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Where do good eats and Sci-fi history meet?   Perhaps in a lot of places, but the one I discovered a while back is a Los Angeles restaurant I’ve been frequenting for almost fifty years. When I first dined at the original El Cholo on Western Avenue it was still a single house with an outdoor patio; I didn’t actually eat on the patio until after it had been remodeled into an interior space, enclosed with a skylight.

CineSavant is at its best when digging up arcane film trivia, the sub-relevant kind that inspires respected film historians to shrug their shoulders. The only research for this particular observation occurred by eating at El Cholo not long after re-seeing Roger Corman’s first production effort, 1954’s  Monster from the Ocean Floor.  Corman’s movie takes place in Mexico but was filmed in and around Los Angeles. In the first act his leading players Anne Kimball and Stuart Wade take a break from scuba diving for monsters to go ashore for a bite to eat. Corman’s restaurant scene uses only three or four camera angles. We see a row of adobe support pillars, a small courtyard and a decorative tile pattern on a wall. ( ↑ )

I’ve long been convinced that Corman filmed this scene at El Cholo. But my comparisons between the feature ( ↑ )   and El Cholo today ( ↓ )   didn’t convince at first, because the shape of the pillars seemed wrong. The lower section of each pillar, below where the arch begins, seems taller in the 1954 B&W frame grab.

But I was certain that I’d seen the tile pattern on the back wall; for the longest time it stood above a decorative fountain. I think it was there until sometime in the 1980s, when another remodel took place, widening the pillars, adding brickwork, etc..

And I figured out why those adobe pillars seem a little different. In the 1954 screen grab the arches on top are barely visible, and appear to begin at least two feet higher. Then it dawned on me that when the outdoor patio was incorporated into the building, the customers would no longer be eating at ground level, on a lawn. A foundation was constructed to raise the floor to the level of the house interior… effectively lowering the arches. The brickwork added to the arches changed their profile as well.

I can easily imagine Roger Corman wheeling and dealing like a pro on his very first movie, securing a restaurant location that might actually pass for being in Mexico. As the eating area was then essentially outdoors, it would have had natural lighting, too. I wonder if the tyro filmmaker Roger was a patron of El Cholo. The restaurant was noted as a casual hangout for movie people. In the 1975 movie Shampoo Warren Beatty’s hairdresser character says he’s in trouble with his girlfriend played by Goldie Hawn: “Jeez, I was supposed to take Jill to El Cholo.”

Perhaps the inspiration for this column item came from being locked out of restaurants for the last 1.5 years… I’m eager to go out again. Is this perhaps an old piece of Roger Corman trivia that I missed?  I’m forever ‘discovering’ things that are common knowledge. Conversely, let me know if the Monster from the Ocean Floor location has been established as some other restaurant … there are other similarities that make me think I’m right. Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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A quick book review today — really a nod, perhaps — to a book that sounded too interesting to pass up. Foxx Nolte’s Boundless Realm: Deep Explorations Inside Disney’s Haunted Mansion is for committed Disneyland fans, not necessarily casual fans like myself but for people that already know much of the development history of the parks and are ready for something more — more detail and thought. For detail, insightful conjecture, and rather good writing, the book delivers.

The focus on The Haunted Mansion(s) leads one to expect something that the book is not. In his first chapter Nolte explains that he has not written an introduction to the Disneyland and Disney World attractions, nor a history of their development or construction. Nolte instead tells us that in college he got his dream job, which allowed him to work at the Mansion in Disney World. His book is a collection of studies, observations and acquired knowledge about the attraction — how it works, how some of its design elements were developed, and in particular a great many hidden meanings within the design choices… for instance, how certain rooms were conceived for one kind of ‘illusion-attraction’ but ended up with another.

This involves telling some historical backstory (some good spook-house stories, there), culture and literature, and architectural stylings — is the Mansion Victorian, or something else? — and even relating themes from relevant movies. And there’s also a lot of ‘backstage’ employee weirdness — where on the ride the ‘ushers’ stashed their soft drink containers, and what urns in the back of which mansion room are filled with random shoes lost by riders. How they became lost, we’re not told.

