Some Sherpas actually manage to kill a giant yeti, and the corpse is promptly shipped overseas to be studied by renowned anthropologist Dr. Claire Collier (Juliet Mills) who discovers something strange… this yeti was purposefully mutated into existence, but by who… or what… is unknown.
Enter: Matthew Connor (Richard Joseph Paul); Claire’s former student and shit-hot anthropologist as well. Matt is flat-out amazed by all things yeti-corpse, as one would imagine, and before you know it, he’s recruited into the ranks of Claire’s Himalayan excursion… along with hard-ass, big game huntin’ mother fucker Rondo Montana (Leon Russom), Sherpa guide Siku (Tai Thai), and yet another anthro-thusiast, Kathleen (Walker Brandt).
So off these cats trek, all fired up to retrieve a living specimen… which they find, along with an entrance to a hollow earth paradise/living hell chock-full of ape-like cavemen, lizard people, U.F.O.’s, and aliens. Sounds like my kinda party cats n’ creeps!
Will our intrepid heroes survive their ordeal and bring ’em back alive, or will they become meal worms to feed the scaly, violent throngs that are hot on their heels?!!
That may be the long and short of the plot to stop-motion animation maestro David Allen’s The Primevals, but the story behind the story is pretty damn interesting as well.
Filmed in 1994 for legendary producer Charles Band’s (the Puppet Master franchise) Full Moon Features, The Primevals was in the can as far as the live-action elements were concerned, but the off-the-charts level of stop-motion animation would take years to complete… so many in fact that Allen died before the work could be finished.
Flash forward to like the day before yesterday, and the film was completed (and of this writing premiered at the prestigious Fantasia film festival), but was it worth the nearly 30 year wait?
You bet your arcane ass it was!
Containing a story that is equal parts high-adventure in the vein of Jules Verne (in particular his 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth) and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series and 1950’s drive-in creature feature, The Primevals is like a living comic book chock-full of crazy-ass cryptid theories (many popularized in dubious speculative “non-fiction” tomes of the 1970’s), colorful monsters, and undeniable charm.
To put it in simple (if impenetrably nerdy) terms; The Primevals is the most Empire Pictures of the Full Moon Features. While Band’s Full Moon was primarily known for it’s horror output (with 1992’s Jeffrey Combs vehicle/Dr. Strange pastiche Doctor Mordrid being the main outlier), his previous company, Empire, was renowned for it’s more comic book-style entertainment with titles such as Eliminators, Arena, Zone Troopers, Trancers, and Robot Jox exemplifying that aesthetic.
In order to bring to life all of the madness mentioned up yonder, Allen uses a number of impressive, practically-realized techniques including matte paintings, forced perspective, large sets, and creature suits, but the real show-stopper is of course Allen’s stop-motion animation that presents a staggering number of creatures in many scenes, and displays every second of the love and imagination poured into them for years.
Pound for pound, The Primevals is an absolute knock-out of a fantasy-flick; full to the beastly brim with excitement, colorful creatures, and impressive visual effects, and is a true crown jewel in the Full Moon catalog… highly, HIGHLY recommended!
