#the primevals

[vintage1981]

Full Moon Announces David Allen's Lost Epic: The Primevals!

IT'S FINALLY HERE!

Full Moon's THE PRIMEVALS is arriving on Blu-ray in a massive limited edition box set, filled with extras, two cuts of the film and a few awesome items! The ultimate THE PRIMEVALS release!

Only 100 box sets are available for PRE-SALE, and each of those 100 will be signed by producer Charles Band. At a later date, more units will become available. 

Deep in the Himalayas, a group of Sherpas subdue and kill a towering humanoid creature, one that Dr. Claire Collier believes to be the legendary Yeti. Soon, Dr. Collier and her colleagues lead an expedition into the mountains to find other beasts like it, only to uncover a race of beings even more fantastical!

Stop motion FX wizard David Allen's long-planned passion project was shelved in the 1990's after Allen passed away from cancer. Finally completed in 2023 by Full Moon and former Allen associate Chris Endicott, THE PRIMEVALS is the ultimate retro-fantasy adventure, employing a wild array of arresting, 100% hand-rendered, stop-motion special effects and a rich orchestral score from composer Richard Band. Prepare yourself for the ultimate fantasy adventure, an epic over 30 years in the making!

Full Moon presents THE PRIMEVALS in a gorgeous leather collector's case, with three Blu-rays inside featuring the theatrical cut, a new documentary on the making of the film, tons of never before seen special features and vintage BTS footage and the never before seen "David Allen Cut", an extended version that contains storyboards and other footage assembled to even more accurately reflect Allen's vision! You'll also get postcards and a pair of incredible enamel pins of the monstrous Yeti and one of the evil lizard men!

Only 100 box sets are available for PRE-SALE, and each of those 100 will be signed by producer Charles Band. At a later date, more units will become available. 

COLLECTOR’S FEATURES:

Leather and Metal Case

Postcards (6)

Enamel Pins (2)

Theatrical Cut of the Film (Blu-ray)

David Allen Cut of the Film (Blu-ray)

Lost To Time - Making of Documentary w/ Bonus Features (Blu-ray)

DISC BONUS FEATURES:

A Celebration of Tenacity: Q/A at Industrial Light and Magic

Charles Band and David Allen on The Primevals

Randall William Cook visits The Primevals

The Primevals - 1984 promo reel

The Primevals - 1997 promo reel

Raiders of the Stone Ring - promo reel

The Primevals - Time-lapse animation

The Beginning and the End

David Allen at the Moviola

Primevals - A False Start

[redlettermediathings]

[thenefilim]

Review - The Primevals (2023)

Nearly 50 years after it was first announced, and 30 years after writer/director/animator David Allen's death, his dream project The Primevals is finally finished and in release.

https://www.voicesfromthebalcony.com/2024/06/14/the-primevals-2023-review/

[randomdeinonychus]

There might still be a US release coming, but earlier this week Umbrella Entertainment posted their pre-order for a fancy deluxe release of THE PRIMEVALS and I pounced on it at once.

Though they are an Australian company, their releases are usually region free and I currently own their Blu-rays of KING KONG LIVES and SUPER MARIO BROS (their first release, not the recent fancy 4K anniversary version which I may yet upgrade to) and they're great discs. Plus, the extras for this one are simply incredible.

I'm excited to see how the film turned out, since it's not often you get to see a lost stop-motion epic get finished and released.

[prowl-mun]

David Allen's The Primevals review.

I saw this online at the SIFF Virtual Film Festival. I loved it! It reminded me of a simpler time when my family would rent a film at Coborns or Mr Movies ( there wasn't a Blockbuster near us), like the 7th Voyage of Sinbad or Jurassic Park on the weekends.

I heard about this film when I was a kid, and I didn't think they would ever finish it due to the director David Allen's passing in 1999, but Charlie Band and Chris Endicott did it.

The Yeti was the best stop-motion primate ( or a primate, dog, or feline hybrid) since King Kong, and like Kong, you feel sympathy for the poor guy thanks to David Allen's fantastic stop-motion animation.

The lizardfolk are terrifying and cruel.

However, I wish it had more stop-motion creatures to make the Lost Valley feel more alive, like the cut River Lizard from the poster or the Monoclonus/Mammoth hybrid mentioned in an article in Cinemafantastique magazine about this long-gestating film.

All in all, it was a fun B-film for special effects fans.

i give it 4 stars.

