Long overdue

This film has been long-neglected for the home video market, it practically screams out for a good dvd release. It was the first real attempt at bringing Willis O'Brien's long-cherished notion of a "cowboys vs dinosaurs" film to life (unless you want to count some aspects of "Mighty Joe Young"), something that his successor, Ray Harryhausen, took all the way eleven years later with "The Valley of Gwangi." As such, it's historically important...and, even more importantly, it ain't all that bad of a little film!

I think probably one of the biggest problems is that it was a United Artists film, and by this time they weren't really a studio anymore so much as a distributor for independent films...which means that, for the most part, ownership was left in the hand of the original small production companies, and goodness knows who owns the thing now...and especially who might still own the original elements.

Speaking of which, I find it rather amusing that one of the reviews on here condescendingly takes the film a little bit to task because of its age and primitive effects (has he ever seen the original "King Kong," from twenty-three years before?), and includes a dig about how muddy the color is, as if that was the way color looked back then. Hasn't he ever seen any of the nicely restored versions of "The Wizard of Oz" or "Meet Me In St. Louis" or a lot of other older and gorgeous color films?

Muddy, my butt. My guess is that this thing originally had gorgeous color, and we've just been unfortunately stuck with inferior third- and fourth-generation tv prints for years now.

It's certainly about time that someone tracked down whatever was left of the original elements of this thing, if, by some miracle, they still exist.

Here's hoping.



Losing your virginity, burying your pet and killing your sister...can take a lot out of a girl!