Directed by Chiang Tai and starring Chen Hsiu-Chen, Hsi Hsiang and Chin Ling Chih.
Poster
Yun Chung Lung, also known as Prince 3, is a golden dragon deity. He is banished to the human world as penitence for causing catastrophic flooding during a battle with another, evil dragon. Lung, now in human form and aided by a young, lovestruck couple, takes on the devils causing problems in the kingdom, including one flesh-hungry villain disguised as an ill, old lady.
Yun Chung Lung
Red Devil…
…confronts a giant, white ape…
…and they fight…
…and, at one point, the ape downs Red Devil with a drop kick!
Also known as MOTHER GODDESS VS THE SEA DEMON, this Taiwanese fantasy production uses stock footage from THE FOUNDING OF THE MING DYNASTY (1971) and EXORCISING SWORD (1975), plus music purloined from the likes of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979), and is of most interest when giant monsters take centre stage. These creatures include a colossal, red-haired, fanged demon-dude with reptilian hands & feet, a massive white ape, two serpentine (marionette) dragons, a bat-eared lake monster that resembles a kind of gigantic gill-man, a large (puppet) cobra and a huge, humanoid monster with long white hair and bulging eyes. Oh, there are various giant, floating heads, too!
Dragon versus Red Devil
Dragon versus dragon
Lake monster!
He’s got bat-ears, fangs and whiskers!
What big, orange eyes you have!
Giant, floating monster head fires green lightning bolts from its eyes!
These beasties, mainly men-in-suit creations, possess varied powers, including the ability to breath flame, shoot electrical power beams from their eyes and, at one point, flip from one monster form to another.
Monster footage from THE FOUNDING OF THE MING DYNASTY is used in this movie
More monster footage is taken from EXORCISING SWORD, also known as THE DEVIL FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
Miniature sets get flooded, animated energy bolts fill the screen, suicide is treated very lightly, the human drama moments tend to drag and, generally, the movie comes across as a cheap, sometimes plodding merging of fairy tale, sub-Toho kaiju flick and baffling mythological yarn.
Directed by Hwa I Hung, starring Billy Chong, Chan Lau, Chang Tao and Cheng Ka Ying .
Poster
Ocean Shores video sleeve
A renegade priest brings the dead back to life as eyeless, hopping zombies to help a bad guy called Mu Tai kill his opponents, but the villain dies in one of his own boobytraps, so his ghost demands to be reincarnated in another body. Mu Tai’s spirit ends up residing in the corpse of hero Pang’s father, but a faulty ritual turns him into a white-faced, part-human & part-ghost being, who’s hellbent on murdering several folks. To make matters worse, Pang (Chong) is also targeted by scar-faced undead villain Long, a guy so tough he even carries on fighting when his hands and feet catch fire! Fortunately for Pang, the handy intervention of a Buddhist monk imbues him with the power to defeat Long, who is finally lynched with prayer beads and stabbed to death with a tree branch.
Is Pang’s dad dead or unwell or a zombie?
Nice eyebrows!
This is a corpse, innit?
This Eternal Film Company production is a comedic fantasy-horror-actioner, starring the likeable Billy Chong, which merges lively bouts of kung fu, humour and supernatural hijinks with music borrowed from the likes of MOONRAKER and EXORCIST II.
This leaf hat will make you invisible to vampires and zombies – honest!
The movie informs us that spirits need to be nailed to the corpses they are going to inhabit and reveals the fact that a hat constructed from leaves can make its wearer invisible to the living dead!
Video cover
There’s some super-fast editing for several fight scenes, plus speeded-up farcical chases, though this all actually works out fine within the context of this film, which is, after all, an exaggerated comedy kung fu horror flick.
Directed by Ted Kingsbrook, produced by Tomas Tang, starring Kent Wills, Trudy Calder, Lucas Byrne, Sorapong Chatree, Sun Chien and Jack Mackay.
Lots of people get eaten!
Master Cooper, who controls people-munching killer crocs from a golden cave, plans to team-up with Monica (Calder), the blonde sorceress who is running a ‘vampire business’. Together they hope their crocodiles and hopping vamps will take over the world, but agent Bruce Thompson (Wills) is determined to prevent this evil plan from happening.
