Primevals, The: Ultimate Collector's Edition (Blu-ray Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Jul 29, 2024
Format: Blu-ray Disc

Director

David Allen

Release Date(s)

2023 (June 1, 2024)

Studio(s)

Castel Film Romania (Full Moon Features)

Film/Program Grade: B-
Video Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B+
Extras Grade: A-
Overall Grade: A

https://www.fullmoonhorror.com/

Review

London After Midnight. The original 42-reel version of Greed. The 131-minute rough cut of The Magnificent Ambersons. The Day the Clown Cried. Coyote vs. Acme. These are all films that belong to the unfortunate pantheon of titles that have been lost to time, for one reason or another. In some cases, there’s no known extant elements of any kind, and the films appear to be gone forever. In other cases, while the final cuts are still available, all of the missing footage from the longer cuts has been lost or destroyed. Still other films were shelved before they were completed, and while the elements may still exist, they’re locked away in the vaults. Miracles do happen occasionally, like when a 16mm reduction negative of the original cut for Metropolis was located in Argentina. Sadly, stories like that are the exception, not the rule. And as the recent fates of both Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme have proved, films can become lost to time even in the modern era. Still, when the stars align, miracles do occur, and such is the case with David Allen’s long-lost passion project The Primevals.

In some ways, the saga of The Primevals is even more complicated than any of its more famous brethren in the annals of lost films. That’s because it’s been in the works for the better part of a half century at this point. The genesis of the project actually dates back to the Sixties as a proposal for a stop-motion animation adventure called Raiders of the Stone Ring. The story would change significantly before the film was actually greenlit by low-budget producer Charles Band in 1978, with the title now officially being The Primevals, but that version never got past the pre-production stage before it imploded. Allen and Band attempted to revive it during the Eighties as an Empire Entertainment production, but that never came to fruition. Finally, in 1994, The Primevals got off the ground under Band’s Full Moon label. Yet as it turned out, that was just the beginning, not the end. Allen completed principal photography and got to work on effects sequences, but Full Moon’s fate took a turn for the worse when their distribution deal with Paramount Pictures fell apart. Allen continued to work on the stop-motion animation on and off over the next few years, but his health deteriorated rapidly after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and he passed away in August of 1999 with his dreams left unfinished.

That left the unfinished The Primevals on the shelf for many years. Chris Endicott and Kent Burton had worked on some animation for Allen while he was in the hospital back in 1999, and Endicott knew what Allen’s game plan was for the finished film, so it was natural that he would be involved in some capacity. There was a workprint that was being used to drum up interest and Band pushed Endicott to release it as is, but Endicott held firm and eventually suggested a hybrid of the workprint footage with the original storyboards for the missing sequences. Yet he still wanted to complete at least one of Allen’s missing sequences, and thus began the extended saga of finishing the film. That one sequence grew into another, and despite the lack of money, Endicott and Burton worked on the animation whenever they could. Band eventually ran an Indiegogo campaign to raise additional funds to finish the film, hired his brother Richard to write a score, and so The Primevals finally saw the light of day in 2023 when it screened at the Fantasia Film Festival.

Of course, this version of The Primevals isn’t quite what Allen would have created if he had lived to see it through. There are still missing sequences and shots because the animation couldn’t be completed, and the final film utilizes some modern techniques like digital compositing and even digital matte painting. Yet it’s still filled with old-school practical effects that were created by Allen and his crew, and Endicott stuck to those guns by refusing to utilize digital animation for any of the new work. The footage that was completed after Allen’s passing utilizes the exact same puppets that he used, hand-animated one frame at a time. The Primevals remains a showcase for classic effects like stop-motion animation, traditional glass matte paintings, foreground miniatures, and more. The new animation blends pretty seamlessly with the old, retaining many of the quirks that marked Allen’s own animation. It’s all true to the spirit of what Allen intended, if not necessarily the exact form.

