The Primevals

Younger viewers need to understand that, however odd this film may seem, this was precisely and absolutely the way Sci-Fi was done 75 years ago. The stop motion animation in Harryhausen style speaks for itself. The name Rondo Montana (!) speaks for itself. The script seems an assembly of short, staccato, phrases totally lacking in emotion punched up by a soundtrack overflowing with gravitas -- exactly the sort of presentation most of us from that era remember. The only thing jarring to this reviewer was the use of color. Every synapse in my brain said this should have been in B&W. The only benefit color gave us was the needless awareness that, no matter how dirty their surroundings, the players always wore spanking clean outfits, as if right off the shelf from the local Target. Always been a fan of the Mills sisters, and nice to see Juliet once again commanding an entire film. For viewers of a certain age, a treat. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

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.

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.

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.

After the discovery in the high Himalayas of what appears to be a Yeti specimen, he's been sent back to the United States for research. Leading the investigation is noted anthropologist Claire Colller (Juliet Mills of Billy Wilder's Avanti!) who decides to organize an expedition to the Himalayas. Collier teams up with Mat Connor (Richard Joseph Paul), a former student of her class and famous writer, Rondo Montana (Leon Russom) , an ex-big game hunter, and Kathleen Reidel (Walker Brandt) , another one of Collier's former students and the guide (Tai Thai) for their journey. Through dangerous paths, they suddenly arrive in a lost world in which they will discover an amazing and hidden crater inhabited by prehistoric creatures, primitive hominids and alien reptiles. They then are captured by aliens and are judged and condemned to death penalty. A Civilization Lost in Time... Invaded One Million Years Ago !. Journey to a hidden valley of incredible splendor and unbelievable terror... where the future and the past battle for the present !.

This fantasy picture gets action, adventures, derring-do, amusing images and breathtaking landscapes . Colorful atmosphere in this entertaining story in which with tension and adventure are maintained throughout. Splendid cinematography by cameraman Adolfo Bartoli showing marvellous outdoors and abound matte painting, including enjoyable special effects by specialist Dave Allen, and a nice production design too. Two decades after the death of the expert FX artist David Allen, this peculiar project was born; an imaginative story of adventure and science fiction in the purest style of the 60s and 70s. Allen, a Stop Motion specialist, responsible for the effects of films such as ¨Howling¨, ¨Young Sherlock Holmes¨ and ¨Willow¨attempted since the 1960s to make this film, to which he dedicated hours and hours of work until his premature death in 1999. After his death, the storyboards, puppets and other elements of the project passed to his work colleague Chris Endicott, who completed it, and finally almost 25 years later, ¨The Primevals¨ was released.

It contains traditional special effects by means of stop-motion, in the wake of Ray Harryhausen; in fact, there's a spectacular fight between Yeti and alien creatures. In addition, a rousing and spectacular musical score by Richard Band, 'Full Moon' and 'Empire' regular composer. The impressive and majestic soundtrack is one of the film's greatest assets. The motion picture was professionally directed by late Dave Allen and produced by Full Moon Features. The latter was a B-production company, owner Albert Band; he was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors who started his career in the early 50s and continuing the legacy, his son, the equally prolific producer/director Charles Band. Albert Band began financing a number of motion pictures through the sixties, seventies, and eighties decades and helped his son, Charles, to bring together his own production company, 'Empire Pictures', in the early eighties. Upon the collapse of Empire Pictures in the early nineties, Band continued to work with his son and help bring a number of low-budget and medium budget films to the Hollywood screen or direct to video releases. Albert Band directed some Westerns, such as : ¨She came to the Valley¨, ¨Massacre at Grand Canyon¨, ¨The Young Guns¨ and ¨The Tramplers ¨ at his best . Furthermore, he made terror and Sci-fi , such as : ¨Aliens Gone Wild , Prehisteria , Prehisteria 2 , Robot War , Ghoulies II , Satán's Dog¨ and all kind of genres. While his son Charles Band has written/produced/directed a lot of films, such as: ¨The Creeps, Hideous, Dollman vs demonic toys, Puppet master, Crash and burn, Trancers , Trancers II: the return of Jack Deth, Dungeonmaster, Metalstorm: the destruction of Jared Syn, Parasite, The alchemist¨. Rating The Primevals (2023) : 6/10, acceptable and passable fantasy/adventure movie.