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The Primevals (2023)
Notes Written 10/17/2024
Format - Digital File
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   David Allen, an old hand in the stop-motion game, wanted to make a
Harryhausen-style adventure flick in the late '60s.  The project was
repeatredly pitched and reworked over the next three decades until it
came to the attention of Charles Band and his merry band of
delinquents at what would ultimately become Full Moon Productions.
Something resembling a real budget was raised and filming in several
actual locations began around 1994.  A Full Moon film with an outdoor
setting - and even some extras!  David Allen was "allowed" to direct
his pet project while Full Moon doubtless appreciated the budgetary
savings of the lead animator and director being combined into a
single paycheck.

   After wrapping up the shooting with live actors, stop-motion work
began.  The realities of work with Full Moon and its...unreliable
financial situation also began to manifest.  In 1999, work was
nowhere near done but Mr. Allen's time on this mortal coil ran out.
He left all of the gear and such to a trusted associate.  Here the
incomplete movie sat for nearly two more decades until launch of a
fundraiser around 2018.  This effort raised a paltry $40,000
inflationary funbux to finish a dead man's vision.

   A crew was put together to slowly finish animation over the next
five years; doubtless on a part-time and under-copensated basis.  And
finally, staying true to his word with some perhaps uncharacteristic
integrity within the realm of direct-to-video production, Charles
Band released his late associate's film around 2023.

   Rather than dabble in a thin plot description, let us just say
that the movie is an obvious love letter to Ray Harryhausen and Edgar
Rice Burroughs.  With more inexpensive-to-film dialog scenes than
Burroughs would ever have written but all the ludicrously simplified,
mindless, and spectacular ending as he could ever have penned.

   A cheap-ish ode stop-motion with great animation and the
enthusiastic soul of a child playing with hand-crafted toys.  Backed
by a producer willing to drop a film featirung '90s ankle warmers and
tape dictaphones in the year of our Despotic Technocratic Overlords
2023.  It is a poorly acted work of art and I'll have to track down a
Blu-Ray.  A new prduction disc to send some money to the studio as a
token of thanks for such a heartwarming little bit of fun in film
making.

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kimek
[gopher://sdf.org/1/users/kimek]