that can surely be the only explanation for the great ray harryhausen to be making a film with reptiles with bits stuck on them to make them look like dinosaurs, something i would think would be beneath him. its a pity as there are some decent stop motion sequences in the film.
shareWell, there was only one giant iguana in that movie, and believe it or not, having it there was actually Ray Harryhausen's idea! For years, I always thought that it was a studio insistence for having the iguana, but in reading Ray's book, it was indeed his idea. I'll have to read again why he put it their in the first place.
shareHe included the iguana (and the tarantula) as the first prehistoric creature the audience is introduced to, so that, if they bought that it was a real iguana, they might also more easily accept the stop-motion dinos.
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YES, there were budgetary consideration. Animation scenes were completed or in process and would have been assets. Some scenes were started or even near completion like the Apatosaurius/Brontosaurius scenes. We were not that sheltered in the 60s. My Brother thirteen (13) and myself fifthteen (15) saw this in original release in 1966. After it was over the first things we commented upon were the live action animal scenes and other missing concepts.
shareI always thought that the first part of the movie (Toomak'c wanderings) were surreal (hence the unrealistic SFX). The second we see the Shell Tribe, the tone changes, and the movie takes on a ddifferent tone.
Like you, I saw this movie as a boy, and noticed the magnified tarantula/cricket etc...
"I love corn!"
shandy8; In all my Brother and I felt it was a bit of a disappointment. We both liked the original version better. Have written review for IMDB, so check it out.
shareI'm guessing to show homage to the first film which was made in the 40's. It had an iguana in it.
shareI don't get the hate surrounding the giant iguana. In all actuality it's much closer to the truth than the stop motion effects. Humans certainly never coexisted with dinosaurs, but it is a fact verified by the fossil record that anatomically modern humans and giant lizards existed on the planet at the same time, and may have encountered each other as late as 40 to 30,000 years ago.
If anything, though, I don't think the use of live action animals with stop motion figures blends very cohesively. Commit to one approach or the other, or else you risk distracting from the believability of both. Didn't mind it in this so much...the suspension of disbelief is already so far out the window, what's an enlarged iguana or two. But I found that the use of people and animals in rubber suits distracted from quite well done photographic tricks with live reptiles in the 1940 version. All things considered, without attempts to incorporate dinosaur suits, the creatures in that film (in reality modern animals enlarged to gargantuan size) are much closer to what early humans might have encountered.