Likable rehash of KING KONG (1933) with a traveling sideshow instead of a film crew, Forbidden Valley instead of Skull Island, Mexico instead of New York, and a dinosaur instead of a giant ape! The film may lack the essential interaction between the heroine and the monster (the latter seems to be only interested in eating!) but substitutes pleasing Technicolor and the eccentric (yet agreeable) blending of styles being part-Western and part-adventure/mythical fable!
The script dusted off an unfilmed Willis O'Brien project from the early 1940s with the necessary elaborate trickwork (exposed somewhat by the digital transfer, but fully maintaining its make-believe factor and distinctive charm) handled by Ray Harryhausen, O'Brien's former protégé and who eventually took from him the mantle of cinema's foremost special effects wizard. Perhaps the film's most notable sequence in this regard is when Gwangi the dinosaur is roped by a number of people on horseback involving incredible precision in order to match the movement of the monster (obviously added in later) with two sets of live-action footage brought together by the split-screen technique! The narrative introduces three different species of dinosaur though, naturally, Gwangi gets the biggest 'role'; unfortunately, however, this means that the amiable miniature horse (mythical ancestor of the much bigger variety prevalent today) is forgotten after a while prior to Gwangi's appearance, it had been intended as the sideshow's new attraction.
The cast is okay: James Franciscus plays the rugged hero, Gila Golan the attractive (if bland) leading lady, sci-fi veteran Richard Carlson appears as the entrepreneur figure (though he's never quite the egomaniac that Carl Denham was!), Laurence Naismith (who comes off best) is the inevitable anthropologist, while Freda Jackson provides some camp value as a blind and superstitious local woman. The rousing score by Jerome Moross recalls his best-known work the large-scale Western THE BIG COUNTRY (1958).
Though clearly intended as a kiddie film (with a smart local boy teaming up with con-man Franciscus), the antics of the rampaging Gwangi are quite intense and bloody: his ingenious introduction, darting from behind a rock to seize and munch on a dinosaur of a much smaller size, was actually replicated in Steven Spielberg's JURASSIC PARK (1993). The climax, then, is highly satisfactory as the dinosaur escapes from captivity in the arena (cue an endless parade of screaming Mexicans as they run for their lives!) but is eventually cornered in a cathedral which is convincingly destroyed in the ensuing blaze.
P.S. I'm now left with only THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) still to watch from the Harryhausen canon. I hope I can be able to remedy this soon...
The script dusted off an unfilmed Willis O'Brien project from the early 1940s with the necessary elaborate trickwork (exposed somewhat by the digital transfer, but fully maintaining its make-believe factor and distinctive charm) handled by Ray Harryhausen, O'Brien's former protégé and who eventually took from him the mantle of cinema's foremost special effects wizard. Perhaps the film's most notable sequence in this regard is when Gwangi the dinosaur is roped by a number of people on horseback involving incredible precision in order to match the movement of the monster (obviously added in later) with two sets of live-action footage brought together by the split-screen technique! The narrative introduces three different species of dinosaur though, naturally, Gwangi gets the biggest 'role'; unfortunately, however, this means that the amiable miniature horse (mythical ancestor of the much bigger variety prevalent today) is forgotten after a while prior to Gwangi's appearance, it had been intended as the sideshow's new attraction.
The cast is okay: James Franciscus plays the rugged hero, Gila Golan the attractive (if bland) leading lady, sci-fi veteran Richard Carlson appears as the entrepreneur figure (though he's never quite the egomaniac that Carl Denham was!), Laurence Naismith (who comes off best) is the inevitable anthropologist, while Freda Jackson provides some camp value as a blind and superstitious local woman. The rousing score by Jerome Moross recalls his best-known work the large-scale Western THE BIG COUNTRY (1958).
Though clearly intended as a kiddie film (with a smart local boy teaming up with con-man Franciscus), the antics of the rampaging Gwangi are quite intense and bloody: his ingenious introduction, darting from behind a rock to seize and munch on a dinosaur of a much smaller size, was actually replicated in Steven Spielberg's JURASSIC PARK (1993). The climax, then, is highly satisfactory as the dinosaur escapes from captivity in the arena (cue an endless parade of screaming Mexicans as they run for their lives!) but is eventually cornered in a cathedral which is convincingly destroyed in the ensuing blaze.
P.S. I'm now left with only THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) still to watch from the Harryhausen canon. I hope I can be able to remedy this soon...