The story and screenplay that Allen concocted along with Wiilliam Randall Cook offers a pretty basic The Lost World setup, with scientist Dr. Claire Connor (Juliet Mills) obtaining the corpse of a Yeti and using it to raise funds to go on an expedition to the Himalayas in order to investigate further. Joining her on the journey are her former student Matt Connor (Richard Joseph Paul), adventurer Rondo Montana (Leon Russom), Kathleen Reidel (Walker Brandt), and a Sherpa experienced with the Yeti (Tai Thai). From there, things move into At the Earth’s Core territory, with the group discovering an underground civilization that in this case has extraterrestrial origins. Ultimately, the whole thing is essentially The Lost World with Sleestaks instead of cavemen (although there are a few of those as well). There are a few gaps and plot holes sprinkled throughout the film, although most of those are due to unfinished animation that couldn’t be included in the final cut.

Of course, regardless of what anyone may tell you, the story is never the most important thing with this kind of adventure. The characters in The Primevals are also pretty basic, and the acting is serviceable at best (although Leon Russom is always reliable in genre fare). No, stop-motion adventures like this are all about the sense of wonder offered by the creatures and the worlds that the artists have created. In that respect, The Primevals suffers a bit from being released decades after it should have been. Stop-motion animation was still a viable art for live-action films even after the visual effects renaissance that Star Wars launched in 1977, so had The Primevals successfully reached the screen in 1978, it would have felt quite different than it does now. Even the Jurassic Park CGI revolution in 1993 still left space for films like The Primevals over the first few years that followed, as many Full Moon titles from that era will attest. In 2023, however, things are a bit different. Stop-motion still exists as a vehicle for pure animation in family fare like Studio Laika titles, but as a visual effects technique for live action, not so much.

Does that mean that The Primevals is a letdown? Absolutely not. Of course, for fans who have eagerly followed the behind-the-scenes saga for many years now, there’s no way that it could possibly live up to the hype that we’ve built up in our own minds. Nothing can ever live up to anticipation that has been building for decades. If an extant print of London After Midnight is finally uncovered, it’s probably not going to be the lost masterpiece that we’ve all been hoping for. Yet it doesn’t have to be, and The Primevals also doesn’t have to be the 1933 version of King Kong in order for it to be something special. The reality is that regardless of any deficiencies that it may have, The Primevals is just that: something special. It’s the realization of the dreams of a man who tragically left us a quarter century ago, and that’s magical indeed. No, it’s not exactly what he had in mind, but it’s close enough. The whole thing might be a bit baffling to younger people who have grown up on a steady diet of CGI, but for those of us who were raised by Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, and Eiji Tsuburaya, it’s magical enough. Watch it in that spirit, and you’ll end up enjoying it in that spirit.

Cinematographer Adolfo Bartoli shot The Primevals on 35mm film using spherical lenses. While Band may or may not have originally intended to give The Primevals some sort of a limited theatrical release back in the Nineties, Bartoli would have shot everything open-matte and protected the image for full-frame 1.33:1 in order to facilitate release on home video, which was Full Moon’s primary market. This version is matted to the current home video frame of 1.78:1, and presumably that’s the ratio that was used for its exhibition at the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival. Also, while the entire film would have been completed in the analogue domain back in the Nineties, the final cut was likely completed as a digital intermediate (some of the new animation was captured digitally, and there’s digital compositing used throughout).

What’s murkier is the elements that were used to create it. When Charles Band’s deal with Paramount fell apart, it soured his relationship with Fotokem, and he hasn’t had access to the negatives for most of his films. Yet in this case, it looks like much of the final product was indeed sourced from the negative, although there are shots sprinkled throughout that appear to have come from dupe elements instead. (If something like a high-quality IP was the actual primary source, then the weaker shots are at least a generation removed from that.) With all of that out of the way, the image is clean and reasonably sharp, although the shots sourced from lesser dupe elements do look a little softer, with harsher contrast. Overall, the contrast range is quite good, and the colors all look perfectly natural. Everything has that bright Full Moon home video look that all of its titles had regardless of whether or not they were shot on film, but that’s true to the source. The bitrate runs a little low, but there aren’t too many major compression artifacts. As Full Moon Blu-ray releases go, The Primevals looks pretty impressive.

