The Primevals

Usually when a project has been shelved for a long time it's for a reason - either it's not that good to begin with or there's just not enough time or money to finish it properly. Thankfully The Primevals was the latter.

When I read the film's history I was fascinated by it - a movie almost fifty years in the making just couldn't be otherwise. David Allen had a distant vision of how it was going to be way back in the late sixties but only came as close as shooting it in the mid-nineties but still wasn't able to finish it before his death in 1999. Only twenty years later the movie was picked up to finally be finished and to pay proper respects to its original idea and the people behind the 1990s production. So, was it all worth waiting that long for? Absolutely.

First and foremost, The Primevals is a movie without CGI which is obscenely rare in the 21st century - instead it utilizes stop-motion, animatronics and puppetry to bring its creatures to life - a long forgotten art form since the rise of computers in the late 1970s, and it makes this movie truly stand out above all the recent ones. Sure, the creatures don't look realistic enough this way but this story is not about realism, it's about the soul.

Nowadays people tend to have completely forgotten what cinema is all about - originality, new ideas that give you food for thoughts, something you haven't seen or heard before, and not just a pretty picture with words. Don't get me wrong, The Primevals is no Citizen Kane, nor is it 2001: A space odyssey or even Star Wars - its story is far from being original even remotely as we've seen many alike examples in the 1950s and 1960s during the second Renaissance of stop motion movies but it's something that this work of art represents that makes it worthy being released now, in 2024. I'm sure would it have been released as soon as David Allen pitched his idea to the producers, or even in the 1990s when he shot the movie it would have been instantly lost among its contemporaries but today it ought to be remembered as a relic that's still more relevant and way better than most of its contemporaries.

The stop motion itself is nearly perfect and I was amazed at how well it's handled in the movie. The same was with the music score - simply beautiful, grandiose and is suitable for something more epic than what was on the screen but not less impressive in any way. The only downpoint is probably the actors and their wooden performances that hadn't given us the full spectrum of emotions when on a journey discovering a brand new world - it felt more like they've been doing this every other Sunday. The narrative moves itself here and the actors blindly follow it - it's not that uncommon in adventure flicks but still, it would have been nice to have at least one charismatic character among the bunch presented in The Primevals but there was none.

Overall I feel like no matter when the movie's released and what production hell it's been through The Primevals is a well-crafted picture hands down and I would have given it the same rating despite the circumstances.

In 1978, the film magazine Cinefantastique ran a cover story on an upcoming SF movie, The Primevals, then in preproduction. The Primevals, an ambitious effort on a modest budget, was intended as a showcase for stop-motion animation.

I was in college at the time, and as an animation fan I was pretty excited about seeing this movie. As it turned out, I had to wait just a little longer than expected. Forty-six years, to be exact. It never occurred to me that I'd be nearly eligible for Social Security before The Primevals finally came out.

You see, the initial effort to make the movie fizzled. It was revived in 1994, when the live action and some of the effects were shot. Then the studio behind the project went bankrupt, and the movie, still in post-production, was shelved. It remained in limbo for decades until producer Charles Band and effects expert Chris Endicott worked out a plan to finish it. By that time, the film's guiding light, animator-writer-director David Allen, was long gone, having died of cancer in 1999.

With a new crew of animators, newly repaired or entirely refashioned models, and digital composites instead of back projection, The Primevals finally completed its remaining effects shots (or all the essential ones, anyway; the plot was slightly streamlined as a cost-cutting measure).

As of June, 2024, the movie has been released to streaming services. I watched it last night. As I expected, it often betrays its humble origins, with uneven performances and an overall "1980s TV" quality, which is especially noticeable in the overbright and rather flat lighting. Nevertheless, given the budget and the technology, it's an impressive piece of work - and obviously a labor of love for the creators. Allen and his colleagues made a real effort to elevate the stop-motion genre, eschewing dinosaurs and mythological creatures in favor of a more complex scenario involving alien contact and directed evolution. They also worked hard to integrate the stop-motion elements into the story in a natural way, rather than using them as standalone set pieces, as was too often the case.

The irony is that after all this time, The Primevals can no longer serve its intended purpose as proof of the viability of hand-crafted animation effects in a digital world. That ship has sailed. Instead, the movie will likely go down as the last live-action feature film to use stop-motion creatures in a big way. It's probably not the legacy Dave Allen wanted, but it does assure him of a small place in movie history. And it's a great gift for stop-motion fans like me.

Kudos to Endicott, Band, and their associates for making The Primevals a reality - finally!

Watching this movie I soon found it very familiar in it's production. It seemed to be the good old times of the 1980's when some very good movies were made. This one had very familiar music to what was produced in those times.

I have now seen the IMDb review of michaelprescott-00547 and he enlighted me that this project originated in the late 70's but never saw the light then.

A very nice movie was finally made and I can give this a sound 7 stars. I see that another movie is made or being made this year (2024) by David Allen, but on checking the information, it is a documentary on this movie and probably why it took so long to come to fruition.

Needless to say that I had actually never heard about this 2023 movie titled "The Primevals" prior to sitting down to watch it. But I have to say that I actually found the movie's cover to be cheesy enough to catch my attention. And with it being a movie that I had never even heard about, of course I opted to sit down and watch it.

And with it being a Full Moon Features movie, I figured that chance would be that the movie wouldn't be a complete waste of time, as they regularly do put out something enjoyable and entertaining.

The storyline was actually fair, with some major nods towards the old classic adventures of the 1950s. I have to admit that I was actually enjoying "The Primevals". Writers David Allen and Randall William Cook put together something that proved to be entertaining and enjoyable, with elements of sci-fi and adventure mixed together.

I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, which is something that I do actually enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. It should be said, though, that the acting performances were fair.

The effects in the movie were fair, but keep in mind that the Yeti and the reptilian creatures are brought to life by stop-animation motion capture, so it looks somewhat out of place and awkward.

My rating of director David Allen's 2023 movie "The Primevals" lands on a six out of ten stars.

I really wish I could give this movie a ten rating for the amount of heart that was put into it. This was a nice nostalgic trip back into time for those of us who grew up with these fantastical, silly, yet still entertaining movies.

Ray Harryhausen was such an inspiration for so many people, and I think David Allen did a fantastic job and it's sad that he wasn't alive to see his last project come to fruition.

My thanks to all that helped pay for the completion of this film.

I would say this was better than half of all the Doug McClure movies I used to watch. Some acting was bad, some wasn't. Some of the writing was good, some wasn't. Still, I was entertained, and that was all I was hoping for.