[radiophd]

the primevals -- prairie chain

[donovaneagle2098]

if anyone wants to see a wonderful display of stopmotion practical effects, look up the recently released film the Primevals, a lifelong project by David W. Allen, the man who did the special effects for Honey I Shrunk the Kids (the Ant and Scorpion specifically). He died before he could finish it, but his friends finished it for him just last year. It's a genuine treat, and a great example of some awesome stop motion animation.

Marvel movies have completely eliminated the concept of practical effects from the movie-watching public’s consciousness

[whatyourusherthinks]

The Movies My Theater Missed Review

So. This is the end. Yeah, sorry to cut this blog short, but real life events have changed circumstances in my life and I no long have a job that allows me to watch free movies. I was going to wait and do like eight movies on this list, but I think for my own sanity I'm just going to quick talk about the movies I already watched, then do a top ten best and worst movies I watched this year, then bid adieu. Will this blog become resurrected? I dunno, doubtful unless I get another movie theater job. But for now, lets look at three Movies I totally dug which didn't come out in the theater I was working at.

The Primevals

The Primevals is a retro-styled science fiction adventure movie that is brought to us by Full Moon Features. Now, that alone makes me interested in the movie already. I like sci-fi, I like old school adventure movies, and I like monsters. The story is very straightforward, some scientist gain access to a dead yeti, find some weird stuff dissecting it, and travel to Nepal in order to see if they can find a live Yeti to study. It's got cool stop motion effects, enjoyable characters, and really fricking good music! I really want to emphasize that the effects are spectacular. Not only do they blend surprisingly well with the live action backgrounds, model sets, and real actors, but they are damn impressive. The amount of emotion that the yetis express in the movie is so good. My only real complaint is that finale feels a little low-key for all the build up, but that probably because of budget reasons. Stop motion is already hard, so while having hordes of lizardmen attack a giant ape sounds awesome, only the big corporation filmmakers are gonna have that kind of money and those guys will just make you do it with CGI to be cost effective or to meet a deadline.

But the reason it's on this list in particular is for a deeper reason. I first heard The Primevals is because some of the film people I watch on YouTube were talking about it. And the reason they were talking about this film was because of David Allen. David Allen was an animator, working with stop motion to create creatures for a variety of Full Moon Features and other low budget sci-fi and horror movies. (A particular favorite of mine is Doctor Mordred. That mammoth/t-rex fossil fight was awesome.) He died in 1999. Before he died, David was working on a movie, his movie. A movie that was entirely his vision, making the effects he wanted to see in a story he wanted to tell, the way he wanted to do it. That movie got lost in production hell, stopping and starting over and over as David couldn't find a production company that would float the bill. He worked on this move for 40 years! It was set to come out in 1994! But after his death, Full Moon Features had to shelve it. Until 2018.

In 2018 Full Moon Features ran an Indiegogo campaign to finish David Allen's movie. That movie was the Primevals. This passion project from a guy who was pretty much only a draw if you were in the know and often had a lot of his hard work cut out of movies he worked on. Will this movie be for everyone? No. The old-school adventure set-up of white people exploring distant exotic lands to fight monsters has always been burdened with racist undertones and the plot may brush up a little too closely to ancient aliens conspiracies for some. (Although the movie actually has the story address both points and particularly the ancient alien thing gets cleverly subverted.) But this is a passion project by people with their hearts in the right place and a lost film finally released. This feels like a movie everyone owes it to themselves to check out.

Salem's Lot (2024)

I watched this one on the recommendation of my friends (Hi Chuck! Hi Mary!) and I wasn't really sure what to expect from this. I've gone on record saying I don't really like vampires, and I have absolutely no opinion of Stephen King. Never read any of his books, and the only King movie I've seen is Creepshow, which feels more like a George A. Romero product than a Stephen King one. And I don't know if I could have had a better introduction. Salem's Lot (2024) is awesome! It's more or less a traditional vampire story but with old Hollywood epic vibes. It's not just a vampire terrorizing a small town, we need to hire like 100 extras and need 30 characters in the plot so we can turn half of them into vampires! The movie sticks with some traditional vampire lore which makes the plot somewhat easy to predict, but the way it's implemented is so cool. The special effects in this movies are simply delightful. Especially the crosses, the way they glow makes it seem like they'd burn off the film if it was actually shot when Hollywood made epics. And their is a scene where the main vampire is sucking someone's blood and his head get's all these thick red veins bursting out of his skull, ugh it looked so fucking awesome! It isn't a perfect movie, the sacrifice of having a town full of vampires is that there are way too many characters in the front half of the movie and some of the plot threads lead nowhere. Plus if you could totally predict the plot if you know vampire fiction and ESPECIALLY if you know Stephen King. But hey, it's damn good. I wish it came to theaters instead of being a Max exclusive.

