The Big Picture
- Jurassic Park challenged the popular image of dinosaurs and argued that they had a closer relationship with birds than with lizards.
- Filmmakers like Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro have praised stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen's approach to creating creatures that feel like characters.
- The Valley of Gwangi is a revisionist Western that explores themes of greed and manifest destiny in a fun but morally ambiguous way.
When Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) saw the T. rex appear out of nowhere and attack a Gallimimus, he told Tim and Lex that they’d “never look at birds the same way again.” What Jurassic Park was arguing at the time — in that hoary old age when blockbusters argued — was the relatively recent theory that theropods share a closer lineage with birds than lizards. Up until that point, the popular image of the dinosaur was largely rendered by artist Charles R. Knight, whose upright, tail-dragging Tyrannosaurus and swamp-based Brontosaurus were borrowed for The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933). As movie monsters, they were brought to life by Willis O’Brien, the Oscar-winning effects pioneer who invented stop-motion animation. One of his movie ideas, Emilio and Guloso, alternatively The Valley of the Mist, was completed in 1969 by his protégé Ray Harryhausen and director Jim O'Connolly as The Valley of Gwangi. Bearing one of cinema’s great posters, with the tagline “Cowboys battle monsters in the lost world of Forbidden Valley” in enormous, bold text, it’s a western with one hell of a twist. The cowboys chase an Ornithomimus through the desert before an Allosaurus appears out of nowhere to attack; a moment to which Steven Spielberg was keen to pay tribute.
Filmmakers like Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro have spoken about Harryhausen’s influence, with the latter especially praising the artist’s approach to the stop-motion puppets, less as monsters than as characters. Whether the ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth or the fantasy bestiaries of films like Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts, a Harryhausen creature lives and breathes, evidences a history with every twitch, every gesture. Perhaps the mold was cast with King Kong, an inanimate object charged with a film’s tragic ending. O’Brien’s Valley of the Mist is like a spiritual remake of his earlier work, featuring a prehistoric beast removed from its habitat and paraded before civilization. We're informed via chyron that The Valley of Gwangi takes place in Mexico at the turn of the century, when a stranger blows into town: Tuck Kirby (James Franciscus), who’s actually hardly a stranger. He’d broken the heart of TJ Breckenridge (Gila Golan), a stunt performer at a modest rodeo, and returns to make an offer to buy her out.
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It may be time for TJ to move on, after a stunt involving a horse, a two-story jump, and a pool of water nearly goes wrong. Tuck, however, is easily rebuffed. Despite sound business sense, he’s no gentleman, constantly pushing himself into spaces where he isn’t wanted, like TJ’s dressing room as she’s trying to dress. “My, my,” he says, “You always did look sweet in a temper.” TJ has a better idea anyway, as her friend Carlos (Gustavo Rojo) recently returned from the Forbidden Valley with a new act, a miniature horse dubbed El Diablo. This is the film’s first glimpse of Harryhausen’s magic, an on-ramp to more spectacular creatures later. The nearby but British scientist Horace Bromley (Laurence Naismith), who’s more John Hammond than Professor Challenger, identifies the animal as the extinct species Eohippus. This is where the ghost of Carl Denham haunts our principals, with Bromley believing that El Diablo is a ticket to knighthood. And yet he has no commercial interest, or so he says. “I’m a scientist!” Tuck, too, lets his imagination run away with him.
How nice it would be, if that’s where the story ends and nobody gets eaten by dinosaurs. El Diablo’s arrival is heralded by the dire warnings of Tia Zorina (Freda Jackson), a Romani Mexican woman often referred to as a “witch.” She tells anyone who’ll listen that one must never steal from the Forbidden Valley, lest they suffer the curse of “Gwangi.” Now, the foreknowledge that Gwangi is a big blue Allosaurus undermines the superstition just a little. One can buy the mysticism surrounding Kong, but come on. A dinosaur curse? After Zorina and her henchmen steal El Diablo and set out for the Forbidden Valley, she’s pursued by Bromley and Lope (Curtis Arden), an enterprising boy who befriends Tuck, as well as Tuck and eventually TJ, Carlos, and rodeo boss Champ (Richard Carlson). The latter three believe that Tuck stole the horse, and so this posse has clashing motives but a single, deadly destination.
