Monday, August 15, 2011

Hoppy Rocks! (The Alabama Hills Series)

(GPS: N36 36.260 W118 07.060)

Here is one that I should have had taken care of when I began the blog. In fact, for quite some time I thought I had already had something about it, but one day I was going back over some of the early blog entries and realized I never did. Then over the past few years I just delayed doing it because I always wanted to get better video footage of it than what I originally had. So without further ado, let's talk about the Hoppy Rocks.

In the Hopalong Cassidy movie Silent Conflict, Hoppy and California are being chased through Lone Ranger Canyon. They hide behind some rocks as the men who are chasing them go by.Lots of b-movies used this area for horse chases. It would be too difficult to mention them all.As the men chasing them go by, Hoppy and California are hiding behind two big rocks in what is known today as the Hoppy Rocks.Tim Holt and Gene Autry used them too in their own movies.Now, just take a few steps to the left and rotate toward your right you get this...which was used in a gunfight in Hoppy's Secret of the Wasteland.A lot of these old b-westerns just filmed in the same areas, but filmed different angles to create a "new location" for each movie. All it takes is a few steps, or a slight change of camera angle, to do this. Hoppy actually used this trick of having someone chase him and then hiding behind a rock in Lone Ranger Canyon many times. It was not always at these rocks.

Silent Conflict (Youtube Version)

Silent Conflict (Vimeo Version)