The Animal World

I've got good news at least for the three (so far) commenters here, and perhaps for others as well: THE ANIMAL WORLD has survived intact, and is available from the Warner Archive.

I bought it, not surprisingly, for the dinosaur sequence; I too got those ViewMaster reels in 1956 and have wondered ever since what the movie was like. The movie as a whole is a pretty-good nature documentary, akin to (though not quite as good as) the Walt Disney True-Life Adventures of the 1940s and '50s. The O'Brien-Harryhausen animation scenes are justifiably the main draw here, and they alone are worth the price of the DVD.

This documentary film comprised of stop motion animation of Dinosaurs and film clips of all kinds of animals from all over the world is ahead of its time with the possible exception of Walt Disney who had been making these kinds of films for some time by 1956.

The Warner Archive restoration is quite impressive with clear vivid imagery and colors. The photography is well done and the shots are quite clear. Compare it to the similar "Animals Are Beautiful People" of almost 20 years later where the script is humorous but looking at the blurry action shots in that film for more than 10 minutes at a time will give you a headache and a tremendous case of eyestrain.

The film begins talking about the evolution of animal life on planet earth, being careful to avoid actually saying the word evolution - this is where the stop motion dinosaur footage comes in. The reason that the film gives for the end of dinosaurs on earth involves a cataclysmic change in the earth's climate of unknown origin rather than the meteor that landed in the Gulf of Mexico as is thought to be the reason for their end today. Then it goes on to discuss the new life that populates the earth afterwards starting from life in the sea to the arrival of man. Again, being a 50's film and still under the production code, you'll see many more Biblical references than you'd find in any modern film on animal life.

Next the film shifts to talking about ecology - how current animal life is in perfect balance and how each animal contributes to the planet's existence. If the film has any fault at all it is this - after talking a bit about ecological balance the film shifts to entertaining and often humorous individual pieces about various animals in action without any kind of overriding narrative. Still, I'd highly recommend it.

For the past few weeks, I've been reviewing various films done by stop-motion animators Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, and producer Irwin Allen in chronological order as I will continue to do after this review. I previously reviewed O'Brien and Harryhausen's work on Mighty Joe Young so now this is their second and last collaboration of which O'Brien did the models and Harryhausen did the animation. What they built was some dinosaurs and their surroundings from during the time they lived which Allen-as director and writer as well as producer-put in his movie as part of a documentary of various animals from the past and present doing what comes naturally to them. While the animation and models are obvious, they're no less entertaining. In fact, Harryhausen later revealed he later got some guff from the Production Code people about making the dino fights so violent even though he argued that the real animal fights in the rest of the film were no different! There's also plenty of good humor having various actors doing voices of the animals as if they were communicating with each other as if they were actual human beings! So on that note, I highly recommend The Animal World.

Outdated paleontology media has a good charm to it.

I saw this film in the special features of Warner Brothers DvD of the Black Scorpian, it was a pleasant surprise.

This was one of Ray Harryhausen's lesser known works and I think it's his most underrated project.

He improved a lot in the matter of three years.

Willis O Brien did a good job on this picture too, he made the stop motion models and did most of the close up puppetry.

The only problem with the dinosaur action is that the triceratops puppet looks pretty dull looking and the legs look really stiff.

The non dinosaur footage is pretty good too.

Good documentary for the time, check it out.

To be frank, I've never seen the movie "The Animal World" but as a kid, I inherited the View-Master reels, and later the "Prehistoric Animals" packet, from my older brother... Boy! Did I wish I could see the movie one day! Being a monster movie buff, I bought the movie "The Black Scorpion" on DVD lately and to my surprise, I found out that the entire "Dinosaur Sequence" animated by Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen from "Animal World" was included as an extra feature on it! Wow! I finally saw it! And it was worth the wait... in part. I'm giving it a rating of 8/10 because the sequence is composed of superb stop-motion animation by two great masters, but also of cheesy looking dinosaur puppets... Anyway, it's great fun to look at!