Late night flashbacks

During the early years of World War II, stop-motion pioneer Willis O'Brien (KING KONG, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG) put together the idea of cowboys capturing a dinosaur, and the project was called GWANGI. (Years later, O'Brien's protege, Ray Harryhausen, would revive the project as VALLEY OF THE GWANGI.) Between O'Brien's abandoned project and Ray Harryhausen's finished film, O'Brien sold the basic concept to the Nassour brothers, who turned it into THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN...although on a somewhat smaller scale than either O'Brien or Harryhausen had envisioned. In addition to the story treatment, the Nassours also bought O'Brien's animation model of the dinosaur. (Which, for some reason, they stripped down and rebuilt.) Contrary to rumor, the Nassour's finished film does not use test footage by Willis O'Brien, as his GWANGI (which would have been in black & white--BEAST was in color) was aborted prior to any animation tests being shot. I recall this would occasionally get dusted off and used as a second feature at the drive-in when I was a little kid during the 1960s. Later, it would turn up on the late, late show on TV (although crammed full of commercials and badly pan & scanned). Copies of this, in it's full widescreen format, turn up on E-bay every so often, but it would be nice to see this given an official DVD release. Not exactly a Jurassic classic, but still a decent little adventure film, especially when seen in its original widescreen ratio.