The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (World Pictures, 1918). Three Sheet (41" X 81").. ...

Description

The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (World Pictures, 1918). Three Sheet (41" X 81").
Dinosaurs have always captured the fascination and imagination of filmmakers, leading to some of the best fantasy films ever created. In 1915, Willis O'Brien, a young and enterprising model maker, did the first stop-motion animation for movies; a 90 second short called The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy. The footage impressed Thomas Edison who immediately hired the young entrepreneur to create a series of shorts for his own film company with prehistoric themes. Before long, O'Brien's talents were recognized by another enterprising producer, Herbert Dawley, who hired O'Brien to write, direct, star in and animate his film The Ghost of Slumber Mountain. In this amazing production, a character by the name of Holmes (Dawley) uses a telescopic device created by Mad Dick (O'Brien) to peer at Slumber Mountain where a Tyrannosaurus Rex battles a Triceratops to the death. After the T-Rex kills the dinosaur, it breaks through a time barrier and pursues Holmes until he wakes up and discovers it was only a dream. The film originally ran approximately thirty minutes, but producer Dawley cut the running time down to eleven minutes for its final release. He then took the extra footage he had cut and used it in two other productions he released a few years later. But even in its truncated form, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain was such a sensation that it did over $100,000 at the box office, a substantial sum at the time. The special effects of a T-Rex battling to the death with a triceratops was so spectacular that the the film demanded a better release than was standard for a short subject. World Pictures created posters in both three and six sheet formats and it is remarkable that any have survived, including this impressive three sheet (a Heritage first). The poster, that captures the pinnacle of the film's action in radiant stone litho colors, displays very nicely after professional touchup to minor signs of handling: chips and tears in the borders and folds, tears in the image area, a hole in the bottom gray background, and a small hole in the orange left background. Fine+ on Linen.

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