Valley of the Dragons

Poster tagline: MASTODONS! DINOSAURS! FLYING REPTILES! BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL – AGAINST BRUTAL, BESTIAL NEANDERTHALS! Pure, playful entertainment, something like a Zeman flick of its time. The premise is simple: after a comet collides with Earth, two rivals in love reach its surface of the comet, where prehistoric life thrives. The creators mixed all sorts of things: mammoths, dinosaurs, Neanderthals, Stone Age hunters, aggressive underground creatures with white wigs, etc. Thanks to the colourful production design and a very action-packed story, the film never gets boring. In the studio scenes, which make up 95% of the runtime, there's no direct interaction between the actors and the animals; the classic rear projection comes to the rescue, with an overgrown coati and its fight with a snake, a giant newt and an iguana, a dinosaur duel that is highly reminiscent of the one from Robot Monster and cut from the earlier 1940 film One Million B.C. There are also elephants with glued-on fur, one of which chases one of the actors across the desert, and a fight with a giant spider that gives Ed Wood’s octopus a run for its money. While the Neanderthals are really rough, thanks to the good make-up effects, the prehistoric women look like supermodels, with neat hairstyles, long manes and make-up. The open ending called for a sequel that never materialised. (03/04/2012)