The Valley of Gwangi

Some consider The Valley of Gwangi one of Ray Harryhausen's lesser works, but for me it's not only one of his best, but the best dinosaur movie of the pre-Jurassic Park era. Which, admittedly, isn't saying much, since most movies of this type featured aliens, monsters, or robots instead of dinosaurs. (In fact, its only serious competition came from the 1933 version of King Kong. But except for its dinosaur scenes, I find Kong all but unwatchable.)

Part of Gwangi's lackluster reputation may have come from its central concept of mixing cowboys and dinosaurs. But it's an original idea, and clever enough that you have to ask why nobody thought of it sooner. (Actually, somebody had: Willis O'Brien, Harryhausen's mentor, conceived the idea in the early 1940s.)

The plot of Gwangi actually owes a lot to Kong (which O'Brien worked on): entertainers find a land of dinosaurs and bring one back as the major attraction for their show, but the creature ends up escaping and running amok. Instead of Skull Island, the land of dinosaurs is Forbidden Valley, an enclosed area in Mexico; instead of Broadway, the entertainers own a Wild West show; and instead of Kong, the cowboys bring back Gwangi, a sort-of allosaurous.

As with any Harryhausen film, the plot is just an excuse to showcase his special effects. But good stop-motion animation isn’t enough. Choreography is just as important, since a monster running rampant isn't inherently exciting. In this case, Gwangi has a number of set-pieces. After teasing us with a scene in which Gwangi and a styrachosaurus merely bellow at each other, Harryhausen has them actually meet and fight it out. There's a technically tricky scene in which the cowboys surround Gwangi and attempt to lasso him. And there's a second battle, one between Gwangi and an elephant (similar to the Ymir versus elephant fight in Harryhausen's 20 Million Miles to Earth). Fortunately, in the 1950s and 1960s there wasn't a noticeable desire to protect younger people from violent cinematic deaths (a concern that had grown by the time of Jurassic Park, which keeps the onscreen deaths to a minimum). So we also get three separate scenes of Gwangi grabbing people in his jaws and shaking them about.

Like many of these earlier Fantasy/Adventure movies, Gwangi possesses two apparently standard but unwelcome elements: a slow beginning and a romance. In this case, the beginning is especially slow, as it takes over forty minutes before we get to the good stuff. It's necessary to lay the narrative groundwork and let us get to know the characters, but better pacing is possible, as Harryhausen proved in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. And maybe the romance gives the characters a little more depth, but it seems like a convention from which the filmmakers couldn't or wouldn't break away.

Article Author: Paul De Angelis

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