Review of The Valley of Gwangi (1969) by Philip P — 14 May 2008

If there's probably any movie I'd actually like to see remade, it'd be this. Like most of these kinds of movies, I saw 'The Valley of Gwangi' when I was about six or seven. More than anything else, these are the types of movies I associate with growing up (or in my case, not growing up).

After watching the film again recently, I'm pretty sure this had to be one of Mark Shultz' inspirations for his 'Xenozoic Tales' series. Here you've got cowboys on horse back running around in the desert fighting off an Allosaurus ... all Shultz had to do was add a Cadillac or too.

Yeah, that's right - Cowboys and Dinosaurs. Who wouldn't want to see an updated version of this? I mean, I can't believe I'm actually encouraging a remake, but there's A LOT of potential here.

'Gwangi' follows the story trend established with the 1925 'The Lost World,' in which someone discovers a mysterious land, convinces people to go with them to investigate, discovers gigantic prehistoric animals, barely escapes said mysterious land, yet manages to bring the most dangerous specimen of the land back with them for exploitation, which always results in it getting loose and killing at least one unlucky onlooker. This is probably more well known as the 'King Kong' method, but let's give credit where it rightfully belongs.

The DVD I saw the other week was the new anamorphic restoration, which is something that was about as important when I was a kid as an MPAA rating. Seeing it recently however, I couldn't help but noticed some pretty fine looking cinematography in it's rightful anamorphic widescreen presentation. It's nice that not only is the movie taking place in a wild west setting, but the film makers tried to evoke that look and feel with the then current spaghetti western aesthetics of the time.

'Gwangi' moves at a pretty slow pace until a dinosaur shows up, but that doesn't stop the film from having some hilarious early moments. We've got a Mexican version of Short Round introduced through some campy but charming banter, a horse and rider jumping into a flaming pool of water, a random bull attack, and a miniature horse that pushes the boundaries of 'miniature'.

But that's fine, because eventually someone wonders where the hell a six inch tall horse could come from, and wanders into the VALLEY OF GWANGI (!!!) to find more - for financial exploitation of course - where we have a cowboy going Rocky Balboa on a Pteradon (Or Pterodactyl, if you want to go with the incorrect science of the time. Oh, teehee, the 60's were neat!), and an Allosaurus getting wrangled like a bull.

Naturally, one decides that the most uncontrollable and dangerous specimen of the lot would make the perfect addition to a failing Wild West show nearby. This gives us an excuse to have an Allosaurus tromping around Mexico, where it battles an Elephant. Strangely enough, fighting an elephant is not as uncommon as you think, and the whole scene is pretty much Harryhausen retreading on his 'Ymir' sequence. But who cares? That's like giving us too servings of ice cream instead of one.