NESSIE in Hammer Horror Forum

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BijouBob8mm	NESSIE	Lead	[-]
May 29 07 10:06 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I remember hearing about Hammer and Toho's proposed monster-on-the-loose collaboration for years, and even seeing a poster (probably in the pages of FM) back in the day. Since then, I've read in Little Shop of Horrors, FilmFax and other mags that Toho had not only built the monster, but had even shoot sequences with it. Does anyone know what happened to the footage? Has anyone ever seen it, or a photo of what the monster looked like?
MJ Simpson	Re: NESSIE	#1	[-]
May 29 07 12:51 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There is a very brief shot of it in PRINCESS FROM THE MOON but all you can really see is the back of something large moving through the water. http://www.MJSimpson.co.uk - cult movies and the people who make them
Mark Redfield	Re: NESSIE	#2	[-]
May 29 07 1:22 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	*Quote:* but all you can really see is the back of something large moving through the water. That, in a nutshell, just about sums up everything in the Loch Ness Monster's career. Mark Redfield www.redfieldarts.com
BijouBob8mm	Re: NESSIE	#3	[-]
May 29 07 1:56 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Thanks for the head's up, MJ...I would have thought Toho would not have let their investment go to waste, although it sounds as if they salvaged very little of it. (You would have thought the studio would have come up with something to showcase the mechanical monster.) Have heard of PRINCESS FROM THE MOON, but have yet to see it. (So far, looks like only a Region 2 release on DVD. Maybe one day....) *Quote:* That, in a nutshell, just about sums up everything in the Loch Ness Monster's career. I've got a couple of fiction projects in first draft form that try to address and correct that. (You know, given how much story potential there is in the subject, it amazes me how few films have been made over the years...and how undynamic most of those have been. In his ANIMATED LIFE book, Harryhausen mentions he had been approached about doing a film about Nessie. The concept he was given sounded like a variation of GIANT BEHEMOTH, with a radioactive meteor crashing into the lake, and turned it down.)
MonstrSquad	Re: NESSIE	#4	[-]
May 29 07 3:34 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I recall hearing of films that have featured Nessie or Loch Ness-like monsters. Though the movies actually featuring a real Loch Ness monster usually range from the obscure(Secret of the Loch) to the downright awful(the Loch Ness Horror). I even tried to come up with my own storie featuring Nessie but it's really difficult for me to come up with one( at least in this day and age). This is a link to Toho Kingdom which has some info on the unmade project as well as some advance poster art:www.tohokingdom.com/cutting_room/nessie.htm
BijouBob8mm	re: NESSIE	#5	[-]
May 29 07 3:43 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Thanks for the link, Monstrsquad! The poster at the lower lefthand corner of the site is the one I saw back in the Seventies. The upper photo is the first time I've ever seen the actual Toho creature, itself. Much appreciated!
marygoodwinder	Re: re: NESSIE	#6	[-]
May 30 07 4:52 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Too bad Werner Hertzog and Zak Penn beat them to it.
Ted Newsom	Re: re: NESSIE	#7	[-]
May 30 07 10:07 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Brilliant, nasty, funny film that is, too. The lovely thing about Nessie in that is, she stays as off-screen and semi-seen as she does in reality, and it's all to the good.
BijouBob8mm	Re: re: NESSIE	#8	[-]
May 30 07 10:40 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Still haven't seen the Herzog outing. I caught part of the film with Lysette Anthony, BENEATH LOCH NESS. Don't know if I would have enjoyed it more if I'd seen it from the start, but the little bit I did see didn't overwhelm me. The Ted Danson film, LOCH NESS, was enjoyable (although I might have been a little biased, since it also featured Joely Richardson). Even the creaky SECRET OF THE LOCH has a certain charm, big lizard and all. (With a young David Lean serving as film editor on that, no less.) As mentioned above, Larry Buchanan's LOCH NESS HORROR was...well, a horror. (It had a cool poster, but the film itself made Buchanan's MARS NEEDS WOMEN look like dynamic science fiction at its finest.)
Tonyspiders	Re: re: NESSIE	#9	[-]
May 30 07 11:52 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Herzog's film was a laugh riot. It's well worth the rental. It was certainly a lot better than a bunch of speculation and blurry "photos."