VHS cover
A grungy-faced hopping vampire
Master Cooper dwells on his golden cave, sitting within the skeletal jaws of a croc
OMG! Where to start with this incredibly weird cut-and-paste flick?! Well, here’s just some of the things that occur… There are multiple crocodile attacks, both in the water and on land, with a high bodycount and much screaming. Monica performs seemingly pointless incantations, at one point causing several fish to spill from a vampire’s mouth, into a fishbowl, which then fly up into a different vampire’s mouth. A levitating dude loses his concentration and falls prey to a hungry crocodile. A guy vomits up maggots. A smaller man-in-suit croc does tricks for villagers. Some of the vampires are of the Chinese hopping variety, whilst others are more like zombie-vamps with green blood. Oh… and the crocodiles are actually the spirits of people who have become reptiles, so they often appear in human form too!
Witch-woman Monica has long, steel nails!
The croc footage stems from a Thai film called KRAI THONG 2 (1985) and the main crocodile, though not exactly a Hollywood-standard animatronic creation, is a pretty serviceable full-size model that munches down on many, many extras. The low tech attack scenes actually possess a pacy verve, as loads of people run, shout and get bitten or carried away. One of the reasons these reptile assaults stand out is because they are never isolated incidents: the various crocs don’t bother waiting around to pick off lone victims, they launch onslaughts against groups of people near their homes or at riverside markets. Most of these attacks involve the actors struggling in the reptile’s jaws, but there’s one particular scene that is quite gory, with limbs being bitten off, and I’m sure actual amputees were cast to portray these legless or armless victims.
A dude has his leg bitten off
A man tries to pull a victim back out of the croc’s mouth!
KRAI THONG 2 provided much of the footage for this cut-and-paste production
It’s a real WTF moment when one of the crocs turns into its human form (a young woman called Maria) for the very first time. It’s revealed that Maria is the deceased girlfriend of a local man called Jack and she says such things as “If you really cared for me, Jack, you’d be a crocodile too, and then we could both be together right away, what do you think?”
Jack makes a crocodile let go of its latest victim…
…and the croc transforms into his dead sweetheart Maria!
The film focuses more on the crocodile spirits in their human form later in the story, in scenes mainly based in the golden cave, referred to as Sea World. This is the location where two croc-demon guys, one called Donald and the other named Stephen, fight one another, with Stephen hurling small, stuffed-looking crocodiles at Donald!
Okay, now THAT is what you call a poster!
The film reaches dual climaxes, one involving Jack as a croc-fighting hero with a special spear & dagger, the other finale boasting a showdown between Bruce, vampires and witch-lady Monica, who suddenly develops a fake-looking, throbbing belly, from which bursts a slimy human head!
Bruce Thompson versus Monica!
The zombie-vampires leak greenish blood when they are stabbed
This dumb, fun Tomas Tang production, often mistakenly credited as a Godfrey Ho film, is utterly batshit crazy, filled with so much incident, including a croc biting the head off a water buffalo, a machine gun assassination attempt, and a crocodile with diamond teeth, that the film actually makes other cut-and-paste epics like SCORPION THUNDERBOLT look like coherent, perfectly normal movies by comparison!
At one point one of the crocodiles glides through the air!
Directed by Joe Livingstone, produced by Tomas Tang, starring Robin Mackay, Nian Watts and Harry Myles.
Japanese VHS cover
Tom, an anti-drug agent, is mortally wounded whilst taking on narcos, who are using Chinese hopping vampires as weapons and as a means to smuggle their heroin shipments. Tom dies on the operating table, but it is decided to transform him into an android… enter the robo-warrior!
We can rebuild him! We have the technology!
Narco villain
Dastardly priest
ROBO VAMPIRE, a cut-and-paste movie courtesy of producer Tomas Tang’s Filmark International, closely resembles the kind of productions made by director Godfrey Ho, the king of such chimeric flicks, which is why the film is very often falsely attributed to him. So who is ‘Joe Livingstone’, then? I don’t know the answer to that, but the owner of IFD Films & Arts Ltd, Toby Russell, assures me that it isn’t Mr Ho. So let’s move on…
Hopping vampire
A scab-faced vampire with a mouthful of his victim’s flesh!
Much of the footage in ROBO VAMPIRE, especially the hostage rescue mission sequences, is sourced from the Thai actioner PAA LOHGAN (1984). The new spliced-in material is all the hopping vampire and robo-dude stuff and, interestingly, these additional scenes are actually better lit than the original movie footage, which usually isn’t the case.
At one point robo-warrior levitates!
The main character, a stomping, low tech, silver-suited dude with a big gun, is not actually a vampire, as you might have expected considering the film’s title. He’s just a cut-price android, though he does skirmish with many scabby-faced, hopping bloodsuckers throughout the film’s running time.
Android versus vamps!
