The Valley of Gwangi
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Movie Reviews of The Valley of Gwangi
Movie Review: fantastic,
Summary: 5 Stars
this movie classic is one not to miss. the effects at that time was fantastic.Movie Review: Fodor's Valley of Gwangi 2008 Edition
Summary: 4 Stars
As this review begins, one must pose a question of sorts to the mass audiences. If "The Valley of Gwangi" were a travel destination, say like a classic visit to Dinosaur Land, would modern audience want to go, or would the glitz and glamour of the Jurassic attraction in the neighboring city drown the excitement. Could a mom-and-pop destination, complete with an Allosaurus created by the maestro himself, Ray Harryhausen, still appeal to a generation transfixed on iPods, CGI, MySpace, and boy-band ring tones? Is the destination worth the trip? Below is compiled a review of sorts on why "The Valley of Gwangi" would be an excellent place to spend your summer, complete with a restaurant guide, a locals favorite section, and the much needed, "Watch Your Step" section (aka the pitfalls to avoid). This is a guide to hopefully help the amateur Harryhausen traveler, as well as the most experienced. "The Valley of Gwangi" is a strange, yet wonderful trip that should be continually experienced (despite the bizarre ending), and hopefully never forgotten.
For a trip to "The Valley of Gwangi", you want to pack light. There will be quite a bit of running, horseback riding, church destruction, and trap making, so you definitely do not want to be weighted down with a burdening weight. This guide suggests just finding what you need when you arrive, one could even approach the vast traveler himself, Tuck Kirby, straight from another death defying trip filled with cons, hassles, and barters. He is your "need-to-get" guy. On this trip, he is hunting for a horse, preferably one that his old flame, a lady named T.J., currently uses in one of the greatest sideshow attractions you are going to find on your trip. With little to carry and a guide by your side, you may want to avoid such pitfalls as asking young children name Lope for help. This is an obvious swindle, as he claims he needs to feed his family - while continually paying for further information. Let's not even discuss the crazed gypsy with an eye-patch coupled with her small guide. That is our competitor; you don't want to travel with them. Trust me. It is these socialites that you meet on this trip that will provide you with at least an hour and a half of entertainment. One can even be guaranteed the cliché shout "By George!" from our resident archeologist which is a constant source of laughter and amusement. They may seem overplayed, wooden, and at times not quite as frightened as they should be that they are standing in front of a Triceratops, but they are good companions, and worthy of the special effects that will soon engulf you.
Did I say "engulf", oops, I mean to say devour you! Is anyone else hungry? Looking for that perfect spot in the Valley where you can enjoy a sit down meal. Well, count that out. Here, it is survival of the fittest - literally. When this guide went to tour the local eateries, we used the Gwangi as our guide. He showed us how to properly eat Triceratops, elephants, jealous boyfriends, and anything else that was in the way. To be honest, our Gwangi is an eating machine, but thanks to the brilliant animation by Harryhousen, it is worth the poor service. Harryhousen may fall short on the small detail (some quote the lack of shadows), but it is the overall effect that makes you want to visit again and again. The creatures he creates, while they are as colorful as a bowl of Lucky Charms, are realistic, coupled with honest reactions that put you there with the creatures. The scene that stands out is one where our guides are trying to tie the neck of a Gwangi to keep him secure. The beast screams, tugs, grabs at the real ropes in a way that real animation may have cheapened out. Take these scenes of realism, our pesky - non-traumatized guides, and the detail of blood on the Gwangi's victims, and this film steps up another notch that a regular viewer may never see coming. The detail during our fights, one could credit Harryhausen again, are superb. While the colors seem to be a bit over the top, the attacks placed are not without scars. This could make the average tourist see the danger and the madness in our team's unheroic ways to become the best sideshow in the Valley, and the true threat that lies within them.
Finally, the "Watch Your Step" section. With very little to fill this section, it is necessary because not everyone traveling will want to see the Gwangi due to what modern technologies are currently available. All this guide can say is beware of these short pitfalls. 1) The ending. Without ruining your entire trip, I must say that the last twenty minutes revealed a much different tone that the first 90 minutes of this journey. With our iconic final scene, I felt our mayor of this town, Jim O' Connolly, captured the ideas of cowboys and dinosaurs fighting together, in fact it was the fight sequences that kept me glued to the screen, but there were two separate films in this one little B-movie. There was the greed, the corruption, and the voice of our carnival people as they hunted for the main attraction, but then there was the counter-point to their greed. There was the destruction - and that carried with it a new world that didn't mesh as well with the first. Another "pitfall" to this trip, may be our locals (as they are also a plus), but their lack of concern when fatal errors occur to one of their own, their lack of true fear, and the cliché stereotypes that follow our bumbling archeologist are fun, but not for honest cinema. Outside of these two minor drawbacks, the Gwangi will satisfy every urge you have to ensure safe passage through the Cape of Monster Cinema.
