1969's "The Valley of Gwangi" was an original idea by stop motion animator Willis O'Brien that finally came to fruition under his former apprentice Ray Harryhausen, envisioned as "Valley of the Mists" with cowboys battling dinosaurs in the Grand Canyon, which never got off the ground at RKO in 1942, later done by the Nassour Brothers in 1956 as "The Beast of Hollow Mountain" Guy Madison luring his predatory beast into a bog. Harryhausen wanted to take a crack at the property himself for his final dinosaur entry before his 1981 retirement (just three more fantasy films ahead, "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad," "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger," and "Clash of the Titans"), and began work after principal photography in Almeria, Spain was finished in Oct. 1967 (home of numerous Spaghetti Westerns), shooting titles including "Gwangi," "The Lost Valley," "The Valley Where Time Stood Still," and "The Valley Time Forgot." The star Allosaurus Gwangi was the actual name from O'Brien's treatment, located in a lost canyon in Mexico at the turn of the century where a band of avaricious circus entertainers had hoped to recapture a miniature horse (Eohippus) set free by a blind gypsy woman (Freda Jackson). The entire first half serves as exposition before reaching said valley, the Eohippus described as a three-toed ancestor of our modern horses, their hooves originally the middle toe. The second half offers superb nonstop action that make the early scenes relatively easy to bear, Leonard Naismith the paleontologist in league with James Franciscus as entrepreneur Tuck Kirby, reliable Richard Carlson ("It Came from Outer Space") on hand as circus owner Champ Connors, safeguarding the interests of his unpaid employees. Harryhausen's other creations include a winged Pteranodon that only gets so far before getting its neck broken (Gwangi devours its corpse), a swift Ornithomimus that runs right into Gwangi by way of introduction, a multi horned Styracosaurus that loses its battle when attacked, and a circus elephant that can only scream in terror when the Allosaurus escapes capture. Its screen image was devised to be 14 feet tall, constantly snapping its jaws to try to prevent being roped from all sides, similar in appearance to the popular Rhedosaurus in "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms." At this stage of his career Harryhausen's efforts could be seen at the height of his powers, but by the time he'd finished Warners had changed hands and disavowed the final product, resulting in a box office dud that even producer Charles H. Shneer went on to dismiss: "probably the least of the movies Ray and I did together" (the ads stated: "cowboys battle monsters in the lost world of forbidden valley"). Even director James O'Connolly must have agreed, a protege of Herman Cohen also at the helm for Joan Crawford's "Berserk" and Richard Gordon's "Tower of Evil," though most pundits tend to place the blame on the unlikeable characters as scripted, a bunch of con artists engaged in bringing back a live specimen like King Kong.
Review of The Valley of Gwangi