I personally first saw Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion on a graduation night in 1970; I was impressed by the weird elevator room, the ghost illusions in the ballroom and Paul Frees’ spooky voice. The book really is intended for a more die-hard fan, the dedicated Disney-dog already familiar with the basics, and is ready to sign up for ‘Haunted Mansion 102.’ Every aspect of the ride is examined, including discussions of conflicts during the design process, abandoned ideas, and what seems to be a focused concentration on every single thing a rider sees and experiences during the ride.

The book is clearly not a Disney publication. Although nothing is controversial, the inner workings of Disneyland is exactly the material The Mouse routinely suppresses. This is all hard content — the illustrations included are explanatory diagrams of things like window patterns for a ‘ghost light’ effect, sketches explaining how individual gags work, and illustrations of particular pieces of interior design that Nolte is discussing.

I’m told that the publishing date for the book was April 18, although Amazon says October 1 of last year. Frankly, if I knew a genuine Disney park Nut, this would make an ideal gift.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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The newest DVD Classics Corner on the Air web podcast is A Salute to the Blu-ray Debut of Annie Get Your Gun with Dick Dinman once again interviewing George Feltenstein. That pair of experts lay out a concise explanation of the many problems this show had getting to the screen; we’ll also learn a bit more about the way it was remastered for HD. CineSavant’s review from April 20 is here.

And here’s a fun announcement — CineSavant has been enjoying Kino Classics’ recent German restorations from the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation, what with The Woman One Longs For and two Douglas Sirk melodramas. They’ve just announced something very exciting for science fiction fans: The 1932 Ufa production F.P.1. Antwortet Nicht aka ‘Floating Platform One Does Not Answer.’ The F.P. in the title apparently stands for ‘flugplattform,’ or ‘flight platform.’ Perhaps others have had better luck but this feature has always eluded me. The floating platform is a high-tech artificial island in the middle Atlantic, a refueling airport for transatlantic flights. Like the next year’s Gold it’s science fiction with a topical edge — no sooner is the F.P. in place than it attracts foreign agents bent on sabotage.

The movie was reportedly a blockbuster hit in Germany. It stars Hans Albers and Sybille Schmitz (pictured center, above), the memorable vampire victim in Dreyer’s Vampyr and whose controversial life was the basis for Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss. Memorable in the cast is Peter Lorre just before he left Germany for England.

Both the original novel and the film script are by Curt (Kurt) Siodmak, who at this time was having more commercial success than his more famous brother Robert … but would soon exit to France, and then America as well.

The confusion sets in with the fact that F.P.1 was also produced in two more foreign language versions, all filmed at the same time: the French-language I.F.1 ne répond plus with Charles Boyer and Pierre Brasseur, and the English-language F.P.1 Does Not Answer starring Conrad Veidt and Jill Esmond. I’ve seen a very poor, incomplete copy of the English version, and assume that the original German is better, especially with Peter Lorre involved. The good news about this disc release, is that it will contain both the German and English versions.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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Gary Teetzel assures me that this page link will be old news to confirmed Godzilla fans, but that amateurs like myself might find it fun … I liked it, and I see that it has only been up for five days and only has 20,000 hits, so here ya go. It looks like somebody nabbed the entire ride on video… it’s called Godzilla The Ride. Are theme park ‘rides’ just wraparound movies now?  Imagine paying movie admission for a show that turns over twice an hour, even if the hydraulic seats shake you up and vents spew you with sulphuric Godzilla breath. A park ought to make $$ money $$ on something like that, ya think?

Laserdisc fans are still out there and still going strong, it seems — after last Saturday’s link to the Laserdisc Database, I got a loo-oong note from correspondent Spencer Draper, who told me about his own attempts to nail down the history of the laserdisc format, and the making of his personal 1400-disc collection. Spencer praises the quality of laserdisc picture and sound, and I’ll grant that DVD and BD have indeed altered some movies in ways I don’t like… I’ve kept the three unaltered Star Wars laserdiscs as well. I also won’t argue with the fact that buying old discs is now a bargain. It ought to be, when a laser trade-ins at record stores here in Los Angeles only net one five cents apiece. I don’t expect my own meager sampling of laserdiscs to grow in value.

