The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Plot Outline: A small travelling circus in Mexico in the 1700s is struggling to find ends meet. But then they stumble across a tiny horse which they hope will put their circus on the map. The tiny horse is actually an Eiohippus, a prehistoric horse which has come from a secret valley where dinosaurs still live. Local gypsies believe that the horse being out of it's element will bring a curse upon them and steal the horse to return it to the valley. Some of the cowboys in the circus follow them and enter the Valley of Gwangi, where they find more than just tiny horses!

The Review: Cowboys and dinosaurs - a rather unique mix and one which you probably won't find very often in films. As with a good 99% of films where Ray Harryhausen did the special effects, the only real stars of the film are his marvellous creations. Without them, films like The Valley of Gwangi would stink. It takes way too long to get into the thick of the action because I mean come on, we only want to see dinosaurs fighting each other. Instead we are given the generic story of the struggling "insert attraction here" suddenly on the up because they have some form of new attraction which brings the punters in, only for it to go pear-shaped. When they do get to the valley the film certainly picks up and Harryhausen's creatures come into their own. There's an allosaurus, a styrathosaur (sort of like a triceratops) and a pteradactyl, as well as an elephant later on in the film. Like his other creations, they all have their own individual personalities and of course there is the expected fight between two dinosaurs (and as a bonus, we get a dinosaur vs elephant fight later on). Most remarkably, the best scene involving the stop-motion creatures comes when the cowboys are trying to capture the allosaurus by roping him. The interaction between animation and reality is amazing and not for one minute do you think that the two aren't actually reacting together in reality. Then the film leaves the confines of the valley and it turns into some King Kong style film where the captured dinosaur goes on a rampage. It's not exactly a great finale because you've already seen it before and I'm sure that they could have come up with something more original.

Final Verdict: The Valley of Gwangi isn't the worst film you're going to see. With it's numerous stop motion creatures running amok, it's pretty entertaining after the half-way mark. But it's when the creatures aren't around that the film suffers badly and it's around 45 minutes into the film before they actually get to the valley!

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