Overall, I must admit, this film surprised me more than anticipated. Having grown up with the Jurassic option always in plain sight, it was a pleasure to finally allow this film to breathe. One can only hope others decide to pick up this journey and enjoy the sights, sounds, destroyed religious centers, and Allosaurus vs. Elephant fights. A bit of warning if there needs to be, this is B-rated, this is not high quality cinema if you nitpick acting and technical civility, but when traveling in the rural south -- who needs that sort of high-tech honesty? Ray Harryhausen influenced our current generation of film with such films as "Valley of Gwangi", and it shouldn't be forgotten. I applaud this film for what it accomplished, and promise - even with the nimble ending - that if you choose to embark on an adventure like this - remember my first word of advise - pack light ... you are in for a strange and fantastic voyage!
Grade: **** out of *****
Movie Review: One day he will learn to obey the law of Gwangi...
Summary: 4 Stars
The Valley of Gwangi, aka Gwangi, aka The Lost Valley, aka The Valley Time Forgot, aka The Valley Where Time Stood Still, (whew!) stars James Franciscus (Beneath the Planet of the Apes) and Richard Carlson (It Came From Outer Space) and while they were decent, the real star of this movie is special effects creator and legend Ray Harryhausen. Franciscus plays Tuck Kirby, a cowboy looking to make a quick buck by brokering a deal for the sale of a horse that's being used in his ex-girlfriend's Wild West circus show that is located 'just south of the Rio Grande'. Gila Golan plays T.J. Breckenridge, owner of the circus, with Carlson as Champ Connors, the protective fatherly figure/manager of the circus.
Anyway, a discovery is made of some sort of prehistoric animal, a wee little horse, and we soon find out the animal came from an area called the 'forbidden valley'...or at least that's what it is called by the gypsy-like tribe that seems to live near it, which, by the way, are inclined to believe that the rather wee horse needs to be returned to the valley whence it came of dire consequences involving a curse or some such hooey will follow. Now, getting off on a slight tangent, if I were these gypsies and I wanted to keep people out of the valley, I would have probably called it something else, like valley of the happy flowers, or valley of the nothing to see here, as the forbidden valley just sounds too tempting to strangers and such to not be explored. The gypsies also refer to it at times as the valley of the Gwangi, but they never really get specific as to the exact nature of the Gwangi. So these gypsies end up stealing the wee, small horse and returning it to the 'forbidden' valley, with members of the Wild West circus in hot pursuit. Also along for the ride is some elderly anthropologist who happens to be in the area studying fossils and various junk who seems to just get in the way more than anything else. This pursuit ultimately leads the group into the forbidden valley, where they encounter various prehistoric creatures, including a voracious and persistent tyrannosaurus rex. We are now about an hour into the movie, so if it's dinosaurs ye be looking for, keep this in mind, as you will probably be bored silly with the movie leading up to this point. Cowboys and dinosaurs? Sounds pretty cool...and it is. Harryhausen really outdid himself in this movie not only bringing these various creatures to life, but managing to instill personality into them, and adding all kinds of nuances to the stop motion animation. Keep in mind there were no high tech hoity toity computer gizmatronics back when this movie was made, so special effects creators had to be, well, creative. Harryhausen, shows in this film why he's considered one of the greatest effects artists in motion pictures. The man must have truly loved his work as it shows here. So what happens next? Well, the cowboys manage to capture one of the bigger, wily, creatures (hint, it's a real big one with sharp, pointy teeth) and bring it back to put in the Wild West show but things go badly as the creature escapes and wreaks havoc in a heavily populated area. Think of Godzilla attacking Tokyo except instead of Godzilla it's a prehistoric beast, instead of Tokyo it's Mexico City and instead of frightened Japanese people fleeing in terror, it's frightened Mexican people in sombreros fleeing in terror. Oh the carnage...who lives? Who dies? Who get horribly ate up? Well, you'll just have to see the movie.
The picture provided on this disc is wide screen anamorphic, and special features include an eight minute tribute to Ray Harryhausen entitled `Return to the Valley' where contemporary special effects artists gush over Harryhausen and tell how he influenced them and the various films they've worked on, most notably Jurassic Park. There is also like four or five trailers for other films Harryhausen worked on, including The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. I thoroughly enjoy The Valley of the Gwangi, even though I understand others have thought the movie to be bit slow, in the beginning, at least. I understand this, as the really cool dinosaurs don't appear until about halfway into this 95-minute feature. Fans of Ray Harryhausen will not be disappointed, but others may find themselves looking for the chapter stop where the dinosaurs are...all in all a nifty western adventure with a good helping of thrilling science fiction provided by a true pioneer of special effects. By the way, where did they find this actress who played the love interest to James Franciscus? She was somewhat attractive, but her wooden acting skills certainly made me root for a big, hungry, salivating primal beastie to gobble her up quickly.
Cookieman108
Movie Review: Ray Harryhausen and some cowboys capture an angry gwangi. Look out!
Summary: 4 Stars
Valley of the Gwangi, as long as you're easily satisfied, is a movie to enjoy in spite of itself. It's a light-hearted but leaden-footed dinosaur adventure film, with a group of turn-of-the-century cowboys versus a gwangi. The idea is fun, the acting is adequate (with one exception), the script is workmanlike and the direction is dull. It seems to take forever to get to the good stuff. What it has going for it, starting half way through the movie, is the gwangi - an allosaurus - that seems to be constantly angry. The joy of the movie is that this giant, meat-eating, top-of-the-food chain creature is brought to life by the stop-motion artistry of Ray Harryhausen.
