The Valley of Gwangi
Film |
name = The Valley of Gwangi | image = Valley_of_Gwangi.JPG | caption = Theatrical poster to The Valley of Gwangi (1969) | director = Jim O'Connolly | producer = Charles H. Schneer
Ray Harryhausen | actors = James Franciscus
Gila Golan
Richard Carlson
Laurence Naismith
Freda Jackson
Gustavo Rojo | writing credits = William Bast, Julian More, Willis H. O'Brien | music = Jerome Moross | cinematography = Erwin Hillier | editing = Henry Richardson, Selwyn Petterson | distributor = Warner Bros | released = September 3, 1969 | runtime = 96 min. | imdb_id = 0065163 | amg_id = 1:52145 | language = English | budget = }} The Valley of Gwangi is a 1969 fantasy film directed by Jim O'Connolly. The film is also known as Gwangi, The Lost Valley, The Valley Time Forgot, and The Valley Where Time Stood Still. It was filmed in Technicolor.
Creatures effect by Ray Harryhausen.
T.J Brekenridge, a beautiful cowgirl hosts a rodeo that is struggling. Her former fiance Tuck Kirby, a heroic former stuntman working for Buffalo Bill's wild west show, wants to buy out T.J., but T.J. has an ace she hopes will boost attendence at her show - a tiny horse. However, the tiny horse came from the forbidden valley, and a gypsy claims that it has a curse, and demands it to be returned. Tuck, and T.J lead a group of cowboys, along with a british paleantologist named Sir Horace Bromley who was working in a nearby desert, and claimed the tiny horse is a Eohippus, a prehistoric ancestor to the modern day horse. One the team returns the tiny horse, it is revealed that it really did have a curse. Tuck, T.J, and the rest of the group are forced battle with dinosaurs in the Forbidden Valley. Eventaully they encounter Gwangi, a vicious Allosaurus which kills many of the cowboys. The surviving ones watch Gwangi fight a winning battle with a Styracosaurus. The cowboys eventually succeed in knocking Gwangi unconsious in a landslide, then they capture him, and send him to a rodeo. At the rodeo, Gwangi breaks free then battles, and kills an elephant and then goes on a rampage in the town. Tuck, lures Gwangi into the town church and then setting the building on fire, burning Gwangi alive. For killing Gwangi, Tuck is hounored as the town hero. However, the townspeople are also saddened, by just the thought of a magnificent creature like Gwangi dying a horrible death.*Although Harryhausen intended Gwangi to be an Allosaurus, he based the model of the creature off a Tyrannosaurus, making many fans believe Gwangi was a T-Rex. Harryhausen occasionally confuses the two, stating in a DVD interview: "We called it an Allosaurus, occasionally... They're both meat eaters, they're both Tyrants... one was just a bit larger then the other."
*Gwangi was originally concived by Willis O'Brien, the man who did the animation for King Kong. In O'Brien's script, then called "Valley of the Mists". In the original version, cowboys going around America find a T-Rex in the Grand Canyon. After finally roping the dinosaur, they put it in a Wild West show, but when the creature, now called Gwangi, breaks free, it fights escaped lions in the show. After killing the lions, Gwangi goes on a rampage around the town and was run over a cliff by a man in a truck. The film would have been done in 1942 had O'Brien got the finance to do it.*
* Karate Party review
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