In one action sequence, the robo-warrior battles armed bad guys on a beach, where they attempt to immolate him, but when this fails he is assailed by vampires that pop-up from the sand. This is a shoddily-shot, gloriously cheesy set piece that ends with a tin foil-covered dummy, representing the android protagonist, being blown-up by a rocket launcher! But don’t you worry, the tech guys weld robo-warrior back together again pretty quickly and easily.
Such amazing special effects!
Though the jungle-based rescue subplot is a mainly underwhelming series of shoot-outs, fights, some water torture and explosions, with far too many characters being introduced into the story, a lot of the other incidents in the movie are quite memorable, including drugs being hidden in a real dead cow’s slit-open belly, romantic interludes between a ghostly woman and her gorilla-faced super-vampire lover, a bloody eye-poking, fireworks being fired from the ape-mask-vampire’s sleeves, and a fight between the now-topless female ghost and a priest! Once the she-spirit defeats the evil holy man, our android hero then scorches the gorilla-vampire with his machine gun, which is now in flamethrower mode (cue burning dummy on a wire)!
The female ghost
A gorilla-faced vampire! Yes, you heard me right: a gorilla-faced vampire!
Another shot of the girl ghost
Weird, cheap, trashy and cheerful nonsense.
You don’t mess with a flamethrower-wielding android!
A monster hand reaches up to grab a buddhist monk…
Directed by Roc Tien, starring Roc Tien (who also wrote the script), Meng Fei, Chun Sing and Tien Ho.
Also known as THE SILVER SPEAR, this Taiwanese wuxia production begins like a murder mystery, with several warriors dying of poisoning in a mountain valley. The hero, Silver Hermit, is accused of the killings and becomes embroiled in a story that encompasses concealed identities, buddhist monks, hidden allegiances, secret siblings, the search for a tunnel to the much-desired Green Jade Villa, the destruction of an entire town, and the return of a vampiric villain called Immortal…
VHS sleeve
A coupla monks
This movie, from IFD Films & Arts LTD, starts really well, with a nicely-paced first act located in misty, snowy valley sets that mix together artificiality and atmospherics effectively. However, after the villain Silver Spear reveals that he poisoned the victims as part of his plan to ensure he inherits Green Jade Villa, the movie becomes more and more confusing, thanks to choppy editing, many over-dark sequences and the introduction of a multitude of characters, many of whom are concealing their real identities.
Green Jade Villa
SILVER HERMIT FROM SHAOLIN TEMPLE is based on a novel by Gu Long, so perhaps the filmmakers tried to cram too much of the book’s plot into the movie. Whatever the reason is for the semi-incoherence, by the time the blood-sucking bad guy Immortal is introduced into the tale you do begin to wonder whether the story is actually being made up as it goes along. On the plus side, the involvement of this villain, who sports a wild, Albert Einstein-esque haircut (and is referred to as ‘a beast from Persia’), does mean you get the opportunity to enjoy watching a tall, clawed, pale-faced, fang-mouthed monster-man rampage about the place during the hectic finale!
Directed and written by Larry Cohen, starring Tony Lo Bianco, Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Sam Levene, Robert Drivas, Richard Lynch and David Morten.
Poster
Peter J. Nicholas (Lo Bianco), a devoutly religious police detective, deals with several cases of mass murder, including a New York sniper attack. He discovers that each perpetrator utters the same excuse to explain their killing sprees: “God told me to”.
The sniper
Detective Peter J. Nicholas is a devout catholic
Digging deeper, Nicholas eventually finds out that an androgynous, glowing, christ-like being, identified as Bernard Phillips (Lynch), has influenced all these murderers… and this dude is actually a product of alien artificial insemination! Nicholas realises that he, too, is one of these hybrid beings, though his human genes overpowered his alien genes just enough to enable him to pass for ‘normal’ for most of his life, but now it is time for him to confront Phillips…
Richard Lynch as the glowing, messiah-like product of the alien insemination of a human female
Larry Cohen, as usual, throws lots of ideas into the pot. We have a horror-sci-fi-police-procedural plot encompassing mass killings, religious overtones, UFO abductions, psychic powers and throbbing alien vaginas! Cohen doesn’t quite pull it all off, unfortunately, and you’re left wondering what Phillips was hoping to achieve with his psychically-induced mass killings, what was the story behind the cabal of businessmen that believe Phillips is the new messiah, and whether the unseen, meddling aliens actually had an objective.
Chaos after a policeman starts shooting folks during New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade
That said, there’s a lot of memorable moments here. There’s the horribly compelling scene where one of the killers, a family man (Morten), describes to Nicholas, in an easygoing manner, how he systematically murdered his own wife and children. Plus there’s the opening sequence, where members of the public are picked off by a gunman standing atop a water tower.
