp post at left

These days, End Rock is thought to be part of a planter setting at the mobile home park, while Corner Rock was partially lopped off to make way for a road. In the recent photo above, the rock that now passes for End Rock is the larger of the two rocks in the foreground, while Corner Rock is in the shadows at the left, behind a low brick wall. The positions are reversed because this shot is taken from the north, while the shot of the monster above is taken from the south. I've never been fully convinced that this flat rock in the planter is in fact End Rock, something I've talked about a little in a previous blog entry. It has generally been "accepted" among researchers that it's End Rock, but I think everyone's at least a little suspicious.

This angle from "20 Million Miles to Earth" more closely approximates the recent shot, with Corner Rock on the left and End Rock on the right. The dirt road seen here follows the same path as the current asphalt road bordered by the low brick wall in the recent shot above, which leads to the mobile home seen above End Rock in the recent shot. The "bump" on the right side of Corner Rock, which protrudes over the dirt road, has been removed to allow for a wider road today.

Apartment complex atop the former Smooth Hill

Even Smooth Hill, an important landmark in hundreds of old movies and TV shows shot at Iverson, was destroyed. The top of the hill was lopped off when the 118 Freeway came through in the 1960s, and a large apartment complex now occupies the site, along with some condos. In the above shot looking northwest toward the two main buildings of the apartment complex, the freeway can be seen cutting through the center of the shot above Topanga Canyon Boulevard, with a glimpse of the condos at far left.

The monster's Iverson rampage ends when it is captured by dropping a steel net on it, with the capture taking place in what's now the mobile home park. However, as anyone who knows monster movies will tell you, we can expect it to come roaring back to life — and it does. For reasons that I presume are explained in the movie, the monster's next rampage takes place in the streets of Rome. I have heard that one reason the production went to Italy was because Ray Harryhausen wanted to vacation there.

One of the highlights of "20 Million Miles to Earth" is a brutal fight between the monster and a Dynamation elephant, with Harryhausen's fluid motion work seen in all its glory. (The still shots don't do it justice.) This sequence, along with the remainder of the movie, is set in Rome and no longer involves Iverson. But the Rome rampage is too cool not to post a bunch of screen shots of it anyway.

In contrast to the frustratingly brief appearances by star monsters in many 1950s monster movies, viewers get a "lot of monster" in this one.

The creature goes on a tour of Rome for a while, and kind of trashes the place. In some instances, as with the shot above, the modeling is pretty obvious.

In other shots the sets look real, as when things come to a head with a climactic stand atop the Roman Colosseum.

Ultimately, the odds are stacked against the monster ...

... which takes some hard hits from the gathered artillery ...

... and winds up in ruins, like much of the rest of Rome. Oh yeah: Spoiler alert. I mean ... but is this really the end of the monster?

The man behind the monster. Born in Los Angeles, Ray Harryhausen moved to London in 1960 and remained active in the movies through "Clash of the Titans" in 1981. Here he's seen with a model of one of his trademark skeleton warriors — a tribute to the classic battle scene in "Jason and the Argonauts" that featured seven of the hard-to-kill swordsmen. Harryhausen, one of the true legends of the movies, died today, May 7, 2013, at 92.

One of the best deals in entertainment history: Thoughts on the Corriganville tour (Off the Beaten Path)

For anyone interested in the history of movies and TV shows — especially Westerns — you'll never get more bang for your buck than taking the $5 Corriganville tour. It isn't the kind of ho-hum tour you might expect when sleepy suburbanites gather on Saturday mornings in Anytown USA. This one's pure Old West with a healthy sprinkle of Hollywood — a detailed, informative and enlightening trip back into movie history.