Audio is offered in English 2.0 and 5.1 Dolby Digital, with optional English subtitles. (Note that there’s no place on the menus to select either audio or subtitles, so you’ll have to use your remote instead.) While it’s disappointing that there’s only lossy Dolby Digital audio, that’s standard practice for Full Moon Blu-rays and even their UHDs. It is what it is. The good news is that both tracks sound fairly robust, and Richard Band’s usual solid musical work has some real heft and depth to it—a decent quantity of deep bass, too. The 2.0 track does appear to have encoded surrounds, mostly in the form of ambient sounds like wind and crowd noises, plus a little reverb for the score. The 5.1 track is a straightforward discrete encoding of the same basic four channels, so there’s little practical difference between the two. The 5.1 may have slightly better steering, and the 2.0 may sound a little more expansive, but the differences are still minor, and the choice is yours.

The Full Moon Features Ultimate Collector’s Edition Blu-ray set for The Primevals is a three-disc set that offers two different cuts of the film on the first two discs, plus a third disc of extras. All of the discs are housed in separate Amaray cases, doubtless so that Full Moon can simplify their inventory for later releases without having to repress or repackage anything. It also includes two enameled pins (one for the Yeti and one for the reptilians) and six art cards. Everything comes housed inside a wooden box with leather and brass accents—and yes, it’s real wood, so for once Charles Band is delivering as promised. Frankly, it’s insanely cool, and a genuine premium item. That’s not all, though; while this isn’t a part of the main listing on Full Moon’s website, placing an order for the set also adds a free Primevals metal lunchbox and a copy of issue #37 of Full Moon’s Delirium magazine, with a cover story on The Primevals featuring Chris Endicott and another interview with Richard Band. And yes, the lunchbox is equally cool, as it perfectly captures the spirit of the film. While everyone’s mileage may vary, as swag-filled collector’s sets go, this one’s a doozie. The following extras are included:

DISC ONE: FEATURE FILM

Trailer (HD – 2:12)

DISC TWO: EXTENDED CUT

The Primevals: The David Allen Version (HD – 97:43)

DISC THREE: EXTRAS

Lost to Time: Unearthing The Primevals (HD – 45:31)
Raiders of the Stone Ring – Promo Reel (HD – 10:06)
Primevals – A False Start (HD – 1:41)
1984 Promo Reel (Upscaled SD – 2:30)
1997 Promo Reel (Upscaled SD – 4:54)
Time-Lapse Animation (HD – :59)
David Allen at the Moviola (Upscaled SD – 6:10)
Randall William Cook Visits The Primevals (Upscaled SD – 2:31)
Charles Band and David Allen on The Primevals (Upscaled SD – 1:43)
The Beginning and the End (Upscaled SD & HD – 3:20)
A Celebration of Tenacity (HD – 30:03)

The Primevals: The David Allen Version is perhaps misleadingly titled—it’s still the finished version of the film that was completed by Chris Endicott, not any kind of an assembly cut that still involved Allen. Instead, it’s an extended version of the final cut that adds back scenes and shots that neither Allen nor Endicott were able to complete. Missing animation has been replaced by semi-animated storyboard artwork, sometimes with that artwork composited onto the live action footage to show how it would have been laid out. The lengthiest single addition is an encounter with a sleeping dinosaur-like creature during the river raft ride, one that goes sour when the beast wakes up. That’s referenced in an expanded version of the later campfire scene. There’s also more information provided by the ancient recording on the spaceship, and a variety of different shots added to the arena battle toward the end. The missing footage does fill in a few gaps in the final cut, like showing how the river raft ride came to end, and explaining what happened to the second reptilian on the control platform in the arena. Had the animation been completed, this would have definitely been the superior version of the film, with the monster encounter providing a much-needed bit of animation to bridge what’s now a lengthy gap without any. Note that the audio options are identical to the main feature, offering both 2.0 and 5.1 Dolby Digital, but there’s no subtitles available in this case.

