Finally I watched Beast from Haunted Cave and I have to say I liked it! I am a hugh fan of all things Charles B. Griffith and he wrote the screenplay. There is some great dialog in this film especially a scene between the jaded moll of gangster Frank Wolf and the super straight ski guide. Top Notch. I’m pretty sure Griffith wrote this but I did hear that Monte Hellman might have done some re-writing. To investigate this further I ordeded a dvd of the unreleased Naked Paradise, that Griffith said was actually an earlier version of this same script. I guess when Griffith wrote something and Roger Corman liked it, the story would get recycled several more times. Anyway I did not ge the dvd as the guy running the site seems to be very ill. I hope he’s still alive. It sounds bad. I was very impressed with Monte Hellman’s direction, really just the fact that he pulled off this no budget feature on time and on budget. This had to be very difficult especially because it was Monte’s first film (he was a theater director) and the story takes place in a very snowy wilderness, difficult place to film! But as I say he did a great job.

I met Monte several times back in the day, we have a mutual friend in Rudy Wurlitzer, who wrote Two Lane Blacktop for Monte. Also I was once at his Hollywood Hills Home, he generously let Dennis Bartok have a reading of a script there. Anyway I will track down another copy of Naked Paradise soon and continue the investigation. And if I discover anything noteworthy I will write about it here. Also there are scenes where the Beast of the title captures humans and keeps them alive all glued up in webs in a cave, very effective and I must say a real influence on Ridley Scott’s Alien. Watch it and see for yourself.