Down Mexico way at the turn of the century, T. J. Breckenridge (Gila Golan) stars in and manages a ramshackle circus, Champ Connors (Richard Carlson) and a handful of American and Mexican cowboys help out. Old flame Tuck Kirby (James Franciscus) shows up and wants to buy T. J.'s wonder horse, Omar. No way, says T. J. And she tells him that she's got an even better horse act ready to be introduced...a tiny horse-like creature she purchased with no questions asked. But eccentric Professor Horace Bromley (Lawrence Naismith), a paleontologist who is determined to prove his theory of the humanoids, identifies the whinnying little thing as an eohippus, an ancestor of the horse, which supposedly has been extinct for millions of years. When gypsies steal the eohippus to return it to a hidden valley, off in pursuit goes T. J., Tuck, Champ and the Professor, aided by Lope, a ten-year-old Mexican lad and two wranglers from T. J.'s circus. And finally, after nearly 50 minutes, the 96-minute movie really starts.
The movie, thanks to Ray Harryhausen, gives us the goods with three first-rate scenes. There's the entrance to the valley on horseback, with some strange scenery and then a quick attack by a pterodactyl that scoops up Lope. Lope's rescue is something to see. There's the great set piece of cowboys versus the angry allosaurus, with the gwangi raging after cowboy ordeurves and the cowboys regrouping to lasso the gwangi, then the gwangi breaking free to have a life-or-death battle with a oneceratops (or whatever a one-horned triceratops is called). And finally there's the raging gwangi tearing apart the Mexican town (climaxing inside a burning cathedral) where he was brought to be the lead attraction for T. J.'s circus.
Nothing about the movie is first-rate...except these three scenes. They're rousers. Franciscus does an okay job as a generic, happy-go-lucky cowboy hero and Richard Carlson, now 57, has aged into a cross between Pete Postlethwaite and Randolph Scott. He's fine but nothing special as T. J.'s protective circus manager. Gila Golan, however, is a lush young woman who can barely act, much less ride a horse. She made a handful of films. I'd swear she was dubbed.
In some ways, The Valley of the Gwangi, with it's turn of the century setting and cowboys roping a dinosaur, is charming. If only it had better actors and a smarter first-half script.
To see a handful of brave souls do amusing battle with various Harryhausen creatures, try Mysterious Island. It even has Captain Nemo, as well as some considerably better actors, such as Joan Greenwood and Herbert Lom, For grinning, vicious, clattering skeletons waving swords around, you can't do better than Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts.
Along with Ray Harryhausen, the movie owes a lot to Jerome Moross who composed the film score. He uses echoes from his great score for The Big Country to make Valley of the Gwangi more impressive than it deserves, especially in the cowboys-versus-gwangi set piece. So four stars with Harryhausen (and Moross). Three stars without them.
Now if you really want to see how to capture a gwangi, or at least a Tyrannosaurus Rex, I'd recommend you watch Prehistoric Park and the adventures of Nigel Marvin.
Movie Review: Harryhausen's Dinosaurs in the Old West: Now that's cool!
Summary: 4 Stars
This was one of the least financially successful of stop-motion animation master Ray Harryhausen films, which is a shame, since it's one of the wildest and most interesting. Based on an idea by Willis O'Brien, the visual effects master on the 1933 "King Kong," "The Valley of Gwangi" is basically a re-imagining of "Kong" as a Western. Yep, you heard that right, pardners: this is a Giant Monster meets the Western film.Now come on, that's got your attention, right?
"Gwangi" is just a blast. Watching the mixture of cowboy antic with a lost land of dinosaurs is the ultimate Saturday morning matinee experience. The kid in you will just wake up right away and start cheering. (As for kids themselves, do you really have to ask? They'll love this!)
At this point in his career, Harryhausen was producing masterful effects and getting more ambitious with each film. Here he has a sequence of cowboys roping an Allosaurus (astounding!), and later a rampaging dinosaur caught in a burning cathedral. Even with today's computer effects, Harryhausen's effects have a wonderful marvel to them, a magic that CGI can't really capture. (Unless you're Peter Jackson.)
Like most of the films Harryhasen produced with Charles Schneer, the actual dramatics and script are a bit lacking. James Franciscus is right on the money in his part as the smooth-talking frontier huckster, but Gila Golan is wooden and terrible as his love interest. The dialogue often clunky, but don't worry -- the dinosaurs or a cowboy shoot-up are right about the corner.
The DVD also contains a featurette interview with Harryhausen, where he explains how the film came to be made and talks about how he achieved the incredible "dino-roping" sequence. Your appreciation of this visual effects genius will only go up when you hear what he had to do to get this amazing scene to work.
Fans of plain old fun films: BUY THIS! Visual effects fans: BUY THIS! Anyone who wants to capture the feeling of being a kid and loving dinosaurs and cowboys: BUY THIS!