Lost to Time: Unearthing The Primevals is a new documentary on the film written by C. Courtney Joyner, produced by Chris Endicott, and directed by Daniel Griffith for his Ballyhoo Motion Pictures. Narrated by Full Moon stalwart Jeffrey Combs, it features interviews with Chris Endicott, Charles Band, and David Allen (via archival footage), as well as interviews with visual effects artists Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett, Susan Turner, William Stromberg, John Berg, Dave Carson, and Tom St. Amand. Lost to Time isn’t so much a documentary about the finished film as it is about the prehistory of The Primevals, tracing its origins to David Allen’s early inspirations like Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen. It covers the early stages of Allen’s career like his uncredited work on The Wizard of Mars and his first collaboration with Dennis Muren and Jim Danforth on The Equinox... A Journey into the Supernatural. From there, it follows the on-again, off-again saga of The Primevals from its earliest proposed version in the Sixties to the first attempt to make it with Charles Band in 1978, and from there to its eventual revival in the Nineties. While anyone wanting to know more about the tortuous process of finishing the film will have to look elsewhere, this is a great overview of the miles that had to be covered in order to get to that point.

The next few extras dig deeper into some of that prehistory. The Promo Reel for Raiders of the Stone Ring is the a sizzle reel created to sell the original version of the story, linking animation tests with sample dramatic footage. It’s incomplete and no audio was ever recorded (subtitles have been added to clarify the story), but it’s still a fascinating glimpse of what could have been. Primevals – A False Start is a reel of the only remaining animation tests from the aborted 1978 version. Unlike the eventual Full Moon production, these were filmed in widescreen Panavision. The 1984 Promo Reel was another attempt to sell the film to investors, this time under the banner of Band’s Empire Pictures. The 1997 Promo Reel is from the Full Moon production, featuring honest-to-goodness footage from the film and making promises that were never delivered.

The Time-Lapse Animation is a brief reel demonstrating one of David Allen’s complex rigs for creating a tracking shot of the Yeti walking, with everything done in-camera on multiple passes. David Allen at the Moviola is camcorder footage of Allen working that was shot by Paul Gentry while he was visiting Allen’s studio in early 1999. The actual camcorder footage has been replaced by a different video transfer of the reel that they were watching, but Allen’s verbal descriptions of the footage has been retained. Randall William Cook Visits The Primevals is the last footage that was shot of Allen in his studio in June of 1999, just two months before he passed away. Cook used the footage as part of a videotaped farewell to Allen for a convention in Las Vegas, and that’s the version included here.

Charles Band and David Allen on The Primevals is taken from the Full Moon Cinemaker DVD set. That was intended as a guide for low-budget filmmaking, and this clip offers Band and Allen acknowledging the difficulties in finishing The Primevals. The Beginning and The End is behind-the-scenes first of the first animation that Allen did for the film in 1995, compared footage of the final animation completed by Kent Burton in 2021. It’s an interesting glimpse of how times have changed (Burton was capturing the animation digitally against a green screen).

Last, but certainly not least, is A Celebration of Tenacity, which is a sort of a Q&A with some of Allen’s friends and collaborators after a screening of The Primevals at Industrial Light & Magic. Dennis Muren arranged the screening and acts as host, joined by Phil Tippett, Susan Turner, John Berg, Robin Louden, and Dave Carson. They reminisce about their relationships with Allen and finding themselves in and out of the orbit of the long journey of The Primevals. There are some great stores here about working during on a budget during the practical effects era.

That’s a pretty impressive slate of extras for a Full Moon title, headlined by a fine documentary and some priceless archival footage. Even more impressively, it’s a swag-filled set where most of the swag doesn’t feel disposable. Whether or not it’s worth the $120 asking price is something that you’ll have to decide for yourself. Full Moon will be releasing a more standard Blu-ray later this year, though it looks to be only the first disc of this set. Umbrella Entertainment in Australia has a Region B version coming soon, with a different set of extras, but shipping from Down Under can take a hefty bite of its own. (We do have a copy of it on the way and will soon have a review of that one as well.) If, like some of us, you’ve been eagerly awaiting The Primevals ever since reading the cover story in the January 1978 issue of Cinefantastique, then you might just have to take the plunge on this set. But you know who you are.

- Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd).