MovieChat Forums > One Million B.C. (1940) Discussion > Enlarged Reptiles, actually quite effect...

Enlarged Reptiles, actually quite effective!

posted 10 years ago by ClassicMovieholic
3 replies | jump to latest

I actually thought the use of photographically enlarged footage of reptiles was very effective in this film. Some have suggested that stop motion effects may have been a better choice. I do wish they had done without the man in the dinosaur suit, and the pig in the triceratops suit. For these sequences, stop-motion would have been preferable. You can tell the filmmakers were uncomfortable with the quality of these effects, since the costume shots are brief and obscure. But I'd rather they'd dispensed with dinosaurs altogether and just gone with the enlarged alligators, lizards and armadillo.

Not only did I find these effects more convincing, they are also more accurate. Whereas humans never coexisted with dinosaurs, anatomically modern humans certainly walked the planet at the same time as giant reptiles. Anatomically modern humans may have encountered giant lizards as late as 40 to 30,000 BC, making the use of giant reptiles quite a bit more convincing than the dinosaurs of One Million Years BC (1966) and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970).

I doubt that PETA would agree, but I give the use of real, live reptiles in this film two thumbs up!

[–] Big G-2 9 years ago

Willis O'Brien, stop-motion effects master for KING KONG, was a name that was never considered for this movie. I tend to think that producer Hal Roach, who was quite familiar with the stop-motion process having used it to great effect on MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS, realized it was a time consuming and expensive process. This movie contained many critters, and to have them all done in animated form, would have taken forever, so the way to be more expedient was to use live reptiles (but sometimes, they don't always cooperate when the cameras are rolling).

Both Hal Roach Sr. and his son, would later become associate producers for the 1966 stop-motion film.

Ironically, producer Irwin Allen would go through the same cycle as Roach. He hired both O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen to do the animation for his wildlife documentary THE ANIMAL WORLD. Allen himself would realize that stop-motion was painstaking and when it came time to redo THE LOST WORLD in 1960, he opted instead with the lizards sporting backfins.

[–] boxerrebellion 9 years ago

I am NOT a reptile person... generally they give me the creeps. However, after living on a Caribbean island for a decade with basically harmless reptiles (iguanas, curly tails, geckos, non-aggressive boas) I do have some affection for iguanas. I found some of the reptile scenes painful to watch as it was obvious that they were being injured and manipulated by unseen hands.

[–] ClassicMovieholic 9 years ago

I'm not saying it's morally right to force live reptiles to fight to the death on screen...just that the use of enlarged reptiles (which seems to have gotten some flak from people) is very effective from a special effects standpoint, and also more historically accurate than stop-motion dinosaurs. Anatomically modern humans and giant lizards did walk the earth at the same time.