The Valley of Gwangi
Director: Jim O'Connolly
Year: 1969
Rating: 6.0
And Man
Killed the Beast. Ray Harryhausen carried out the idea that his mentor had
decades before. Willis O'Brien was one of the great special effects men in
film history using stop-motion animation in films such as The Lost World,
She, Mighty Joe Young and most famously King Kong. Harryhausen had
studied under O'Brien on Mighty Joe Young in 1949. O'Brien had been tinkering
with the idea of cowboys coming into contact with prehistoric animals since
the late 1930s but the project never came off the ground. There is a definite
plot similarity to King Kong. Harryhausen and his usual producer Charles
Schneer made a deal with Warners to make the film. It wasn't a success at
the box office - poorly marketed and perhaps dinosaurs were losing their
luster. Harryhausen had animated dinosaurs only three years earlier in the
successful One Million Years BC, but that had the Raquel Welch special effect.
This one doesn't. It was to be his last dinosaur film and he slowed down
considerably after this with only three more films that he did special effects
for.
Harryhausen does some nice work with a dinosaur
or two, a miniature horse and an elephant but nothing here feels as original
or as complicated as his earlier work - Medusa, the Skeleton swordsmen and
Cyclops. There was a bit of me that said, seen it before. We get jaded so
easily. The scene of the cowboys lassoing the dinosaur was pretty well-done.
But it is more the non-special effects part of the film that is a let down.
None of the characters are at all likable - so much so that you will end
up rooting for the dinosaur, none of the actors have much personality and
the vibe is very King Kong. But no Fay Wray. Or Empire State building.
Tuck Kirby (with a name like that, you know
he is a jerk) played by James Franciscus goes into Mexico where his old girlfriend
T.J. (Gila Golan) runs a Wild West show with a wagon going in circles and
Indians shooting arrows at it. Then she jumps into a large bucket of water
on her horse from a high height. This was a real thing back in the 1880s
and lasting as long as the 1970s in Atlantic City. Those darn animal rights
folks shut it down. The show is near folding up until someone brings her
a miniature horse - by miniature I mean about 6 inches high. Tuck sees this
and along with a paleontologist (Laurence Naismith) think that wherever that
came from, there must be more. In the Forbidden Valley!
They end up in it with a few cowboys from
the show and T.J. and soon find a bunch of gigantic creatures. A Styracosaurus,
a Pteranodon, a Ornithomimus and the main star, an Allosaurus, which they
name Gwangi. A lot of terrified running takes place, some terrific horse
stunts and trying to lasso it. Of course, someone comes up with the brilliant
idea of capturing and putting it in the show. You can imagine how that goes.
Greed will always win over common sense with humans.
