The Valley of Gwangi

The Valley of Gwangi
Original film poster by Frank McCarthy
Directed by	Jim O'Connolly
Produced by	Charles H. Schneer Ray Harryhausen
Starring	James Franciscus Gila Golan Richard Carlson Laurence Naismith Freda Jackson Gustavo Rojo
Music by	Jerome Moross
Cinematography	Erwin Hillier
Editing by	Henry Richardson Selwyn Petterson
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	September 3, 1969 (1969-09-03) (United States) July 19, 1970 (1970-07-19) (Japan)
Running time	96 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Valley of Gwangi is a 1969 American western-fantasy film directed by Jim O'Connolly and written by William Bast. 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 and is known for its creature effects provided by Ray Harryhausen, being the last prehistoric-themed film animated by him.

Plot

Sometime near the turn of the 20th century, a beautiful cowgirl named T.J. Breckenridge (Gila Golan) hosts a rodeo that is struggling. Her former fiancé Tuck Kirby (James Franciscus), a heroic former stuntman working for Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, wants to buy out T.J.

T.J. has an ace she hopes will boost attendance at her show - a tiny horse. Tuck meets a British paleontologist named Horace Bromley (Laurence Naismith), who was working in a nearby Mexican desert. Bromley shows Tuck fossilized horse tracks, which Tuck notices to be similar to T.J.'s horse's feet. So Tuck sneaks Bromley in for a peek. Bromley declares the horse to be an Eohippus.

The tiny horse came from a place known as the Forbidden Valley. A Gypsy known as Tia Zorina claims that it has a curse, and demands that it must be returned. Later, a group of thieves (presumably under orders from the Gypsy) collaborate with Bromley to steal the horse and release it in the valley. Bromley collaborates in the hopes of following the horse to its home. But Carlos (Gustavo Rojo), once a member of the Gypsy tribe now working for T.J.'s circus (and the one who actually delivered the tiny horse to T.J.), walks in on the theft and tries to stop it, but is knocked out.

Tuck arrives just as the Gypsy posse leaves. He sees Carlos as he begins reviving, notices the horse is missing, and sets off after it and Bromley. When T.J. and her crew discover Carlos and that the horse is missing, Carlos claims Tuck has stolen it. T.J. then leads a group of cowboys after Tuck and Bromley to retrieve the horse.

Making their way into the Forbidden Valley, Tuck, T.J, and the rest of the group meet up and soon discover why the valley is said to be cursed as a Pteranodon swoops down and snatches a boy who had accompanied them. After Carlos kills the Pteranodon, they spot an Ornithomimus, a small dinosaur which they chase after in the hopes of capturing it. Just as the ornithomimus is about to escape, it is killed by Gwangi, a vicious Allosaurus which pursues the group, almost finding and eating Bromley. However, a Styracosaurus appears and drives Gwangi away.

Later, Gwangi pursues the people to their base camp, where it is able to get the best of them, until they begin to rope it down. Then, the Styracosaurus reappears and battles Gwangi. Gwangi emerges victorious, but decides to attack the men again.

Gwangi manages to catch and kill Carlos, but knocks itself out while trying to exit the valley in pursuit of the rest of the group. Securing the creature, they take it back to town where it is to be put on display in T.J.'s show. However, on opening night, one of the Gypsies sneaks in and begins to unlock Gwangi's cage in an effort to free it. Instead the unfortunate man is killed and Gwangi breaks free, killing Bromley and feasting on a circus elephant (actually modelled after a prehistoric mammoth) in the process. The crowd stampedes away from the arena, trampling and killing Tia Zorina.

Eventually, Gwangi, Tuck, T.J and Lope (a Mexican boy) end up in a cathedral which catches on fire. After some close calls, Tuck and T.J. manage to escape and lock the door behind them, trapping Gwangi in the burning building, which crumbles around it. Screaming in agony, Gwangi dies in the fire and the town makes Tuck the town hero. However, the townspeople are also saddened by the thought of a magnificent creature like Gwangi dying such a horrible death and by the loss of life caused by its rampage.

Production

Background

Gwangi was originally conceived by Willis O'Brien (1886-1962), the man who created the special effects for the original King Kong (1933). The plot was inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Lost World (1912), with added elements from King Kong (capturing a monster and bringing it to civilisation where it runs amok). In O'Brien's scenario, then called Valley of the Mists, cowboys discover an Allosaurus in the Grand Canyon. After finally roping the dinosaur, they put it in a Wild West show, but the creature, now called Gwangi, breaks free and fights lions in the show that have also escaped. After killing the lions, Gwangi goes on a rampage around the town and is run off a cliff by a man in a truck. O'Brien died before The Valley of Gwangi was filmed.

