The Animal World

[Danvarner@aol.com]

Pete Von Sholly just jogged my memory. Recently the the DVD of Willis 
O'Brien's 1957 film, "The Black Scorpion" was released. It's one of O'Brien's 
later 
efforts made on a very low budget. It includes some of the animation models 
created orginally for "King Kong"'s Spider Pit sequence. There are some 
excellent 
stop-motion sequences. What makes this DVD special, however, is that it also 
contains the entire dinosaur sequence from the 1956 film, "The Animal World", 
only available in bootleg form previously, I believe. Willis O'Brien 
supervised the sequence with Ray Harryhausen animating Marcel Delgado's models. 
Since 
it was all done on tabletop with painted backrounds and no composites, multiple 
cameras were used providing double the normal usable amount of footage. It 
was a big deal with lots of pub back in 1956. Yes, I remember it, Mary... Dell 
Comics came out with a comic book version illustrated by Mo Gollub, the artist 
who did the classic Turok covers. Great dinosaurs! DV