Gregg "Cheyenne" Anderson,

Corriganville historian and tour guide

The difference maker at Corriganville is tour guide Gregg Anderson, who's one of those obsessive movie historian types (ahem ... like anyone we know?), and boy does Gregg know his subject matter. Gregg's the Corriganville counterpart to folk like me and a few of my pals who obsess over Iverson. He clearly has done his homework — enthusiastically, I'm sure. Gregg digs into the details, delights in new discoveries and passes along his wealth of insights to anyone lucky enough to find their way to one of his monthly tours.

To call Gregg a Corriganville expert doesn't really say enough — Gregg is THE Corriganville expert. Among the many pieces of evidence, it's Gregg's name, expertise and photos that appear on those interpretive signs that were set up around the former movie ranch in the late '90s when a chunk of the sprawling Simi Valley property became a single-family residential development.

Around that same time, the rest of Corriganville — fortunately, the best part, from a historical perspective — was preserved as a park. Gregg's tours, run through the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District, cover the portion of the park where the bulk of the filming took place. His accomplice on the tours is Dave "Deadwood" Hugo, who hits the right notes (including the appropriately sour ones) as Gregg's B-Western-style sidekick.

Dave "Deadwood" Hugo,

sidekick extraordinaire

Not a whole lot is left of the original Corriganville movie sets, with the stone foundation of an old barn being one of the few remnants that rise above ground level after a series of fires devastated the Santa Susana Mountains in the 1970s. But like the Iverson Movie Ranch in nearby Chatsworth, many of Corriganville's most distinctive landmarks — its rocks — have survived.

Corriganville's Gorilla Rock rises above

the stone foundation of "Barn No. 2"

Don Megowan and Barn No. 2 in "Snowfire"

The above screen shot, from the low-budget 1958 family movie "Snowfire," shows what that stone foundation looked like back when it held up a working movie barn.

A closeup of the surviving foundation shows 

that the stones match the "Snowfire" shot

As a film historian specializing in the Iverson Movie Ranch, I've been aware of what might be called a mild natural rivalry between Iverson and Corriganville. With the two movie ranches operating just a few miles apart — and being the two busiest movie location ranches during the heyday of the B-Western and early television — they would have been competitors for location work in early Westerns in particular.

But one thing that set Corriganville apart was that it also became a Wild West theme park — and any kid who was lucky enough, as I was, to visit the place in the 1950s or early 1960s would happily tell you that a trip to Corriganville was a peak experience.

Corriganville's main street, Silvertown,

back in the filming and theme park days

Corriganville wasn't a theme park in the way that Universal Studios — which may have had something to do with driving Corriganville out of business — was and is a theme park. Universal, a fancy, modern operation more in the mold of Disneyland or Magic Mountain, is fun enough in its own way, I suppose. But for all its mass commercial appeal and huge crowds, something is missing. Places like Universal Studios and Magic Mountain, where the focus is on the sizzle, on keeping ahead of the competition and on cramming as many visitors as possible through the turnstiles, tend to wind up with a lot of engineered plastic and not much soul. Corriganville weren't nuthin' like that — it was rough and ramshackle and made of wood, like the real West, and there was something exciting and authentic about it — even if its reason to be was to create the illusion of the West in the movies.

For a kid growing up when kids still played cowboys and Indians, rough and ramshackle was what I wanted, and Corriganville delivered. The two family outings we took to Corriganville — I'd say I was in the 7-9 age range at the time — were among the high points of my childhood. 

Live shootout in the streets of Corriganville

A routine stroll down Corriganville's main street, grabbing some grub or checking out the souvenir stores with Mom, flipped in a single defining moment into a Wild West adventure, as shots rang out, shattering the calm on the street and raising the hairs on the back of your neck. These were loud, startling, scary shots, with serious-looking bad guys firing off serious-sounding movie blanks — the kind that made a bang so ferocious that to this day I still think it may be the loudest thing I've ever heard. It was on that terrifying and thrilling note that the action began, and the next thing you knew, a realistic movie-style shootout was playing out all over town.

