Cesare
(National Lampoon’s Animal House) Danova and Sean (My Chauffeur) McClory star
as two feuding men whose duel is interrupted by a comet crashing to earth. They awaken to find themselves in a strange
surrounding and eventually figure out they’ve somehow been swept away on the
passing comet. They soon put their
differences aside and go exploring. The
two men wind up getting separated and find themselves on opposing sides of a caveman
tribal war.
Based on a story by Jules Verne, Valley of the Dragons earns points for not wasting any time getting the show on the road. It kicks things off in fine fashion with the scene of the comet literally sweeping Danova and McClory off their feet. It doesn’t take long to get bogged down from there though. The caveman scenes are slowly paced and the final dinosaur battle (that’s right, they’re not even dragons), which is nothing more than lizards with fins glued onto their backs, goes on far too long.
Most
of this is laughable and cheap. You can
get some amusement from seeing elephants covered in fur being passed off as
mastodons and forced perspective shots of anteaters and armadillos. Fans will also have fun spotting the
wholesale swiping of footage from One Million B.C., King Dinosaur, and even Rodan
being recycled for the action sequences. The spider monster from Cat-Women of the Moon
is even reused briefly. The skull-faced
Neanderthal men are kind of creepy too, but for the most part, the overreliance
on stock footage and the soggy pacing in the second half ultimately sink this
Valley.
AKA: Prehistoric Valley.
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