Review: The Primevals

This last year or so has been the era of “movies that have started decades ago finally get funded and finished then subsequently released”. We saw this with last year’s Mad Gods from Phil Tippett and now we’re getting one from another stop-motion animation legend David Allen. Thanks to the likes of Chris Endicott and Kent Burton, the duo were able to help realize Allen’s vision and bring this 30-year journey to a close.

From a production standpoint, The Primevals is what we would call now-a-days, a hybrid, but when this film was first starting production they probably had not a lot of choice BUT to use stop-motion animation to depict all of the crazy fuck creatures that are in this 90-minute feature-length that is clearly a love letter to King Kong, Planet of the Apes, and Star Trek all rolled into one and if you think back to how those movies and TV shows were made you will certainly see all of those influences early on in this one as the premise follows a band of would-be-travellers looking for yetis that then come across the likes of hominids, alien reptilian species, and then remnants of some other aliens race.

The plot is VERY loose and I’m being kind by saying this. In today’s standards, The Primevals would certainly be called “messy” at best, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a sight to behold in seeing a number of actors, some of whom have retired quite some time ago save for some occasional spot work, in their prime and doing their craft and doing so with surprisingly strong dialogue. The stop-motion animation is very indicative of this time and I actually do appreciate the fact that the producers that helped finish the feature didn’t seem to employ many of the modern-day easy tricks to try and get this thing finished and instead focused on finishing the film as it was intended.

The Primevals in a lot of ways doesn’t hold up, especially in the plot department, but in every production way possible it certainly does so if you’re a classic film buff of sci-fi from another era, this one should be up your alley.