Although Harryhausen intended Gwangi, the main antagonist of the film, to be an Allosaurus, he based the model of the dinosaur on a Tyrannosaurus that he had made much earlier. Harryhausen occasionally confused 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 than the other." The apparent size of the animal on screen resembles that of an allosaur and it has three fingers on each hand (as did Allosaurus) whereas tyrannosaurs had only two. A full-size tyrannosaur may not have been feasible given some aspects of the plot.

Special effects

The Valley of Gwangi was the last prehistoric-themed film that Harryhausen animated, and he made much use of his experience in depicting extinct animals from his earlier films. Close to a year was spent on the special effects (there were over 300 'Dynamation' cuts in the film, a record number for Harryhausen), with the roping of Gwangi being the most labour-intensive animated sequence. It was achieved by having the actors hold on to ropes tied to a "monster stick" that was in the back of a Jeep. The jeep and stick when filmed with Gwangi are on a back rear projection plate and hidden by his body, and the portions of rope attached to his body are painted wires that are matched with the real ropes. The coordination of Gwangi's animation with live actors on horseback (and the horses appearing to react to Gwangi) was particularly difficult to film, and the source of an editorial lapse in a following scene. Gwangi bites through the ropes around his neck when first lassoed and later has his jaws roped together when unconscious. However, he is then shown being transported in a cart again held only by ropes around his neck but with jaws now un-bound.

Although the animation of Gwangi was well executed (although somewhat repetitive), that of the other prehistoric animals shown in the film was less well done. The appearance and movements of the Ornithomimus were unlikely, and the pterosaurs were mistakenly given bat's wings (with elongate fingers supporting the membrane; pterosaurs had one finger forming the wing's leading edge but none on the membrane). The wings appeared to mimic those of a pterosaur from an earlier Harryhausen film One Million Years BC (1966). Interestingly, a pterosaur animated decades earlier by Willis O'Brien for King Kong shows the correct wing anatomy. Close-up sequences of the pterosaurs in Gwangi were provided by life-size models. The model of the Eohippus was supposed to have had toes but appears to have had regular hooves with 'toes' painted on (the sound effects of the animal moving also resemble hooves). The model of the Styracosaurus featured an inflatable air 'bladder' to simulate the animal breathing heavily after its combat with Gwangi (a feature first used in models made for much earlier films by Marcel Delgado).

Although the habitat shown in the 'Forbidden Valley' was highly unlikely to have ever harboured large dinosaurs given its restricted canyons and sparse desert vegetation, the barren terrain may have made it easier to merge the stop-motion animation with live action sequences.

Cast

Actress Gila Golan's Israeli accent was so strong that all of her lines were redubbed on the film by a voice over. Actor Laurence Naismith who plays Professor Bromley had earlier featured in Jason and the Argonauts as the shipbuilder 'Argos'.

Location shooting

The movie was filmed in Cuenca, Spain.

Legacy

By the time of the film's release, interest in 'monster' films of this type was waning. Management at Warner Brothers and Seven Arts also changed and the film was released with little promotional effort on a double-bill with a biker film; it thus missed its target audience and was not as successful as earlier Harryhausen efforts.

The scene where Gwangi suddenly appears from behind a hill and snatches a fleeing ornithomimus in his jaws was later copied in the big-budget dinosaur movie, Jurassic Park.

During the 1980s hit TV series Scarecrow and Mrs. King, anytime a television was shown on in the series, The Valley of Gwangi was on the screen.

Justin Parpan's 2006 children's read-aloud book, "Gwango's Lonesome Trail" (Red Cygnet Press, Inc., ISBN 1601080042) features a pre-historic dinosaur named "Gwango" roaming the contemporary American Southwest.

In an episode of the situation comedy Friends, Ross watches the movie while in a hospital.

In the 2011 animated movie, Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur, during a night time chase scene through the town a movie theater can be seen in the background playing two dinosaur-themed monster movies,The Valley of Gwangi and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

See also

• The Beast of Hollow Mountain, an earlier, similar sci-fi western film
• Weird West
• List of stop-motion films

External links

• The Valley of Gwangi at the Internet Movie Database
• The Valley of Gwangi at AllRovi
• Review of film at Stomp Tokyo