Valley of the Dragons (1961)

Okay this is obviously done well before the advent of CGI. A baby gator or croc with a fin attached some how (glue?). A lot of monitor lizards, iguanas, and some boas. While I did like this movie some things stand out that raise questions in my mind. The Earthlings are never shown starting a fire yet always have one. This is suppose to be a comet that had passed close to Earth a long time ago. While I am not an astronomer, I don't believe any comet or asteroid that would have the mass to suck a portion of the Earth with it would also cause a lot of destruction if it actually got that close. Even if that did happen what about gravity? No astral body like that one would have a gravity near Earth's so the two men would have been a lot stronger but much more awkward on the comet. There were a couple of nice cave women though. I didn't see any furry animals yet every one dressed in pelts. What about genetic diversity? Didn't seem to be enough humans to keep from becoming inbred and by extrapolation degenerate.

I grew up in a tiny little town that had nothing going on except a run down movie theater. I recall somebody taking me to see this movie when I was a little kid. I'm guessing that Valley hit our screen around 63 or 64, a good two years after its release. Anyhow, I loved every second of it and still have vivid memories of the movie to this day. (I caught it one or two other times on TV during the seventies) It had a very dramatic opening scene: two duelist were suddenly swept away just before they were about to kill each other. Then they find themselves on a strange world filled with huge dinosaurs doing battle with each other. As if that wasn't enough they soon are under attack by savage primates. I'm guessing it sorta goes downhill after that but this film was a major event in my very ordinary little life back in the early sixties. I will always be grateful for that no matter how this holds up in comparison to today's stuff. It was pure cinema magic back then.

This movie was on fairly regularly when I was a kid; my cousin and I would frequently watch it together (she didn't share my enthusiasm for the animal skin-clad women, but she loved a scene where one of the cavemen gets eaten by a dragon). It was years later that I saw One Million B.C. for the first time; I knew it was hailed as a classic, but while I found it enjoyable (I fell in love with Carole Landis), VOTD still held more of a mystique for me. I have since looked for it in various video rental places with no success. It seems that these days even the networks aim for more sophisticated fare and overlook simpler joys like this. Just because the movies have graduated to Jurassic Park shouldn't mean that we can't suspend our disbelief for a brief period. VOTD should not be allowed to become extinct!

This was one of the very first dinosaur movies I ever watched. When I was a kid I loved the a lot of the scenes, especially the ones from the volcanic eruption. Little did I know at the time that most of the footage was "borrowed" from the original "jurassic classic" One Million B.C. (1940). Also, I didn't find out until several years later that this film was based on a work by the master of science fiction, Jules Verne. This is an okay film for lovers of B movies. Too bad that they don't really show it on television anymore.