Valley of the Dragons (1961)
Starring:
Cesare Danova
Sean McClory
Joan Staley
Danielle De Metz
Here we have a dinosaur film that did not shoot one frame of dinosaur footage for its own production. Every scene of dinosaur and prehistoric beast was reused footage from films that have come before, most notably, One Million BC (1940). The production got fairly creative with this, going as far as filming the characters (new footage) in the foreground over the reused footage in the background. They even use b&w footage of Rodan to stand in as a pterodactyl. The premise of the film is far-fetched. Two men about to have a gun duel are swept up by a comet colliding with earth. They find the comet has earth’s prehistoric life still living as it had been a million years ago. The men are attacked by a parade of lizards and reptiles posing as dinosaurs including, a skink, a gator, an iguana, a monitor lizard, and a snake. There’s even some armadillo mixed in with some fake mastodons and a mongoose. Well, the two men get separated and each makes friends with a separate tribe of humans. In the end they get the warring tribes to get along, shake hands themselves and make a new life with their respective new cave-girl love interests. One of the big draws to the film, especially for young men, was the underwater swimming scene with star, Joan Staley. This film is not at all important in the history or legacy of dinosaur films. However it is enjoyable in a train wreck, sort of hokey-silly-pseudo-science, way. I just wouldn’t go out of my way to find it.
a big draw for the film in 1961 was this scene…huba, huba!
parlor of horror 
Pingback: DINOSAUR films and other giant creature movies – Overview | parlor of horror
How I never saw this as part of channel 4’s Saturday night “Science FictionTheater” I don’t know. Your post has made me want to seek it out,though. 🙂
lol, that’s when I saw it, on the ol’ Creature Features in my neck of the woods 🙂
It’s silly, but good too. 🙂