Valley of the Dragons (1961)

Valley of the Dragons (1961) about two men in 1881, outside of Tangiers,about an Irishman named Michael Denning,played by (Sean McClory) and a French Captain Servadac pl,ayed by(Cesare Danova) are about to fight a duel with pistols over some fracas involving a woman. The duel is interrupted when a comet rushes in, narrowly missing, or perhaps grazing the earth. Based on Jules Verne's Career of a Comet ,using the ubiquitous footage from One Million BC (1940). Director Edward Bernds lends little credibility to the prodceedings, but Verne's audacious premise is sufficiently diverting for those who don't mind bargain-basement cavemen and dinosaurs movies. ==Story== Algeria 1881. Two men, Michael Denning and Hector Servadac are having a duel with one another when a comet goes past the earth at low altitude. The strong wind this creates transports the two men to the moon. They find themselves in a jungle inhabited by reptiles and prehistoric humans. They have a difficult time before they manage to adapt to the dangers, but eventually they each find a girl to spend time with, awaiting the next return of the comet to take them back to Earth. In 1881, Michael Denning, an American soldier, and Hector Servadac, a French aristocrat, are about to have a duel over a woman that they both are infatuated with. However, just as the two men are about to shoot at each other, a comet strikes the Earth and the gravitational pull draws in the two men. Michael and Hector soon deduce that this comet has been periodically landing on Earth and gathering people and animals from various eras in time, including people and dinosaurs. The two men then decide to put their differences aside and fight for survival as well as help make peace between two warring tribes of cavemen. ==Notes==As with most film adaptations of Verne novels, Hollywood altered things heavily to make similar to other type movies. In Verne's original novel, many people were taken by the comet, not just two men. Like other disaster film plots, the band of castaways must survive both the elements and interpersonal friction. Verne's novel was more of a spotlight on Anglo-French tension, with a dash of anti-semitism. Bernds cast the story in more traditional Hollywood tones of boy-meets girl themes. There is one,where the girls get attacked hairy creatures,that allot like the Morlocks,in George Palsmovie version of the Time Machine.Morlock imations shown one intriguing short scene is when the Morlock-like subterranean men,with glassy eyes try to capture Deena. Clearly not just more Neanderthals, these white-haired brutes were some other form of humanoid. There is no evidence that the comet take them off the earth at some point too. Did they come off some other planet? No explanation is given, so the pre-Morlocks are just a fun tangent in Valley of the Dragons for veiwers to speculate upon. Fanciful "Science" -- At one point, Servadac theorizes what happened to them. They are riding on a "comet" which periodically has visited earth over the millennia, each time, it snatched off some hunk of earth bringing with it some flora, fauna and atmosphere,presumed to come various pre-historic eras. This handily explains the co-existence of dinosaurs and cave men, as well as themselves,unlike much other material like Edgar Rice Burroughs novels Pellucidar Series,or Marvel Comics Savage Land,where are simply thrown together. Servadac guesses that evolution would be 'frozen' with such isolated samples. Therefore both dinos and cavefolk did not advance during the thousands of years. Handy. Cave men and Cave Women used as modern Hollywood versions -- It is interesting that in the film, cave men (not the Neanderthals) are brutish and not too bright. Cave women, on the other hand, are exactly as we idealize them today -- beautiful, shapely, and hungry for love. Oh, and they can learn english pretty quickly, while the men are stuck with grunting and pointing. Much food for musing in all this stereotyping of the time. ==Recycling Footage==Ancient Recycling of other movie footage in The Valley of the Dragons contains a good deal of footage recycled from One Million B.C., a 1940 dinosaur-caveman film by Hal Roach.They witness the mongoose/snake battle from One Million B.C. (1940) and lose their appetites. Giant lizard footage prompts, "What kind of nightmare world is this?" "A world of the past--a hundred thousand years past." More cruel footage of lizards fighting follows. Aside from the oft-reused scene of the alligator (with fins) battling a large lizard,used also by Irwin Allen the earthquake and lava footage was reused too. Bernds even reused the basic plot elements: a member one tribe is lost and taken in by rival tribe. The lost man and beautiful blonde girl of the other tribe fall in love. This romance becomes the key to intertribal peace. * ==References== }}*http://classicscifi.blogspot.com/2009/12/valley-of-dragons.html*http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055583/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl*http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/valleydragons.html