The Valley of Gwangi (1969) on Netflix
G19691h 36mSci-FiThrillerWestern
T.J. Breckenridge's traveling wild west show is failing in Mexico, so she hopes El Diablo, a miniature horse, will save it. Tuck Kirby, once her fiancé, arrives wanting to buy the show.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.2/105,756 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, T.J. Breckenridge stars as a trick rider in the traveling wild west show she manages, having taken it over after her father died. Attendance is poor. Tuck Kirby, a horse trader and her former fiancé, arrives at the show's stop south of the Rio Grande hoping to buy its star horse for another outfit and to help T.J. out of debt. She has a new attraction instead: El Diablo, a miniature horse no bigger than a dog. Through the paleontologist Horace Bromley, Tuck recognizes the animal as an eohippus, a creature thought extinct, and Bromley has found its fossilized tracks nearby. Tia Zorina and the local Romani hold that El Diablo came from the Forbidden Valley and is cursed, and they demand its return.
Cast
- Dennis Kilbaneas Rowdy
- Mario De Barrosas Bean (as Mario de Barros also)
- Jose Burgosas The Dwarf (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Roping Gwangi was the most labor-intensive animated sequence: close to a year went on the effects, with more than 300 "Dynamation" cuts, a record number for Harryhausen. The trick was having the actors hold ropes tied to a "monster stick" in the back of a jeep.
- The project began decades earlier at RKO, where president George J. Schaefer agreed to finance it and gave O'Brien a $552,000 budget, his stop-motion effects to be complemented by director Ernest B. Schoedsack's live action. Executive changes and wartime constraints scrapped it in 1942 with no filming done.
- The scene in which Gwangi suddenly appears from behind a hill and snatches the fleeing Ornithomimus in his jaws was later copied in Steven Spielberg's big-budget dinosaur film Jurassic Park.
- Gila Golan was cast at the insistence of Warner Bros., but her Israeli accent was so strong that every one of her lines had to be redubbed on the film by another voice actress.