Cover for the Blue Underground Blu-ray release
Cohen includes the alien abduction plot thread in an interesting fashion, never over-focusing on it, inserting these details as flashbacks and reminiscences. It’s here that we first get a glimpse of an unexpected close-up of a palpitating vagina (!), as a naked woman victim is levitated into a space vessel (actually footage of an Eagle spacecraft from the Gerry Anderson TV show SPACE: 1999). I remain utterly surprised that such up-close anatomical shots of a very vagina-like sex organ managed to make it into the movie!
Alien abduction flashback
Later, during the climactic showdown, Phillips pulls up his smock to reveal that he has a large alien vagina throbbing away on his torso! Phillips suggests that he and Nicholas should mate, to produce more progeny. Nicholas isn’t a fan of this idea, however, and decides to attack Phillips instead, leading to the glowing hybrid dude’s death and the destruction of a building.
This dude has got a torso-vagina
Nicholas finally unleashes his own psychic powers
GOD TOLD ME TO, also known as DEMON, is shot in Cohen’s typical style, meaning that it’s not overly well-lit or particularly glossy, it seems very choppy, editing-wise, but it is filmed with a no-nonsense verve and immediacy, with a lot of handheld location footage, that keeps the story’s momentum from flagging too much, even in the slower third act, which discards the mass killings plot line to concentrate on Nicholas’ unearthing of his own forgotten past. Cohen, as usual, gets his lead actor to deliver a compelling performance, in this case Tony Lo Bianco, who is a driven, earnest presence throughout the film.
Directed by Lien-Chou Ho and starring Lawrence Ng, Gon-Ha Yick, Hark-On Fung, Mo-Hau Cheung, Tau Chu and Paul Che.
The film’s title
SEXUAL DEVIL: quite a title for a Hong Kong ghost movie, right? However… this film turns out to be one of those productions that has a lurid, tasty title that is attached to a rather anaemic, flavourless story.
Female ghosts in Hong Kong movies very often wear white robes…
…and they also very often have echoey voices
Basically, the plot concerns a fashion photographer (Ng) and a ghostly girl, with some magic spell-making scenes added.
VCD cover
Shot on video, this production from Dragon Film Limited begins with some footage of animal cruelty (a lizard is stabbed in the mouth by a holy man) before, very quickly, becoming exceedingly dull.
When the main character does a photoshoot with two models…
…they look like blue-faced ghosts in his camera viewfinder
Video trick effects are used towards the end of the flick, of a white-robed girl spirit whizzing about the trees, but this only reminds you of how cheap ‘n’ TV-ish this film is when compared to bona fide Hong Kong cinema releases, such as A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987) or even ESPRIT D’AMOUR (1983).
The protagonist drives towards the ghost…
…and she ends up peering at him from the car roof
The one novel thing to occur in SEXUAL DEVIL is the silly scene in which an evil man uses lizards as projectiles, hurling ’em onto an attacker!
Directed by Jim O’Connolly, produced by Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen, written by William Bast and starring James Franciscus, Richard Carlson, Laurence Naismith, Gila Golan, Curtis Arden and Freda Jackson.
‘Cowboys battle monsters in the lost world of Forbidden Valley’: how can any self-respecting monster movie fan resist that tag line?!
THE VALLEY OF GWANGI is a dino-tastic story set in Mexico at the turn of the 20th century. It follows the adventures of rodeo circus owner T.J. Breckenridge (a dubbed Gila Golan), her former beau Tuck Kirby (Franciscus), a British paleontologist (Naismith), a Mexican boy called Lope (Arden) and various cowboy members of the circus, as they find themselves in peril in the Forbidden Valley, a rocky zone that is full of prehistoric creatures! Woot!
Gwangi won’t be caged for long!
THE VALLEY OF GWANGI is a vibrant monster-fantasy-western that features stop-motion effects courtesy of the great Ray Harryhausen, a rousing score by Jerome Moross and likeable performances from the likes of James Franciscus and Richard Carlson.
Pteranodon attack!
Plot-wise, the movie is a lost world adventure with a western twist, which then transitions into a King Kong-style finale, where the titular dinosaur Gwangi is brought back to civilisation to be displayed at Breckenridge’s circus but, as always happens in these tales, the beast escapes and runs amok in the local Mexican town.
Gwangi on the rampage! The dinosaur reaches the big cathedral…
…and there’s a cat-and-mouse encounter inside the building, as Tuck takes on the giant predator…
…and eventually Gwangi is burnt to death, as the cathedral catches fire and starts to collapse
‘The strangest round up of all as cowboys battle monsters!’