Stuntman Buddy Mize meets his fate 

during a live shootout at Corriganville

Corriganville was one "wow" moment after another. Guys would be shot off rooftops, or get gunned down and twirl over hitching rails before they hit the ground. I'd be pumping adrenaline of the purest kind ... little kid adrenaline ... like when you meet Santa Claus, only in some ways ... even better.

Ray "Crash" Corrigan 

with young visitors to Corriganville

Ray "Crash" Corrigan, a stuntman and B-movie actor who set up the place as a filming location in the late 1930s and had the foresight to turn it into a family attraction on weekends, recruited his stuntman and actor buddies to put on those fierce shootouts in the streets of Corriganville's Silvertown.

One of the old hanging trees still in place at Corriganville

They even put on hangings at one of the big oak trees at the end of town. It wasn't gory or grim — it was about showing how it was done in the movies. Still, it was cool, to say the least.

Then there was Fort Apache — or as a young kid in the early '60s might call it: paradise. It was a "real" Old West fort, and you could climb up and take up a post along the fence, or just run around shrieking your lungs out — this was playing cowboy on the biggest imaginable stage.

Corriganville tour, April 2013

Fast-forward about 50 years to 2013. I took my first official Corriganville tour as a grown-up earlier this month, and even though I've already been studying Corriganville myself for a few years (an inevitable byproduct of studying Iverson), I learned plenty.

Mystery rock — mystery solved! Canyon Rock,

not the usual angle, in "Down Dakota Way"

One of the highlights for me was finding a mystery rock I've been seeing in chase scenes in old Westerns for years. It turns out it's another angle on the landmark Corriganville rock known as Canyon Rock.

Here's that same rock, photographed from the chase road during the recent Corriganville tour. The similarities between the above two shots won't be obvious to everyone, especially with the foliage that now blocks the view. But the two shots are taken from close to the same angle, and the rock's shape, markings and surrounding rocks all match.

This is a more common view of Canyon Rock — also known as Hideout Rock — shown from the angle where it was often seen as the entrance to an outlaw hideout. This end of the rock would be at the far left in the two shots above this one.

That's Gene Autry in the above shot, peering around Canyon Rock to get a look at the outlaw hideout in "Rim of the Canyon" (1949). You may be able to match the above two shots. One clue is a circular marking in the rock that appears near the right edge of both photos, about two-thirds of the way up.

The Corriganville tour takes place about once a month, and as I mentioned earlier it costs tour goers a whopping $5 a head — that's not a typo. You can sign up by going to the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District website. It may not be immediately apparent where to find the Corriganville tours —the thing that worked best for me was going under the "recreation" tab and scrolling down to the "age 50+ brochure."

The brochure that you can download there lists a number of activities designed for people 50 and up, but if you haven't hit that milestone yet, I wouldn't worry about it. No one's checking IDs, and I'm reasonably sure all ages are welcome. We had a few youngsters on our recent tour.

The current brochure shows the following tour dates for spring and summer 2013:

Saturday, June 15 (10 a.m.-noon)
Saturday, July 20 (10 a.m.-noon)
Saturday, Aug. 17 (10 a.m.-noon)

Even though the tours are listed as 10 a.m.-noon, they can run closer to three hours. The hiking is non-strenuous, and the setting is beautiful. Meet in the Corriganville parking lot, 7001 Smith Road in Simi Valley.

You can also call the park district at 805-584-4400. When I left a message there, they called me back a day or two later and I reserved my spot without any problem. If all else fails, just show up! Cheyenne and Deadwood will look after you.

If you're interested in learning more about Corriganville, please click here to read some additional blog posts about the site.

Off the Beaten Path is a series of posts that are not specifically focused on the usual subject matter of this blog, the Iverson Movie Ranch. Past subjects have included Bell Ranch, Pioneertown and other old filming locations. You can go directly to the Off the Beaten Path posts by looking up the term "Off the Beaten Path" in the long index of labels at the right of the page, or by clicking here.