After Comic
Well, folks, that is the last time I go looking for a bargain pet in a hidden valley. A tiny horse sounded reasonable. A dinosaur with an appetite—and a cowboy determined to catch him—was more adventure than I had budgeted for.
That’s my Bootleg Comics take on The Valley of Gwangi (1969), starring James Franciscus, Gila Golan, and Richard Carlson. The actual movie brings together a struggling Wild West show, a little prehistoric horse, and a discovery that turns into very big trouble.
What I enjoy about this kind of adventure is the imagination behind it. Somebody looked at a Western and decided the cowboys needed a dinosaur to worry about. Personally, I would have been perfectly satisfied with a difficult mule.
Here are five things you probably didn’t know about the movie:
Gwangi waited decades for his big entrance. Willis O’Brien’s earlier Gwangi project was canceled by RKO in 1942. The property was revived in 1967, roughly twenty-five years later, with Ray Harryhausen creating the creature effects. That dinosaur survived a Hollywood cancellation before he ever faced a lasso.
Gila Golan’s dialogue was dubbed. Golan plays T.J. Breckenridge, the woman running the Wild West show, but her dialogue was dubbed for the finished film. It’s one of those details you can easily miss while watching the story unfold.
The Mexican adventure was filmed in Spain. Principal photography began in Almería, Spain, in July 1967. The location crew included British and Spanish technicians, while the lengthy effects work continued afterward in England. Bringing that hidden valley to life involved quite a journey behind the camera, too.
The cowboys were actually roping a pole on a Jeep. For the famous capture scene, riders threw their lassos around a tall pole mounted on a modified Jeep. The vehicle was concealed through photographic effects. Harryhausen then carefully matched miniature ropes around his animated dinosaur to the ropes in the live-action footage. Imagine keeping all those ropes lined up while moving the creature a tiny amount between photographs!
Harryhausen thought Gwangi came out too blue. He explained that the creature was originally gray-blue, but the blue became stronger when the film prints were made. He felt that this made the dinosaur look less convincingly blended into the scene. Even after all that painstaking animation, the printing process could change the result.
A little note about watching: the free version in my player comes from an outside upload, so I can’t promise how long it will remain available. If the host removes or restricts that copy, it will stop playing here, too. Major U.S. services currently offer the movie for rental or purchase.
If you’ve been meaning to see it, settle in and enjoy this free version while it remains available.
I’ll be over here shopping for a goldfish.
—BJ, Bootleg Comics
Tap the picture for BJ’s introduction, followed by the movie.
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