Lesser known Ray Harryhausen in part because a lot of it was just plain annoying - to me, at any rate - it's got this irritating opening sequence in turn of the century Mexico (presumably to accommodate filming in Spain), which sets up all this storyline about a rodeo rider (James Franciscus, uncharming here) visiting a rodeo, renewing a relationship with a fellow rider (Gina Golan) and some boring old idiot.
They discover a secret valley where there are dinosaurs running. The film improves with some typically strong Ray Harryhausen creatures but it never hits the top rank for me. In part this is because the humans are so dull - they're not really on a mission to find dinosaurs,Laurence Naismith is a dull professor digging in the area but not on an expedition, and there's all this rodeo storyline, with Franciscus wanting to buy a ranch and not wanting to settle down with Golan then wanting to settle down, and then the cowboys thinking of exploiting the aliens and... urgh.
In King Kong the dramatic lines were clear and the characters vivid - Robert Armstrong wanted to make a movie, Fay Wray wanted to act, Kong fell in love with Wray, Armstrong wanted to exploit him. Here it's all fuzzy. Also Kong was kind of mean, beating up humans on Skull Island and terrifying creatures... here the poor old Gwangi is minding his own business when lassoed, and he doesn't deserve to be captured, he doesn't fall in love with anyone and is killed after understandably going on a rampage.
For some reason the scenes of horses travelling with loud clip-clop dubbed sounds really got on my nerves. It was as if "oh we've got to get these horse sounds right" and they ignored the script.
I'm not sure cowboys plus dinosaurs work but this definitely doesn't.
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