Harryhausen’s effects are definitely the movie’s main selling point, and for this production we get to see an Eohippus, a Pteranodon, an Ornithomimus, a huge Allosaurus (Gwangi) and a Styracosaurus roaming across the screen. A stop-motion model of an elephant is also used when the pachyderm fights Gwangi during the finale.
Ornithomimus
Styracosaurus
Dinosaur versus elephant!
The real stand-out moment is the roping sequence, when the cowboy heroes attempt to capture Gwangi using lassos. This is a wonderful action scene, showcasing Harryhausen’s top-notch stop-motion skills.
The roping scene rocks!
Another mouthwatering effects set piece is Gwangi’s fight with the Styracosaurus. Lots of roaring and biting! I love stop-motion dino battles!
Dinosaurs duking it out!
Some earlier scenes with El Diablo the Eohippus, a tiny prehistoric horse, are also memorable, with Harryhausen putting just as much effort into these quieter, sweeter moments as he does with the more bombastic dinosaur encounters later on.
He’s a cute lil’ thing, ain’t he?
Tuck & T.J. with El Diablo the Eohippus
The Eohippus says ‘hi’ to its much bigger descendant
I’m not a fan of the solid-latex model of Gwangi that’s used for the scenes where the dinosaur knocks itself out while trying to push its way through the narrow gap to escape Forbidden Valley. I think Harryhausen himself was never pleased with these shots, as this inflexible model definitely has no ‘life’ to it: it looks especially stiff in the shots of Gwangi lying unconscious on the ground. Harryhausen had done similar scenes in his previous dinosaur adventure, ONE MILLION YEARS B.C., for instance, where Ray presented us with a marvellous shot of a dying Ceratosaurus lying on the ground, with its belly inflating and deflating as it desperately tries to keep breathing. So it’s such a shame a similar effect couldn’t have been used in GWANGI, though I’m sure Harryhausen was under a lot of budget and time constraints (but the Styracosaurus model in GWANGI was equipped with an inflatable air ‘bladder’ to simulate breathing).
Gwangi’s skin colour changes a few times over the course of the movie because, as there was so much animation to do, Harryhausen didn’t have enough time to do proper colour testing, so Gwangi ranges from grey to blue to purple-ish. I actually don’t think these colour changes are distracting and I’m sure I never spotted them when I viewed the movie as a kid.
I would’ve liked more atmospheric matte paintings like this one
The full-scale Pteranodon model and Gwangi head, used for close-ups, are not as effective as their stop-motion counterparts, but I’ll stop quibbling now and reiterate that THE VALLEY OF GWANGI is a colourful, entertaining fantasy flick, replete with monsters, gypsy curses, a belligerent circus elephant and even a dangerous-bull-in-a-bullring scene!
Trying to break the Pteranodon’s neck!
Angry gypsy folk
Shot in Spain, which stands in for Mexico, the movie utilises the odd rock formations of La Ciudad Encantada, a distinctive geological site near the city of Cuenca (which is also featured in 1982’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN), to create the prehistoric vistas of the Forbidden Valley.
This shot features some of La Ciudad Encantada’s mushroom-shaped rock formations
Nom-nom-nom!
Jerome Moross, the composer who worked on such films and TV series as THE BIG COUNTRY, GUNSMOKE, WAGON TRAIN and HAVE GUN – WILL TRAVEL, provides a soundtrack that really injects a thrilling, full-blooded western vibe into GWANGI. It’s a great score, with a main theme dripping with urgency (that I happen to be listening to right now as I write this!)
Here’s some free advice, cowboy-dudes: don’t use a blanket to ward off a vicious Allosaurus!
I was never quite sure why the cowboy decided to spear the herbivore, rather than the more dangerous predator…
The scene where Gwangi lunges into view and snaps-up the fast-running Ornithomimus in its jaws was later recreated in JURASSIC PARK, this time featuring a Tyrannosaurus Rex plunging into shot to gobble up a fast-running Gallimimus.
Anyway, this is a Ray Harryhausen movie about cowboys venturing into a lost world of dinosaurs, so of course I will always love this movie!
THE WILLIS O’BRIEN CONNECTION This film was actually a project that Willis O’Brien tried to develop, many decades earlier. It was titled THE VALLEY OF THE MISTS and it had been in preproduction at RKO for a while but, like a lot of O’Brien’s projects, it unfortunately fell through.