M F Berry	Re: re: NESSIE	#10	[-]
May 30 07 1:39 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Oooh, I love Loch Ness Monster movies ... In fact, the first article I ever wrote for Prehistoric Times was a two-parter on the history of this sub-genre, called "Starring Nessie." Besides all of the titles previously mentioned in this thread, it also covers the quasi-documentaries of the 1970s (remember Sunn Classic Pictures?) and odd appearances or usages of the Nessie legend in such films as Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and the forgotten (and forgettable) British comedy, What a Whopper (1961). It's in issues #62 and #63, and has a fair number of photos. A brief note on 1934's The Secret of the Loch, which was mentioned above ... I really enjoy this old curio. The first time I saw it I was totally unprepared for all the intentional humor; just the scene in the board room of the Natural History Museum is alone worth the price of the movie! And the dialogue exchanges in the pub scenes ... and Seymour Hicks, as the blustery and volatile Professor Heggie, is wonderful! Yessir, in the "bombastic/cantankerous/reporter-hating zoology professor" derby, Heggie is the champion, the rest are mere challengers ... R.I.P. Harold R. "Riff" Smith (d. May 21, 2007)
Bill Warren	Re: re: NESSIE	#11	[-]
May 30 07 7:29 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	One advantage THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES has is that its Loch Ness scenes were (partly) shot on the real Loch Ness, and amid the ruins of Urquhart Castle. The first time (of two) that Beverly and I went to England, we drove on up to Loch Ness, staying overnight there at a bed and breakfast in Drumnadrochit, not far from Inverness, and close to Urquhart Castle. The ruins are spectacular as the castle was built out of rose-colored granite; much of it is tumbled down, with carpets of green grass growing amid the rose-colored stone. It's visually magnificent, and very much worth the visit even if it weren't on the shores of Loch Ness. We drove all the way around Loch Ness, which is very long and very narrow. I still have a bottle of water I took from the lake. At the time, the locals tried to avoid making very much of Nessie, as if it/she/he/they were an embarrassment. However, garbage containers did feature a drawing labeled "Be like Nessie, don't be messy." And in one shop I found two "stuffies" of Nessie. One is essentially a teddy bear version of Nessie--dark green, thick fur, two himps on the back. The other is a stuffed argyle sock with a tam o'shanter and a music box that plays "Scotland the Brave." I bought both. For years, I believed in the reality of Nessie and similar creatures supposedly seen in and around long narrow lakes at similar latitudes around the Earth, such as Lake Champlain between the U.S. and Canada, and Lake Baikal in far eastern Russia. Now I'm skeptical. Beverly and I both enjoyed INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS, directed by Zak Penn, a good deal; we saw it in its brief theatrical engagement locally. (One theater; the Nuart.)
ByronOrlok	Re: re: NESSIE	#12	[-]
May 30 07 8:45 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Y'know, I hate to say this, but when I read about the crap Hammer had on its slate, I figure it's probably just as well they went belly-up when they did.
DonM435	Re: re: NESSIE	#13	[-]
May 30 07 10:21 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I read once, somewhere, that Lake Baikal -- the deepest lake on earth -- actually has the freshwater equivalent of deep-sea fish. Never found any more on the subject, though. Fascinating for sure.
Professor Von X	Re: re: NESSIE	#14	[-]
May 31 07 7:38 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	A childhood friend brought me back a small piece of the granite from the castle at Loch Ness. And it is a nice, rich pink, marred only by the presence of several... LRGE SERATED TOOTH MARKS! Professor Von X
Bill Warren	Re: re: NESSIE	#15	[-]
May 31 07 11:29 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There are freshwater seals in Lake Baikal (and freshwater sharks in a Central American lake).
Professor Von X	Re: re: NESSIE	#16	[-]
May 31 07 11:34 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	That's Lake Nicaragua, I believe, Bill. Professor Von X
Bill Warren	Re: re: NESSIE	#17	[-]
May 31 07 11:40 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Yes, that's it. Managua, Nicaragua is a wonderful town You buy a hacienda for a few pesos down... that was on the flip side of my mother's 78 of "Chiquita Banana."
Professor Von X	Re: re: NESSIE	#18	[-]
May 31 07 11:45 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The lake's sharks'll get you if you take a spill And if they don't, the Sandanistas will! From my upcoming Lake Nicaragua Blues suite... Professor Von X
killer meteor	Re: re: NESSIE	#19	[-]
Jun 1 07 3:02 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There's an awesome Loch Ness Monster in the Doctor Who story Terror Of The Zygons
BijouBob8mm	Re: re: NESSIE	#20	[-]
Jun 1 07 9:02 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	*Quote:* One advantage THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES has is that its Loch Ness scenes were (partly) shot on the real Loch Ness Because of that film, there is at least one monster at Loch Ness. The first monster they built for the film (which allegedly looked even better than the second one...the one we see in the movie) was launched into the loch for filming, only to become waterlogged and sink to the bottom before they could get all the shots they needed. Attempts to raise the creature failed, and it was left down there. (Don't know what kind of shape it's currently in but, at least into the 1980s, the thing was still down there and someone found it with sonar.) So, a second monster had to be built and the creature's sequences staged in a tank back at the studio and intercut into the location footage. (I think the late John Brosnan discusses this in his excellent FX book, MOVIE MAGIC.)

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