Boom Town – 1940
Well, to be honest, I don’t know why this movie was nominated for Best Special Effects. I mean, I know which effects earned it the honor, but I’m just not sure they were special enough. The movie was a romance on a rather small scale. The movie tried to be grand and epic, but it just wasn’t, and the scale of the narrative was directly related to the Effects category.
What I mean is that, except for one major scene, there were very few effects in the film. The plot revolved around a love loves and lives of two oil men in the late 1920s. It started off in Texas and moved around to other parts of the world. Though there were some, there were very few wide shots that required matte paintings or miniatures which might have given a sense of the vast scale of the state’s wide vistas. Most of the shots were close-ups, concentrating the characters and the story-driven plot.
The oil gushers themselves were interesting enough to see, though hardly what I would call an impressive effect. Some high-pressured water pumps and some colored water would have done the trick. So what was the that one major scene which earned the movie its nomination? The oil fire.
When one of the oil gushers catches fire, the blaze was epic and amazing. To put out the flames, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy risk their lives in a daring feat of daring bravery. The flames were out of control with extreme explosions and shooting gushers of fire everywhere. While being showered with water, our heroes approach the conflagration behind a heat shield. When it is close enough, they race back to collect the nitroglycerin charges to put out the fire. When the charges are detonated, the flames vanish and a gusher of black oil takes their place.
The scene was certainly something to see. The stunt men really earned their pay, because while most of the flames were provided via rear-projection and composited shots, not all of them were. One impressive shot in particular made it seem as though the two men were completely engulfed in fire, though they were protected by the heat shield. To give proper credit, I have to admit that the filming of the fire and explosions to project behind the actors was pretty spectacular and must have been a real challenge. Unfortunately, some of those rear-projected shots were obvious, making the actors look completely separate from the background.
But then, after that one exciting scene, the movie went back to its romance story filmed on simple sets which didn’t need any kind of special effects. Would I have nominated it for Best Special Effects? Probably not. I’m not saying that it was a bad film or that its effects were poorly done, but when I compare it to some of the other movies in the category, it just didn’t have much to offer.