"Love's for Latins"
The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
directed by Jim O'Connolly
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
I have to say that I'm probably too old to give The Valley of Gwangi the love it deserves. I can share enthusiasm for Ray Harryhausen but I can't pretend that watching a stop-motion dinosaur attack a stop-motion elephant elicits any reaction other than an appreciation for craft. That isn't exactly the spirit of the picture, where the academic anthropologist is a drunk, but you can't see them all on cable as a kid, and I missed a lot. Or, as the protagonist puts it while hiding behind a rock in the desert, "I make it a rule to never shake hands with an anxious man."
The plot is King Kong and Jurassic Park, but the setup involves a fast-talking love-'em-and-leave-'em type by the name of Tuck, played by James Franciscus. If I've seen Franciscus before, I don't remember, and his ex-Yalie look of a playboy gone slightly to seed gives him plenty of charm to sprint to the altar. A Mexico-by-way-of-Spain location throws flamenco guitar and bullfighting into the usual mix of cantinas and sombreros, and a bullring is just intimate enough a real-life location to put spectators within a convincing range of danger from the greatKong Gwangi.
Tuck, in pursuit of an ex-flame and a quick buck, enlists the equally gregarious, similarly shameless youngster Lope to trick a few wandering gypsies into surrendering the lost location of their "Forbidden Valley." Said lesson in geology is a less-forgiving recipe for ranch dressing (har har) but also a place where time stands still. Harryhausen's first stunt is a tiny horse named El Diablo, and with a pretty woman jumping a big horse into an above-ground water tank, we're watching a successful comedy franchise not half an hour in. Frankly, those first thirty minutes were a lot better than I expected, and the rest - well, the rest is wrestling pterodactyls and roping tyrannosaurs. Nothing less, nothing more.
directed by Jim O'Connolly
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
I have to say that I'm probably too old to give The Valley of Gwangi the love it deserves. I can share enthusiasm for Ray Harryhausen but I can't pretend that watching a stop-motion dinosaur attack a stop-motion elephant elicits any reaction other than an appreciation for craft. That isn't exactly the spirit of the picture, where the academic anthropologist is a drunk, but you can't see them all on cable as a kid, and I missed a lot. Or, as the protagonist puts it while hiding behind a rock in the desert, "I make it a rule to never shake hands with an anxious man."
The plot is King Kong and Jurassic Park, but the setup involves a fast-talking love-'em-and-leave-'em type by the name of Tuck, played by James Franciscus. If I've seen Franciscus before, I don't remember, and his ex-Yalie look of a playboy gone slightly to seed gives him plenty of charm to sprint to the altar. A Mexico-by-way-of-Spain location throws flamenco guitar and bullfighting into the usual mix of cantinas and sombreros, and a bullring is just intimate enough a real-life location to put spectators within a convincing range of danger from the great
Tuck, in pursuit of an ex-flame and a quick buck, enlists the equally gregarious, similarly shameless youngster Lope to trick a few wandering gypsies into surrendering the lost location of their "Forbidden Valley." Said lesson in geology is a less-forgiving recipe for ranch dressing (har har) but also a place where time stands still. Harryhausen's first stunt is a tiny horse named El Diablo, and with a pretty woman jumping a big horse into an above-ground water tank, we're watching a successful comedy franchise not half an hour in. Frankly, those first thirty minutes were a lot better than I expected, and the rest - well, the rest is wrestling pterodactyls and roping tyrannosaurs. Nothing less, nothing more.
posted by NPK at 12:27 AM
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