The enterprising Mr. Draper has lined up some well-delivered podcasts, at his A Damn Fool Idealistic Crusade page — a commentary for a Bond film and a review for the newest CD of the score to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. What I heard sounded pretty profession. Spencer asks if I’ll review the new Ultra HD of GBU, but the window of time on that one seems to be closing … Kino is great to CineSavant but didn’t offer screeners for that particular item. It makes sense — what potential buyer of GBU needs to read a review before plunking down his money?

With that thought about UHD discs in mind, I’m excited about Arrow’s upcoming disc of David Lynch’s Dune on Ultra HD. A couple of my kids have defected from the ’84 Dune fan club, but don’t worry because I stopped disinheriting offspring for those kind of offenses a long time ago. I mean, I showed it to them more than enough times when they were tykes, and they have free will, darn it. I still think the visual imagination of Lynch’s film is superb, along with the casting and the costumes… even if the story feels like a two- hour trailer for a ten- hour movie. And it ought to be a killer in Ultra HD. It’ll come with a second disc of new Blu-ray extras; it’s due out in August. The link is to the page for the identical U.K. release.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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Whoah … I drifted over to Facebook Messenger on Wednesday and discovered that readers, friends and contacts had been sending me messages for over a year, some of them fairly important, and I hadn’t checked in. I’ve rushed out some apologies, and have sent some info for a friend’s audio commentary, which I hope isn’t too late.

For the record, I correspond much more consistently via Jurassic-era Email, at cinesavant@gmail.com &mbsp;That’s the best way to reach me — I check it every couple of hours. I was complaining about not having Column items, and my own FB contacts were offering me plenty of them.

←  Back in July of 2020 I asked if the Toy Space Helmet seen in the 1953 movie It Came from Outer Space was a movie prop, or a real toy a kid might have bought back then. Correspondent Tim Williams sent me a note with this vintage ad for a Tom Corbett Space Cadet Cosmic Vision Helmet, a note that I finally found a year later. Tim says it’s a match for what’s seen in the Jack Arnold movie. To better read the text, the image can be zoomed or opened in a new window.

Was I born too late, or what?  I really would have wanted that space helmet around 1958 or so. I remember playing with a plastic test pilot helmet, pretending I was a Mysterian space pirate.

Another message missed: back in February helpful Jack Criddle forwarded his Mixcloud Play Morricone For Me podcast called Black Cowboys, recorded for this year’s Black History Month. I only missed it by three months. Here’s the rest of Jack’s blurb: “Play Morricone For Me delves into the history of real-life African-American cowboys, exploring onscreen racial representation (and the lack thereof) in the western genre. Featuring music from the films of Herb Jeffries, Woody Strode, Jim Brown and others, from The Bronze Buckaroo to Django Unchained and beyond.”

Correspondent Michael Ryan asked if I knew of an online review site for Laserdiscs that he couldn’t find, but I think he found it on his own. He sent a link to a page that sells used Lasers but also comprises a sort-of information archive: Laserdisc Database. It’s pretty comprehensive — I even found my weird Japanese laser of Major Dundee in there…

I certainly can’t play laserdiscs any more. I’ve kept fewer than a hundred, mainly if they’re not out on newer media, like The Wannsee Conference or because they have isolated music tracks, like When Worlds Collide. And also because of artwork I like, such as the old Tex Avery boxed set. Some offered for sale on the site might be desirable just for the artwork.

Michael included an even better link, to a YouTube encoding of the entire Criterion Laserdisc commentary for King Kong. Recorded by Ron Haver in 1984, it was the second laser commentary ever; Haver spends the first two minutes just explaining the new medium.

Ron Haver ran the film program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art all through the 1970s, becoming something of a legendary figure. We went to the (recently demolished) Bing Theater countless times to see great screenings of original studio prints… students were charged a dollar. Haver’s presentations made one feel privileged to be there, and during his introductions he’d frequently bring incredible surprise guests on stage — James Stewart, Gene Kelly & Jean Hagen, etc.. I once got to shake the hand of Mose Harper himself, Hank Worden.  Haver published several impressive film books as well, collectors’ items.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson