THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969)

There’s a very good, very hungry reason the locals call it The Forbidden Valley. It’s Ron’s beard and the master of stop-motion animation Ray Harryhausen in a fantastic spectacle for kids of all ages.

A Wild West showman and his crew find dinosaurs in Mexico.

Directed by: Jim O’Connolly

Written by: William Bast, Julian More, and Willis O’Brien

Starring: James Franciscus, Gila Golan, Richard Carlson, Laurence Naismith, Freda Jackson, and Gustavo Rojo

Run Time: 96 minutes

After the runaway success of 1933’s classic monster movie, KING KONG, hotshot special effects wizard Willis O’Brien had a great idea for a follow-up film. Since this was before the days of sequelitis, O’Brien had an idea that didn’t involve giant apes. He wanted to make a movie where a different tragic monster was captured and brought to civilization, only to escape and run wild in the streets. The movie made it very far into development. RKO agreed to pony up the $552,000 budget and director Ernest B. Schoedsack was brought onboard to do the non-monster portion of the film. Then, RKO changed studio heads and, crucially, the United States joined World War II, so Willis O’Brien lost his chance to make his dream picture. He’d reuse story elements in other films, like 1949’s MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, but Gwangi the dinosaur seemed doomed to disappear into O’Brien’s toy chest forever.

Thankfully, one of the crew members on MIGHTY JOE YOUNG was a KING KONG superfan and O’Brien devotee named Ray Harryhausen, and with O’Brien as his friend and mentor, Harryhausen picked up the baton of stop-motion animation and ran with it. After O’Brien’s death in 1962, Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer decided the best way to pay tribute to their mutual friend was to revive one of his most famous unrealized projects, and THE VALLEY OF GWANGI was born.

It’s one of those stories that seems very familiar, because it’s the basis of so many creature features and kaiju-type films. A place that time forgot, a people who should know better than to mess around in a place that time forgot, and gigantic creatures that shouldn’t be around somehow still being around. Also, there are cowboys from a Wild West show, Romani, Mexicans, and the world’s cutest miniature horse.

There’s a reason these sorts of stories work as well as they do; people are always thinking they have the ability to control anything and everything they come across, whether it’s ocean waves or a rampaging Allosaurus. Humanity’s capacity for callous dumbassery knows no bounds. Even with other humans, casual disregard for other people happens constantly, which is why Tuck Kirby (James Franciscus) and TJ Breckinridge (Gila Golan, who with a name like that should have been playing Gwangi) are estranged. Former partners, both in business and in life, TJ is struggling along with a podunk Wild West show while Kirby shows up to buy her out and take over her ownership of a high-diving horse for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. However, TJ has something that will help her struggling rodeo hit the big time, and it’s… the world’s cutest, tiniest horse, amusingly dubbed El Diablo.

The stars of this movie aren’t the flesh and blood humans, though Franciscus and Golan are streets ahead of the average actors who inhabit these sorts of films. The real stars of this film are made with modeling clay, foam rubber, and wire frames. Ray Harryhausen’s most in-demand special effects prior to this film all involved dinosaurs and other saurian creatures, like the titular BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, the dragon from THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, and not best non-bikini parts of ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. to name just a few.

By the time filming started on GWANGI, Harryhausen had years of experience making dinosaurs come to life, and it shows throughout the scenes in which Gwangi fights off cowboys and other dinosaurs in Forbidden Valley. While the rushed production of the movie caused some difficulties in color matching for the creatures–the only consistent thing about Gwangi’s coloring is that it’s inconsistent–the motion of the animation itself is stunning, and holds up well even when compared to modern CGI. The creatures have a weight, and they move with a smooth physicality that computers struggle to replicate. Faking gravity is difficult, even for the most expensive graphics suite.

GWANGI is far from Harryhausen’s magnum opus; everyone knows that his greatest movie is 1981’s CLASH OF THE TITANS. However, the novelty of Gwangi the creature and the setting, a place on the cusp of civilization and the slow decline of the Wild West show as a traveling entertainment, give the movie more pop than expected. It’s colorful, and the stunt riders and horses deserve all the credit in the world for being as important to the movie as Harryhausen’s technique. One doesn’t work nearly as well without the other, and the technical skill and dedication it takes to pair practical stunts and stop-motion as seamlessly as it did in 1969 is something to behold.

GWANGI isn’t just a movie, it’s a tribute to a dead art form–the cowboy show–from a dying art form–the western–by someone whose life’s work would be made impractical in just a few short years. Gwangi doesn’t pluck the heartstrings like Kong, but he sure is fun to watch in a way that COWBOYS & ALIENS is not. Digital creatures might be more efficient to make and easier to control, but THE VALLEY OF GWANGI and its Dynamation menagerie remain vital and thrilling in a way similar 2011 CGI does not.

There’s life in latex and armatures, in sweat and hard work and hours laboring in front of a camera, in layering composites together over a light table, that comes through. It’s the sheer, unadulterated joy of kids bashing toys together in a sandbox. It’s the answer to the question, “Wouldn’t it be cool if cowboys had a dinosaur rodeo?”

Yes, it’s really, really cool.

Ron Hogan is a writer, podcaster, gadabout, and raconteur from Louisville, Kentucky. You can read his written works at Den of Geek, Film Stories, and at several magazines and sites that no longer exist. You can hear his voice (and potentially see his magnificent beard) on the Film Strip Podcast. 

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.