Valley of the Dragons

I cannot believe you guys! All this claptrap and no mention of Joan Staley's infamous underwater swimming scene?!?

I saw this movie when it was first released and I was barely pubescent at that time. The audience was quietly taking in the Verneian antics of our shanghaied duo, until one of the main characters (I forget which) runs off for a swim with the Joan Staley character (Deena).

OK, so Deena takes off her prehistoric sunsuit and lo and behold she is wearing a Stone-Age bikini! OK, nothing to get excited about --- pretty chaste even for 1961. No elastic in prehistoric times, though, so the top fits rather loosely.

So the couple jump in the lagoon and start playfully swimming and diving underwater. The decent underwater cinematography lingers on each of the characters as they cavort about.

It quickly becomes evident that Deena's bikini top is not going to hold her fairly ample anatomy securely in hiding from the voyeurs in the audience.

I will never forget the eruption of hoots and whistles from the darkened theater as the camera continued to follow Ms. Staley from such a point of view as to make it all too evident that Deena would have no trouble feeding any of her progeny, especially considering the equipment on display.

Granted, this sort of thing hardly rates the consideration of a PG rating today, but in 1961, it was dynamite. I was at a point in my development where the fuss being made by the male members of the audience only served to make me embarrassed and uncomfortable. The scene seemed to go on forever.

I was elated to be able to get recently a VHS copy of the movie (recorded, believe it or not, from a TV presentation), and waited breathlessly for the scene burned into my mind as a young lad.

And there it was in all its glory. And every bit as provocative as it was in that little Galveston, Texas theater back in '61.

One of the best bits of vintage, unexpected cinematic cheesecake I have ever had the pleasure to encounter.

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.

"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.

Two men are about to fight a duel in the 19th century when a comet flies by and sucks them onto the comet. However, the comet itself is quite Earth-like except that it is populated by dinosaurs, ice age creatures and semi-humans and humans. The two men learn to live and even thrive on this planet--finding a couple hot babes (complete with nicely tweezed eyebrows, makeup and salon hair) and places in tribes of cave people.

I must admit that I did enjoy "Valley of the Dragons", but at the same time, in some ways it was a rather bad movie. After all, many of the scenes featuring 'dinosaurs' were lifted from other movies. What makes it worse is that these were BAD dinosaurs--clearly monitor lizards and alligators with fins glued to their backs. They were also EVIL in that the original filmmakers simply let these reptiles kill each other for real on tiny sets and put these brutal scenes in the movie! While I am certainly NOT a raving animal rights advocate, I still think these scenes were sick and awful. This aspect of the film is just awful. I also had a laugh when normal animals such as coatimundis and armadillos were blown up to dinosaur size! However, the acting was quite good--which surprised me, as the actors were definitely not big-name stars. And, while the script was a bit fantastic, it was fun and worth seeing. Overall, not as bad as I'd assumed and a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Jules Verne's name is shamelessly and regularly dropped in and around this Movie, but none of that matters. What is at stake here is its ability to draw in the Kids with Giant Monsters and Scantily Clad Girls. There is a ton of that seen here, but a lot of it had been on Screen before as it unabashedly clips Scenes from other Movies.

If you can forgive its Plagiarism this is a fast moving Movie with a few of its own quite interesting Shots. There are plenty of Lizards in the Background and some of them are quite brutally disposed of as they menace and mangle everything in sight. Also in sight is an underwater Cheesecake Scene that had the Boys howling in the 1961 Theatres.

An Entertaining piece of Schlock is fondly remembered by its now Grown Up (or have they) Audience, but is just below Mid-Range for this type. Its familiarity is its weakness, but there is enough Cool Stuff to be forgiving. Its an easy Movie to make Fun of but also an easy Movie to have Fun with.