The Primevals (2023)

I will always have a soft spot for stop motion effects.  Despite the fact the method does show its age, often with the herky-jerky motions of the creatures prior to Phil Tippett's advances in Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi and the difficulties of blending live actors and backgrounds into the scene in a realistic manner, just the feeling that there is a person behind the movements makes it better than running a computer program.  Those who are best at it have always brought their own personality to the effects.

David Allen was one of those people.  He was friends with producer and director Charles Band, the man behind Empire Pictures and Full Moon.  While Allen worked on major Hollywood fare such as Willow and Ghostbusters II he is known largely for his work with Band, providing what Ray Harryhausen and Tippett often provided, but on a more modest budget.  Most people would have seen his work on the first five Puppet Master films, with Allen himself directing Puppet Master II.  

Long before he was known as Band's go-to stop-motion artist he had been planning on making his own sci-fi adventure film, The Primevals.  The movie was previewed in 1978 in the magazine Cinefantastique, but budgetary constraints and other issues prevented it from being made.  Still, Allen kept working on it, with Band often promising him that it would get done at some point in the future.  In 1994 Full Moon was in a good position, with a distribution deal with Paramount and pretty much a lock on the direct-to-video film market.  With this being the case Band finally gave The Primevals the go-ahead, and Allen headed to Romania to direct the live-action portions while at the same time overseeing the stop-motion work.

The problem was things were about to change.  Paramount ended its deal with Band leaving Full Moon in dire financial straits.  With most of the effects done and location filming almost complete the movie was cancelled.  Allen managed to quickly wrap up the latter but, despite efforts to get it going through the rest of the '90s, the effects remained unfinished, and that was the situation when Allen passed away in 1999.  Over 20 years later, with Band in a better financial position and the ability to crowdfund the completion or entire production of films, The Primevals was finished and ready to be unleashed upon the world.

Despite being seen as protectors a yeti suddenly attacks a Nepalese village before it is killed.  The body is smuggled out of the country and finds its way to a museum in the U.S. where it becomes a scientific curiosity due to being a combination of different species whose genetics should be incompatible.  Matt Connor (Richard Joseph Paul), a disgraced scientist who spent his life theorizing about the creatures, is asked to embark on an expedition to the Himalayas by Dr. Claire Collier (Juliet Mills).  They are joined on their way by safari runner Rondo Montana (Leom Russom), local researcher Kathleen (Walker Brandt) and local guide Siku (Tai Thai), whose brother was killed by a yeti. 

They indeed find the creature and it leads them into an isolated, temperate valley wherein they find ancient humans as well as the remains of an ancient civilization.  A ship had come to Earth in the remote past and the alien scientists had experimented with evolution in the area to some extent.  Unfortunately, the descendants of the creatures have lived on, and they are none-too-friendly to outsiders.

The Primevals is a throwback to the old early to mid-20th century adventure flicks such as King Kong and Jason and the Argonauts.  The cast, save Mills, is pretty much unknown, with the emphasis being on the stop-motion effects and the sense of wonder those movies brought to the screen.  Despite its budget, which was unusually large for Full Moon and shows both the slight extravagance and the limitations throughout, Allen managed to deliver what he intended.  In truth most of the movies that Ray Harryhausen worked on had modest budgets as well, his effects being what made them feel bigger than they were.  While the first half of The Primevals is a bit talky and contains a laughable, horribly choreographed scene in what is supposed to be Calcutta when Matt and Claire meet Rondo, from the time they enter the valley through the end is nothing but fun.  Also, as they should, the creatures have a life of their own and become characters themselves.

There were some computer enhancements to help clean up the matching between backdrops and the animation.  I would say that is where it doesn't always work.  Stop-motion often had that issue, which can be seen even more on many of the recently restored prints, of the background scenes against which it was filled being of a lower quality or of obvious matte lines and some failures of the creatures to fully fit in the world around them.  I don't think leaving it as it was, except for the stuff that was truly not finished, would have hurt the movie at all.  There was also some streamlining as, two decades later, the actors were definitely not able to do reshoots.  From the previous posters for The Primevals it does appear that Allen meant for the valley to be more like Skull Island and have numerous inhabitants that were the product of the aliens' genetic experiments.

This movie is definitely old-fashioned, but in the best ways possible.  The acting may be a bit wooden, the characters all archetypes, but that's the way it was with the movies it's imitating.  The whole purpose is to come up with an interesting premise and entertain the audience, which is something The Primevals never fails to do. 

The Primevals (2023)

Time: 91 minutes

Starring: Juliet Mills, Richard Joseph Paul, Leon Russom, Walker Brandt, Tai Thai

Director: David Allen