Here are some storyboards drawn by Willis O’Brien…
Here’s a hand-filled report (by O’Brien) on a printed RKO Radio Pictures form detailing visual effects requirements for an action sequence titled ‘Edge of Cliff’, which would’ve been featured in his iteration of the Gwangi movie…
RKO Radio Pictures form
Even though Willis O’Brien’s Gwangi movie was never made, some of his old production materials came into Ray Harryhausen’s possession and he proposed making his own version of the film to his producer/business partner Charles Schneer, who agreed that it should be their next project. And so THE VALLEY OF GWANGI finally went into production. Hooray! Though, as some people have pointed out, it’s a shame that O’Brien, who put a lot of effort into conceptualising the original Gwangi concept, didn’t receive a credit in the 1969 movie.
RAY HARRYHAUSEN CONCEPT ART Here are some really gorgeous examples of Ray’s well-rendered concept art for his movie…
Styracosaurus versus Gwangi
Cowboy chases an Ornithomimus
In Ray’s concept drawing for the pteranodon attack he drew the flying reptile with accurate-looking pterosaur wings. In the movie his stop-motion model was equipped with stylised bat-like wings.
Rays’s hand-drawn scale concept drawing for the Pteranodon features Ray’s signature bat-like wing design
Ray’s concept drawing for Gwangi, with cowboys and a horse shown for scale
Interestingly, long before Ray Harryhausen made his Gwangi movie, he actually painted this scene, way back in the 1930s. The painting’s title is: ‘Allosaurus attacking a cowboy’. So, I guess Ray was destined to make THE VALLEY OF GWANGI one day…
Lovely painting!
POSTERS FOR THE MOVIE Uber-talented artist Frank McCarthy, responsible for vivid, astounding poster illustrations for DUEL AT DIABLO, THE DIRTY DOZEN, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, WHERE EAGLES DARE and many more, produced the striking artwork that adorns almost all of the poster versions for THE VALLEY OF GWANGI.
Here’s McCarthy’s illustration without the poster blurb. It’s a glorious piece of promotional art that exaggerates the scale of Gwangi. The mounted cowboys, dwarfed by the size of the mega-Gwangi, ride their steeds away from the dinosaur and gallop past supersized skulls, adding a lot of dynamism to the composition. A couple of scared, attractive women and the burning cathedral (from the end of the movie) add extra flavour to the artwork.
Stunning stuff!
McCarthy produced several preliminary design sketches that explored possible compositions for the Gwangi poster…
This Frank McCarthy preliminary artwork explores the idea of showing Gwangi from a reverse angle
This rough prelim sketch depicts a very upright-looking Gwangi
This is the Frank McCarthy preliminary artwork design that was chosen for the poster. ‘This is it’ is even written on the design!
Let’s check out a whole bunch of Gwangi posters now…
US three sheet poster
Italian poster. This puts a scantily-clad female at the front of the action. Those Italians!
Japanese B2 poster
German poster
US six sheet poster
Japanese STB poster
UK quad poster
Belgian poster
French grande poster
UK quad double bill poster
US half sheet poster
Italian locandina poster
Australian daybill poster
French moyenne poster
US insert poster
Poster from Argentina
US window card
US one sheet
Italian poster. This one actually doesn’t use Frank McCarthy’s dinosaur illustration: it features a spike-backed carnosaur instead (which was cribbed from a comic book)
A much more recent Mondo poster for the movie, designed by Mike Saputo
Poster for a screening of the movie by the Bristol Bad Film Club (I’m sure the club didn’t think this movie was actually bad!)
LOBBY CARDS Here are just some of the bobby cards for the film…
Lobby card
Lobby card. Laurence Naismith is just about to get squashed!
Lobby card. Dino fight!!!
Lobby card
Lobby card. Two big prehistoric beasts have a face-off!
Lobby card. Gwangi gobbles up an Ornithomimus!
ART INSPIRED BY THE VALLEY OF GWANGI Here are some cool artworks by illustrators who were inspired by the movie…
Gwangi-inspired cover art for the 1983 May issue of ‘Fantasy Book’ magazine, by Alan Gutierrez
Here are some Gwangi-tastic illustrations by the very prolific and very talented artist Jamie Chase…
Tuck encounters Gwangi
It’s lasso time!
William Stout…
William Stout’s rendition of the Gwangi vs Styracosaurus battle
Illustrator & designer Ross Persichetti produced some illustrations, featured on ArtStation, that were inspired by THE VALLEY OF GWANGI. Ross’ faux Gwangi sequel was called ‘Return to the Valley of Gwangi’
Gwangi chases a stagecoach!