Hundreds of Beavers

Oh hell yes! This was pretty much the reason I wanted to make this end of the year long review. I was sent the trailer for this movie by my dad, and I was so hyped immediately. Unfortunately, it was an incredibly limited release. The closest theaters that were showing it was 80 miles away and I don't own a car, so even though I totally would have paid to go see this movie, I couldn't. And it was only streaming on Apple TV, I'm not getting another subscription service.

Hundreds of Beavers is a live action black and white cartoon. And it's fucking amazing. It's about a washed up Apple Jack seller who is trying to survive the winter and earn the hand of a fur trader's daughter by giving him the pelts of, well, hundreds of beavers. This entire plot is just a collection of slapstick and silly scenarios. There is no dialogue, all the characters mostly speak in grunts and screams, and all the animals are people in mascot costumes. They use bluescreen and simple animations that looks so bad they come around to being stylish. The plot is just a sequence of trapper finds something new, the new thing causes him a misfortune, the trapper learns how to use it to assist in his hunting, and someone gets tackled or kicked in the face. It's sounds dumb, but it's actually really smart! I don't want to get too much into it because that would require spoilers and you should just watch the movie yourself, but there's about half the movie I thought was gonna be just joke fodder and then it was called back or important to the plot. And despite there is practically no dialogue in the movie, the humans are all distinct characters and there's a pretty awesome plot twist. The plot about a guy killing people in beaver costumes? Yes. It's one of the greatest movies I've ever seen. Has it beaten The Fall Guy for my favorite movie of the year? No, not quite. It's not as rewatchable as that movie and the romance in The Fall Guy was better. But Hundreds of Beavers is still an easy recommendation.

[cultfaction]

Preview: The Primevals (Bluray Box Set)

Deep in the Himalayas, a group of Sherpas subdue and kill a towering humanoid creature, one that Dr. Claire Collier believes to be the legendary Yeti. Soon, Dr. Collier and her colleagues lead an expedition into the mountains to find other beasts like it, only to uncover a race of beings even more fantastical! Stop motion FX wizard David Allen’s long-planned passion project was shelved in the…

[vintage1981]

The Primevals Lives! Delirium #37 is On Sale Now!

Stop motion FX wizard David Allen's long-planned passion project THE PRIMEVALS was shelved in the 1990's after Allen passed away from cancer. Finally completed in 2023 by Full Moon and former Allen associate Chris Endicott, THE PRIMEVALS is finally unleashed and it's the ultimate retro-fantasy adventure, employing a wild array of arresting, 100% hand-rendered, stop-motion special effects and a rich orchestral score from composer Richard Band.

In this 37th issue, DELIRIUM shines a light on the making of THE PRIMEVALS with exclusive new interviews with Endicott and Band, plus a startling array of rare photos. Plus, we talk to Joe Dante about the making of his 1978 killer fish Corman classic PIRANHA, actor Alex Winter dishes on working with Michael Winner and Charlie Bronson on DEATH WISH 3, sex and vampires meet in the adult arena as we profile the Hungarian erotica line GetVampired, Lucio Fulci's favorite kid Silvia Collatina talks about her days in Italian horror and MUCH more.

[gwarden123]

Watched The Primevals. Stop-motion adventure film finished long after the creator's death. Pretty good! Got the kind of designs in it that make you want to slap them and go oooh!

Also featuring:

Really good animation on the yetis. All of the stop-motion animation is very smooth and lifelike, very good at making you accept all these lizard creatures wandering around without them seeming obviously out of place, but the facial animation on the yetis is exceptionally good. Extremely emotive and subtle.

Younger hero banging his older lady professor. I presume that's what they were doing. There's even a hand-off to the younger lady anthropologist at the end like "oh, I'm sure you'll find someone else to help you finish writing your book *wink*"

Oooh, look at that matte painting! *slap-slap-slap*

90 minutes!!!

[visplay]

Chris: The Primevals is an adventure / sci-fi film about an expedition to find the yeti which encounters a secret valley inhabited by descendants of alien lizard men, great stop motion animation, been waiting for this film to be released for years, Watch: Rent.

Richie: It was fun, I loved the stop motion animation, Watch: Rent.

[cinemaquiles]

"THE PRIMEVALS" (2023), O FILME QUE LEVOU MAIS DE 4 DÉCADAS PARA FICAR PRONTO!

[randomdeinonychus]

Today's arrival is rather less impressive than the deluxe release I originally ordered from Umbrella Entertainment before it got region locked, but it's still exciting just the same.

[buriedknight]

Stargazers

[goryhorroor]

horror sub-genres: aquatic