IT CAME FROM DALLAS CHAPTER THREE!

Dallas rocks drive-in screens in the 1950s!

PREVIOUSLY ON IT CAME FROM DALLAS!

How two movies of the '60s with Dallas connections influenced my life (see Chapter One - and BTW, those two flicks are directly related to each other as well -- do you know how?) and led to my interest in Dallas' film history, and the 2005 meeting with Garry Potts and other DPA members that spawned, like a mad laboratory experiment, the show we'll be doing again on October 15, 2009. And now, more about the Dallas films and pioneers we honored on show number one -- now we're in the late '50s.

ROCK BABY ROCK IT! (1956)
Not , as the ad proclaims, "The First Motion Picture Produced Completely in Dallas!" (see Chapter Two), but the first that got wide distribution. Dallas music producer J. G. Tiger gathered the top regional rockabilly acts in Dallas and the South along with a slight plot about gangsters (played by Dallas wrestlers) trying to take over a teen club. Among its many pleasures is seeing local versions of Elvis (Johnny Carroll), The Everly Brothers (The Belew Twins), and such do-wop groups as The Cell Block Seven and Preacher Smith and The Deacons. Featured dancer Kay Wheeler ("The Queen of Rock 'n Roll!") was then, at 16, the president of the nation's first Elvis Presley Fan Club. She and other cast members were dubbed over by obviously older actors, by order of a distributor who wanted to pass it off as something made in L. A. He also deemed the original title, Hot Rock, too "suggestive". The coolest, daddy-o!

THE KILLER SHREWS/THE GIANT GILA MONSTER (1959)
One of the greatest drive-in double bills ever was the lasting cinematic legacy of Gordon McLendon (1921-1986). McLendon was a Dallas radio entrepreneur (known as "The Old Scotchman") whose many innovations included the Top 40 AM radio format and the recreation of baseball game broadcasts. He was also by and large the Rush Limbaugh of his day, a right-wing commentator who even figures in some JFK conspiracy theories. In the late '50s he tried to branch out into another medium, movies, with his "McLendon Radio Pictures" (with a logo that conspicuously resembled RKO's). This sci-fi horror duo, coming towards the end of the '50s teen monster cycle, was the result, and was actually quite successful for a regional production (and both have been given their props by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew). Shrews features James Best ("The Dukes of Hazzard"), Ken Curtis ("Gunsmoke", also the producer of both flicks), Ingrid Goude (Miss Sweden 1956) and McLendon himself battling giant carnivorous shrews loose on an island near Lake Dallas. GGM is a rebel reptile hassling hepcats out on, what was then, rural Spring Valley Road. Hollywood stunt/FX vet Ray Kellogg directed both (10 years later he co-directed The Green Berets with John Wayne). The actual FX budget must have been, uh, modest, as the shrews are played by hand puppets and dogs wearing rugs, and the gila is the real thing, crawling over model hot rods and getting blown up with fireworks (pre-PETA). McLendon's obscure third/final movie, My Dog Buddy, about a non-shrewish dog, seems to have permanently run away.

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NEXT ON IT CAME FROM DALLAS! -- Zontar, Batgirl, and a basement to avoid!

--Gordon K. Smith