Another faux ‘Return to the Valley of Gwangi’ concept illustration by Ross Persichetti
PRESSBOOK Pages from the Gwangi pressbook…
‘This is not 50,000,000 years ago… this is today!’
Page depicting various posters and accessories
VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES Here’s a bunch of different Gwangi-related items…
Dell movie adaptation comic cover
A page from ‘The Monster Times’ magazine
VHS cover
Hungarian DVD cover
UK DVD sleeve
German black and white ad
A shot of Ray Harryhausen with his clever set-up for the Gwangi vs elephant fight scene
Finally, here’s one more look at Gwangi in action…
I love how Gwangi stops to scratch his nose! Such a great touch from Ray, that adds more ‘life’ to the animated star of the movie. It is, of course, also a nice nod from Ray to Willis O’Brien’s dinosaur from KING KONG, which had an itchy snout too.
Directed by Fred F. (EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS) Sears, written by Samuel Newman and Paul Gangelin, starring Jeff (THIS ISLAND EARTH) Morrow, Mara (THE BLACK SCORPION) Corday and Morris (GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN) Ankrum, produced by Sam (ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU) Katzman.
Let’s just appreciate the space beast’s cheap wonderfulness!
Check out those giant claws…
Jeff Morrow plays Mitch MacAfee, a civil aeronautical engineer who spots an unidentified flying object near the North Pole. Fighter aircraft are sent to chase the object, but one of the jets goes missing and officials believe it was all a hoax. But then more aircraft disappear and it is eventually discovered that the ‘UFO’ is actually a gigantic alien bird…
US one sheet poster
…and this is all we really need to know about the plot, right? It’s about a giant space buzzard attacking Earth!
It’s building a giant nest!It’s laid a giant egg!
Watch out, dude!
Okay, it’s hard not to poke fun at a movie that boasts a monster that is, well, a shoddy marionette with bulging eyes and flared nostrils!
It’s just so stupid looking!
It’s also hard not to snigger when the movie’s characters repeatedly describe the critter as being the size of a battleship! They say it so often!
Don’t ya just love its dopey features?!
And yet… I like the mad imagination of this film.
The filmmakers actually made a movie focusing on an enormous space bird that is from an antimatter galaxy that has an antimatter forcefield to protect it from bullets and rockets! That’s insane! It’s such a preposterous and absurd concept that you just have to wonder how the hell the plot got the green-light to be made.
But thank goodness it did!
The Giant Claw wrecks planes!The Giant Claw smashes-up New York!
The batty, tatty, bent-beaked behemoth gets a lot of screen time and, as a monster movie fan, I appreciate this!
This scene, where a photo of the beaky beast is shown on a screen, made me laugh out loud!
What adds to the film’s enjoyment is the fact that the concept is so utterly loopy but Jeff Morrow takes the whole thing very seriously. So let’s spare a moment to respect Jeff for his professionalism!
Jeff Morrow deserves our undying respect
It has a beak… with teeth!
Here are some yummy posters for the movie. The artists pretty much never want to show what the bird monster’s goofy face looks like! Can’t blame them…
Australian daybill poster
US half sheet – style A – poster
Australian one sheet poster
Italian Locandina poster
US half sheet – style B – posterItalian poster
US insert poster
Italian poster
US six sheet poster
Here’s a pressbook…
‘Winged monster grips entire nation!’
Lobby cards…
Lobby cardLobby cardLobby cardLobby card. I think Jeff Morrow is aiming at the Mexican special FX dudes who built the gimpy puppet…
Some other materials…
VHS cover
An illustration by hobbyist Tracer67
This fan-made poster shows the creature’s face in all its goofy, bent-beaked glory (and even includes lots of drooling saliva too)!
Directed by William Cheung Kei, produced by Tsai-Ching Wang and starring Yun-Peng Hsiang, Yuen Kao, Ping-Ou Wei and Lui Cheung.
An unscrupulous businessman orders his workers to kill loads of snakes infesting a construction site. After a new apartment complex is built there, thousands of snakes return and attack the building’s occupants to get their revenge.
Poster
This Hong Kong-Taiwanese movie features the killing of lots of live snakes and unashamedly shows the deaths in loving detail, so be warned before you decide to give CALAMITY OF SNAKES a watch. If you can stomach these mondo moments of real-life reptile butchery, then the movie certainly delivers on its promise of multiple moments of snake-attack mayhem!
Killed in the bath!
The film starts as it means to go on, with the slaying of various species of snake infesting a pit during the building of a new apartment development in Taiwan, owned by Mr Chang. Ignoring the protests of his architect, Chang refuses to deal with them humanely, ordering his workers to splat the serpents with shovels instead. Chang himself gets in on the act by using a digger to dice more snakes.
