Sometimes, all you need is a good, old fashioned, classic mash up of polar opposite genres to really wake you up and and if the sound of cowboys trying to lasso a huge, snarling dinosaur sounds like your kind of blend, then allow stop-motion demigod, Ray Harryhausen, to float your boat with The Valley Of Gwangi – a rootin’, tootin’ creature feature that throws cowpokes and thunder lizards together in a big, ludicrous stew. It wasn’t the first time the two, disparate genres were allowed to co-exist, as 1956’s The Beast Of Hollow Mountain smooshed six-shooters and saurians together to somewhat lesser effect.
However, while that movie could boast to be the first, it certainly couldn’t boast the skills of Harryhausen, a man who regularly achieved movie magic one frame at a time thanks to his iconic effects work. Could this flesh chompin’, rodeo rompin’, prehistoric, western-phonic oddity do justice to one of the most stupidly enticing concepts of all?
It’s the early twentieth century, and somewhere in Mexico we find Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show trying to eke out a living thanks to dwindling ticket sales despite one of its acts being a woman and a horse high diving into a tank of water. Realising that the writing may soon be on the wall, owner T.J. Breckenridge may have to accept that riding horses off diving boards in a skimpy costume may not draw the crowds like it once did. Her mood isn’t further improved when her former lover and one time stunt man, Tuck Kirby, shows up, hoping to buy her act for a bigger show and a hefty price. However, after the two reconcile, T.J. reveals that she’s got a new act that should put her struggling rodeo back on the map once more in the form of El Diablo, a tiny, cat-sized horse found by tough-talking, Romani show rider, Carlos. Local, eccentric paleontologist, Horace Bromley, excitedly points out that it’s an Eohippus, which have been extinct for a hell of a long time.
As dollar signs pop up in people’s eyes, various plans (some honest, some shifty) are formed to travel to the Forbidden Valley to search for more animals thought to be extinct, but after the group that contains Tuck, T.J., Bromley, Carlos, an entrepreneurial child known as Lope and various other guys, they soon discover more than they can handle. Entering the Forbidden Valley or Gwangi, the cowboys (and girl) discover that far more formidable creatures than a tiny horse have managed to avoid natural selection and soon the party is fighting off a pteranodon, an aggressive styracosaurus and, worst of all, Gwangi himself – a riled up allosaurus who has no intention of getting himself roped up and carted back to perform at T.J.’s rodeo. However, we don’t always get what we want, even if we’re an outraged allosaurs, and quicker than you can say “Carl Denham”, the stage is set for a dino-sized tragedy.
I may have covered this before at some point, but watching Ray Harryhausen movies sometimes feels like watching Jackie Chan flicks because whenever that main draw isn’t currently doing what you’ve paid to see them do, sometimes their films tend to get a little dry. Watching an impossible creature brought to life via stop motion carries the same sort of thrill as watching Chan beat up an entire room with a ladder, but often the full movie can’t live up to those extra special moments. Thankfully, The Valley Of Gwangi manages to be one of the more dependable of the films the effects wizard worked on during his busy tenure, and delivers all the stock moments you’d expect from such a mash-up. Ok, so maybe the film borrows quite liberally from the basic plot of King Kong (bunch of white guys steal a monster and look shocked when their attempts to monetize it in a heavily populated area causes a hefty body count), but there’s cowboys lassoing dinosaurs for Christ’s sake!
However, it seems that Harryhausen might be doing a bit of recycling himself as the dinosaur sequences, while charming as Hell, seem to be something of a greatest hits package. Someone gets carried off by a pteranodon like in One Million Years BC, and like that 1966 epic, the triceratops/ceratosaurus fight is mirrored when the allosaurus picks a fight with a passing styracosaurus. Even the final reel showdown of the bloodthirsty biped squaring off with an elephant is highly reminiscent of the pachyderm vs Ymir fight from 20 Million Miles To Earth, and you could even argue that the allosaurus’ final flaming fate is a nod to the barbecued demise of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. However, while originality may admittedly be a bit thin on the ground, the fact that all of these sequences have cowboys and Mexican peasants scrambling around in the foreground actually manage to make a whole world of difference.
It also helps that the human stuff isn’t punishingly dull. While the sight of James Franciscus (acting with what seems to be Charlton Heston’s teeth) trying to woo and settle down with a distractingly dubbed Gila Golan, may not carry the same excitement factor than a dinosaur murdering an elephant, it all adds to the unfeasibly charming aspect of the whole thing. Plus, at no extra cost, you get Laurence Naismith giving you fuddy duddy professor vibes from behind a set of Old Man Logan muttonchops, and a scowling Gustavo Rojo as the insanely overpowered Carlos who busts some anti-dino moves I’ve never actually seen before. Parts of Jurassic Park III were cool and all, but no one ever thought to nullify an attacking pteranodon by jumping on its back and snapping its neck like a fucking lunatic.
Of course, there’ll be the usual people devoid of imagination who can’t see past the jerky models and disposable gringos to thoroughly embrace and enjoy a movie with such perfectly pulpy concepts, but moments such as a bunch of hombres teaming up to tangle the allosaurus in ropes, or the beast’s surprisingly vicious rampage in the final reel (trampled old women, crushed old men, chewed dwarf, it’s got it all) prove to be nothing short of pure, boy’s-own escapist cinema that scratches an itch you didn’t even know you had. In fact, the only real downer is that it’s a mash-up that’s barely been mined since, which is somewhat strange considering the image of a cowboy on a horse squaring up to an extinct lizard is akin to pop culture nirvana.
It hues a bit too close to other classics for comfort at multiple times, but the sheer enjoyment of seeing two, utterly alien genres collide steers it through any major bouts of overfamiliarity. Playing it’s ludicrous concept straighter than the barrel of a six-shooter, it’s the stunt-riding cousin of King Kong meets the Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad, only with an allosaurus instead of a Cyclops and riding chaps substituting for adventurous harem trousers.
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Greigy gets another right. The world may end.