Valley of the Dragons (1961)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

"Valley of the Dragons" is a real scrapbook of other, better movies. Finally available in a very nice DVD print from Columbia Classics, VOTD reveals itself to be the second half of a sci-fi double bill aimed at kids in the early 60s. VOTD is strictly a potboiler patched together from other films Columbia had access to, as well as stock footage. Columbia hoped to cash in on the Jules Verne craze that had seen great success with Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954) and 20th Century Fox's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1958). Verne's "Off on a Comet" was pretty much forgotten, so Columbia seized on the title and added an astonishing number of things harvested from other sources in hopes to make the money the aforementioned films harvested. It didn't work, and VOTD ended up on an endless loop in second-run theatres and died a quiet death on TV "Chiller Theater" offerings until vanishing in the late 60s. Seeing this oddity again after so many years is why popcorn was invented. It's earnest, yet silly. The production values are not bad, and the story is as flimsy as they come. Earthmen are swept onto a passing comet, discover they're about to become lunchmeat for "dinosaurs", run away from flaming oatmeal spewed out by a volcano, and find hot babes on said comet. Love conquers all and leering commences as the two former enemies realize they have seven years to fool around with the hot babes before maybe getting off the comet when it passes Earth again.The "dinosaurs" are the stock variety lizards with fins glued on their backs and blown up via rear projection. Many have wandered over from the classic "One Million BC" (1940), as have a bunch of mangy mastodons. The erupting volcano and the hot oatmeal returns from that spectacle as well. There's a really unpleasant scene featuring a giant kinkajou attacking and really eating a snake. Rodan (1956) wanders over from Japan and makes a few peek-a-boo appearances. The giant spider/bug is from "World Without End"(1956). The Morlocks from MGM's "The Time Machine" (1960) show up, although the faces have been changed and lack the glow-in-the-dark eyes. And so on. All that aside, VOTD isn't a bad way to spend a few minutes, and there's some cheesecake and a loose bikini top in an underwater swim sequence. This is poverty row movie-making at it's finest. Be warned though, if you making a drinking game of this by taking a shot every time you spot something from another B-movie monster mash, you'll be stinking drunk by the 45 minute mark.

This film is so entertaining from the moment it starts that finding out through research that some of the footage was from "One Million B.C.", it didn't diminish the impact of the film for me. I was going to call my review "The Night of the Big Iguana", but I wanted to instill the point of view that having seen "One Million B.C." and this at different points in my life, I didn't even notice the difference. Only one thing in the film made me roll my eyes, and that was the silly looking underground people. But there was nothing else to laugh at, even after the premise of a comet leaving the two men about to duel all alone (as the others are whiffed away in some sort of Event Horizon) and come out of it as friendly as the Geiko gecko.I'm not really a follower of science fiction to the point where I can call myself an expert on the genre, so I had to simply accept what the two men realized had happened and just go along with the flow with that explanation and enjoy the sight of large creatures they had to hide from. Sure, it is really silly that the Frenchman (Cesare Danova) floats down the river on a palm raft as large creatures (including a snake and lizard) pass right by him as if they didn't want to disturb his nap. It is easy to overlook faulty parts of a storyline when it is presented so entertainingly. Only George Pal and Ray Harryhausen were doing successful films like this at the time, and this one wasn't either one of their talented thumbs.Fortunately, the romantic involvement between the two men and the cave women they found was subtly done not to overshadow the pre-historic nature and science fiction elements of the film. Young audiences of today might not appreciate it (to quote the son of a friend who watched "Godzilla" and told his dad that it was a man in a lizard suit.) But for those of us who remember the double creature feature (and no computer animation), it remains a lot of fun.

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!