The Valley of Gwangi

The Valley of Gwangi (1969) is a dinosaur western you can watch online on iFILM. Deep in a walled-off Mexican valley, cowboys stumble onto creatures that should have died out millions of years ago.

A struggling turn-of-the-century wild west show gets hold of a tiny prehistoric horse, and the trail leads to the Forbidden Valley where time stopped. Tom Kirby's cowboys decide to rope the biggest monster of all — an Allosaurus they call Gwangi — and turn him into the main attraction. Putting a dinosaur on stage goes about as well as you'd expect.

The real draw is Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion: his Gwangi wrestles cowboys on lassos and takes on an elephant frame by hand-built frame, no computers anywhere. One for anyone who loves how fantasy was made before pixels. Stream The Valley of Gwangi (1969) online on iFILM.