Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘I on the other hand am smart’
Based extremely loosely on a novel by Jules Verne.
‘In his great book Career of a Comet Jules Verne tells of a mysterious adventure in time and space’
Valley of the Dragons is set in 1881 and opens with a duel.
‘A million women, young and beautiful here in France’
Nothing to do with ze duel I am simply bragging,
but before Frenchman Hector Servadac and Irishman Michael Denning have a chance to blow each other’s brains out...
The duel is interrupted by a comet,
leaving nothing in its wake but the two combatants.
‘The city, swept away’
What now?
‘Under the circumstances, I feel we must postpone the duel’
End of world stopped play.
They put their differences temporarily aside, but there’s more here than meets the eye,
‘I can’t find the north star’
It’s got to be one of these.
‘This catastrophe – whatever it was - has thrown the earth into a new orbit’
All very well, but how do you explain this?
‘Neanderthals’
They drive off the Neanderthals with their duelling pistols.
‘These are useless now’
We’ll have to find some other way to kill each other.
And the Neanderthals aren’t the only strange creatures out there.
There’s a giant spider recycled from World without End
and, like every other prehistoric set movie of the previous twenty years...
there’s reused footage from One Million BC
and we’re not showing a lot of it because I don’t know how many times I have had to watch these poor animals.
The footage from One Million BC was not a surprise, but I’ll admit that Rodan caught me off-guard.
'Never saw a creature like that.'
Philistine.
I don’t know what’s more surprising, the presence of Rodan or their casual acceptance of it.
After all the near misses the pair settle their personal differences.
‘The lady was charming, beautiful and it may seem a little indelicate, don't you think...’
'That she egged us on to fight?'
by deciding it was all the girl’s fault.
But as the moon rises, they’re in for a shock.
‘God help us… it’s the earth’
Long story short, they’ve been picked up by a comet as it bounced off earth,
something it previously did millions of years ago, hence all the prehistoric fauna,
‘The whole thing is unbelievable’
'It is unbelievable.'
Yeah, that was my take, but let’s check with Dark Corners science advisor and his new assistant,
Dad, any of this remotely plausible?
'No.'
As well as ‘dinosaurs’ there are stone age humans,
whose food they steal, not to be ‘that guy’ but what’s that cauldron made of?
They also help themselves to new clothing.
‘Now we’re both in the height of fashion’
'Ineed we are.'
More importantly, now you fit into the recycled footage.
Which becomes increasingly important as entire set pieces are lifted wholesale.
I feel like the main casting criterion was; must be able to pass for Victor Mature.
The plot now becomes similar to the 1940 film
as Hector is picked up by Deena of the shell tribe.
Winning the Wilma Flintstone award for Caveman fashion.
‘Reeda’ ‘Reeda’
‘Food. Reeda – food’
'Food.'
It’s vitally important you learn English, even though the only other people who speak it are on a different planet.
Also, he's French.
‘Cheri, Cheri’ ‘Cher-i’
Yes, I think trying to make the cave girl trilingual is a tad ambitious.
Meanwhile Michael has found the rock tribe.
‘Well… good morning’
Thank God there are still pretty girls in the past.
Stealing someone else’s girlfriend, have you forgotten how this movie started?
Time for a stone age duel.
Back at the shell tribe, Hector has invented gunpowder.
‘Sulphur, charcoal, potassium nitrate. Boom!’
'Boom'
But he and Deena are attacked by decomposing Morlocks
and are separated.
Deena is found by Michael.
‘It’s amazing how a Frenchman always finds a woman’
You weren’t exactly slow off the mark yourself.
But now his own girl, Nateeta, is jealous and Michael must explain the situation.
‘You belong to me’
We call it ‘civilisation’
‘This girl belong Hector, my friend, this girl Teeta, she belong to me’
You have zero rights.
Approaching the end, the film leans even more heavily on borrowed footage
as the tribes team up against volcanic eruption and giant lizard attack.
#Neanderthal speak#
'He says the people we saved are trapped in a cave by giant beasts.'
Credit to Michael, he at least learnt the language rather than just talking slowly then acting like they’re the dumb ones.
‘Yellow… For heaven’s sake explain to them’
Finally we get a valuable lesson about working together.
‘You’ll recall that we met for the express purpose of shooting each other’
and since I’ve invented gunpowder we can get back to it, and a happy ending.
‘I believe our comet is in a new orbit and will probably take us close to the earth in about 7 years.’
We’ll just stand on the tallest mountain and jump.
‘Well that’s that’
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'Go.'