{"id":42373,"date":"2026-08-10T07:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T11:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=42373"},"modified":"2026-08-04T19:26:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T23:26:59","slug":"valley-of-gwangi-1969","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=42373","title":{"rendered":"“Valley of Gwangi” (1969) starring James Franciscus \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Valley of Gwangi <\/i>(1969)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0 Jim O’Connolly<\/strong><\/p>\n

Screenplay: William Bast, Julian More, Willis H. O’Brien<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stars:\u00a0 James Franciscus, Gila Golan, Richard Carlson, Laurence Naismith, Freda Jackson, Gustavo Rojo<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tagline: Cowboys Battle Monsters in the Lost World of Forbidden Valley.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Plot…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Tuck Kirby, a stuntman working in a traveling Wild West Show ventures into the Forbidden Valley<\/em>.\u00a0 There he discovers a world that never changed.\u00a0 Dinosaurs and other creatures thrive there!\u00a0 Kirby and other cowboys from the show decide to capture an allosaurus called Gwangi.\u00a0 They figure once they have the monster in the show, they’ll become rich.<\/p>\n

What could go wrong?<\/p>\n

Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Willis O’Brien, the genius behind the stop-motion animation effect in King Kong<\/em>, had an idea for a follow-up film.\u00a0 It was to be called Valley of the Mists<\/em>.\u00a0 Cowboys would discover a world of dinosaurs and bring one back to civilization.\u00a0 World War II, budget constraints and changes in studio leadership brought about the demise of the project.\u00a0 Years later, Ray Harryhausen (Willis’ mentee who went on to great success in stop-motion animation) brought forth the idea which became The Valley of Gwangi<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Valley of Gwangi<\/em> was adapted into a comic book published by Dell and released in December 1969.<\/p>\n

The Valley of Gwangi<\/em> was in production for one and a half years due to the extensive use of stop-motion animation.\u00a0 The dinosaur roping sequence alone took two and a half months to complete.\u00a0 \u00a0During the production of Gwangi,<\/em> the studio management changed.\u00a0 The new regime didn’t have faith in the film and released it with little publicity.<\/p>\n

I saw The Valley of Gwangi<\/em> at a drive-in when it was first released.\u00a0 I was ten or eleven.\u00a0 The perfect age for a cowboys and dinosaurs movie.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 Viewings as an adult are still fun, but some of the luster is gone.<\/p>\n

The Valley of Gwangi brought its star James Franciscus to my attention.\u00a0 I next saw him the following year in Beneath the Planet of the Apes <\/em>and the year after that in the tv series Longstreet<\/em> (with occasional guest star Bruce Lee!).<\/p>\n

The Valley of Gwangi <\/i>(1969)<\/strong> rates 3 of 5 stars.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Valley of Gwangi (1969) Director:\u00a0 Jim O’Connolly Screenplay: William Bast, Julian More, Willis H. O’Brien Stars:\u00a0 James Franciscus, Gila<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,54,65,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-movies","category-trivia","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42373"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42387,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42373\/revisions\/42387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}