THE PRIMEVALS belongs to a different time, a different place, an imagined world of monsters, myth and magic that has only ever existed within the confines of classic fantasy cinema. Even if its chief architect, David Allen, had lived and the film had been released in the 1990s, it would have still been out of synch with the zeitgeist. Seen today, it’s a truly singular experience, floating in a bubble outside and above anything else being made.
Fifty years ago, filmmaker David Allen registered the story for the film that would become ‘The Primevals’. His goal was to elevate the art of stop-motion animation into more serious, thoughtful storytelling. In the mid-1960s, the film had started as an homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs, reminiscent of the fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen that had impressed David as a child. He died in 1999 and the task of completing the film fell to his visual effects colleague Chris Endicott
While award winning and Emmy nominated composer Richard Band is primarily known to many as a composer for Horror and Genre films, he has often stepped well outside the horror genre and diversified his body of work demonstrating his ability to tackle any genre and style presented to him. ‘The Primevals’ represents a glorious hark back to the classic scores that fuelled so many of the Harryhausen films of the 1950s and 1960s. A delirious thrill-ride through the joys of monsters, ray-guns, spaceships and good old-fashioned stop motion animation.