Continuing this theme of snake-related nastiness, we then see a live snake being slit open and skinned alive for its bladder at a market. Not too long after this, the snakes start to strike back, as foreseen by Chang’s superstitious wife, beginning with an attack on a construction worker and a call girl… as they have sex!
The film lives up to the promotional artwork for once
Attempting to deter any further snake assaults, Chang’s geeky righthand man employs the services of a snake expert, who sprinkles a powdery concoction of cement, tobacco and sulphur around the place because “all snakes fear these things”. After a rainstorm washes away the powder, the snakes return, so Chang uses mongooses to deal with some of the serpents.
The director obviously believed viewers really, really wanted to watch a lot of mongoose vs snake action, because he presents us with an extended series of close-up mammals-murdering-reptiles shots. This sequence just goes on and on!
It doesn’t end well for many characters in this movie
Realising that he needs more than mongooses, Chang calls in a snake-hunting master, a dude with white eyebrows, who we first see performing some kind of stage show, pulling a snake from his mouth and allowing it to bite his tongue. It is theorised that a boa is influencing the other snakes to attack en masse, so the master sets out to kill it.
Big boss snake
In an over the top confrontation in a storage building, the master fights the large boa, which bites off some of his fingers, leaps about energetically and roars! This is an enjoyably kinetic, fast-moving scene, shot like a kung fu fight, that sees the master use a rope to finally strangle the big snake. The master leaves, assuming his job is done… but it’s shown that there’s another boa lurking around.
Master versus the boa!
The focus of the movie shifts to the newly opened apartment building now, where we are introduced to various characters, including rich, old guys, a precocious child, and a large lady who loves her food. These stock characters, plus more scenes involving the cost-cutting boss and the idealistic architect, give CALAMITY OF SNAKES a vibe reminiscent of 70s disaster movies.
VHS sleeve
There are some incredibly lowbrow comic moments added to the cheesy mix, including a scene where speeded-up footage of the overweight woman eating too much food is intercut with shots of a pig with its snout in a trough, though there fortunately aren’t too many of these ‘funny’ scenes!
The snakes attack everyone in the apartment complex
When snakes start flying up out of the building’s basement level and begin to infest the complex, slithering into lifts and overflowing into lobbies and bedrooms, the actors are soon rolling around the place, with loads of real, writhing snakes crawling over their bodies and faces. The snakes in this movie are obviously treated badly, but the actors don’t fare much better, as an endless flood of real reptiles are hurled at them! I do hope these thespians were paid well enough!
Covered in snakes!
There are a lot of snakes used during this finale, and I do mean a LOT! Entire corridors are deluged with slithering serpents. There are snakes in punchbowls, snakes in the bath, snakes on the reception desk and a tsunami of snakes that spill from a lift!
Snakes in the foyer
Chang, at one point, grabs a samurai sword and the movie treats us to a sequence featuring the slo-mo hacking of snakes, complete with close-ups of the various portions of the decapitated reptiles twitching on the floor.
Snake on the face!
The fire department is eventually called and dudes in snazzy silver boots & helmets come to the rescue, chopping up snakes with fire axes and spraying them with extinguishers. But even the firemen have trouble dealing the second big, roaring boa, forcing them to resort to using flamethrowers! This, of course, gives the filmmakers the excuse to now present us with a multitude of shots of snakes being burned alive.
Flamethrowers!
The boss boa is no pushover, however, especially as it fights like a martial arts master! The critter flies around the rooms, slapping away people with its coils (cue loud, kung fu-style punching noises) and it even hurls a large eagle statue and a drum kit at the firemen, then agilely leaps away from their flamethrowers!
The big puppet beast is finally set alight, whereupon it wraps itself around Chang, then constricts him and immolates him at the same time!
The big boa and nasty Mr Chang both go up in flames
CALAMITY OF SNAKES is an unashamedly exploitative, schlocky, infamous extravaganza that comes across like a mad animals-attack genre film infused with 70s disaster flick trimmings. If you can withstand the many, many mondo shots of snake snuff footage hurled at your retinas (which is kind of hard to do), this is a dumb, fun, subtlety-free, unhinged, revolting-yet-watchable, one-of-a-kind creature feature that you’re not likely to forget in a hurry (for various reasons!)
Snakes in the bathroom
Devoted to every kind of movie and TV monster, from King Kong to Godzilla, from the Blob to Alien. Plus monsters from other media too, including books and comics.
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