Just Like ‘Jurassic Park,’ Dinosaurs Are a Metaphor for Greed
While the documentary Walking with Dinosaurs suggested that the terrible lizards lived in all sorts of biomes, Hollywood loves a primeval forest. The Forbidden Valley is a change of pace, with bizarre stone structures in glorious matte paintings plunging these cowboys into a decidedly weird west. And right out of a vintage comic book, they quickly find themselves wrangling Gwangi in a set piece that delivers on the promise of the tagline. Tuck and TJ throw their lassos, Gwangi yanks people off their horses. It’s a spectacle brought to screen by Harryhausen in his prime. The Valley of Gwangi would actually mark his final film with dinosaurs, so the animation and composite work is built on years of refined technique. Gwangi himself is a natural on camera, reacting to the environment with those beady eyes and poking with his snout. And the snarls.
Bromley had narrowly avoided becoming a Gwangi snack earlier, distracted by another prehistoric creature and dreaming about his prospective knighthood. This is the curse that Zorina was talking about, and it actually jumps from person to person: the curse of greed. The possibility of fame and fortune can lead one toward irrational decision-making, as well as general aggression. After El Diablo slips through the narrow passage of a cave, the posse obliterates the natural formation with horses and rope. If only they had dynamite. This isn’t mere trespass anymore, it’s the kind of penetration that Ian Malcolm was alluding to over Chilean sea bass. The cave later collapses on top of Gwangi, who’d been chasing the intrepid cowboys out of the Forbidden Valley. First it was Tuck and Bromley with dollar signs in their eyes, the latter even sneaking off with Lope to cut Tuck out of profit-sharing, and now it’s Champ, though his Denham speech over an unconscious Gwangi is interrupted by the solemn realization that not everyone made it out. They’ve got one horse too many.
Gwangi is brought into town in an enormous wooden cage apparently erected in the week that he was napping, and Bromley tells Zorina — from a literal high horse — that “he’s no more evil than an alligator! He can cast no spells.” Oh, but for that of human nature. Strangely, TJ is next in line to lose herself to greed, talking about keeping the show going indefinitely, and Zorina fulfills her own prophecy with sabotage. She sends a henchman to open Gwangi’s enclosure within the rodeo, which has attracted a significant crowd; imagery that brings comparisons to Nope. This Dennis Nedry sabotage turns into Ken Wheatley slaughter, and Gwangi is set loose upon the evacuating arena. What’s funny is that even though his cage door is open, he continues to lash his tail and bite at it, betraying that lack of simian intelligence enjoyed by his cinema brethren. So, how does Gwangi stack up as the new Kong?
When Dinosaurs (and Cowboys) Ruled the Earth
The Valley of Gwangi is a revisionist Western not in tone but certainly in time period. By the late 1800s, westward expansion had advanced beyond the borders of the continental United States, and the film depicts not an earnest clash between gunslingers and American Indians but a theatrical reproduction at the rodeo. The mythical “cowboys and Indians” ride around on horseback, firing blanks at each other. Still, Gwangi — both the film and the titular creature — suggests the hidden depths of this colonized land. Where Jurassic Park encourages its audience to read dinosaur ancestry into birds, preferring awe at the natural world over greed for something better, The Valley of Gwangi affixes the greed with Manifest Destiny, turning the preference into a scold — on paper, at least. This is, after all, a movie where a cowboy snaps a pterodactyl’s neck. Despite Gwangi’s tragic fate, there’s hardly any narrative foundation to the moral conclusion. It’s a fun popcorn movie that seems to accidentally stumble into headier territory, laying the foundation for later works with more prominent satire or state-of-the-art technophobia.
Made today, The Valley of Gwangi would absolutely be entitled Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs, enjoy traction online, and underperform at the box office. Instead, this premise is played completely straight, as an homage to two dying film genres. Unfortunately, it may have just been time to finally hang up the spurs and the claws. Ray Harryhausen breathes life into the Forbidden Valley, but the problem of Gwangi is deeper than his immediate characterization. He’s a charismatic sharptooth, for sure, but being part villain and part victim of human greed doesn’t add up and fit a scaly lizard boy. It would be a couple of decades before Hollywood dinosaurs evolved, where the advent of CGI under Spielberg’s own magical eye instilled the reptiles with grand majesty. Jurassic Park also benefits from a story designed for the subject matter, where the mix of cowboys and dinosaurs here is thematically confused. Small price to pay? The Valley of Gwangi is no less essential for its quirks, nevertheless committing to screen unique and unforgettable imagery. It’s worth a trip back in time, to when spectacle was different — but still dangerous.
