In terms of story and acting, this movie is staunchly mediocre. The plot's essentially a King Kong remake. Gila Golan puts some fire into her role, but James Franciscus is bland throughout. The actress who portrays the fearsome gypsy Tia Zorina is probably the best of the cast, actually. By far the best aspect of this movie, unsurprisingly, is the stunning special effects work of Ray Harryhausen, particularly the Eohippus, the pterosaur, and the Gwangi-Elephant battle (which is, however, not quite as good as the similar Ymir-Elephant fight in Twenty Million Miles to Earth). Harryhausen's best stop-motion creations have a fierce realism which the slick computer-driven effects of today can't quite match, and this movie contains some of his finest work, in my opinion.
Review of The Valley of Gwangi
