Movies involving cowboys and Indians were never for me, but cowboys and dinosaurs, as in Horror at Snape Island director James O’Connolly’s The Valley of Gwangi? I think I could get used to this.

A year before venturing Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the clenched-teeth James Franciscus portrayed Tuck, a cowboy who moseys down to Mexico to see his former flame, T.J. (Gila Golan, Our Man Flint). She now spends her time in a rodeo, riding horses that jump from a ramp into big tubs of water. It’s kind of a turn-on.

Tuck hopes to make T.J. rich when he discovers a miniature horse — and I do mean miniature. The animal stands barely bigger than a bug, and they have to chase and lasso it as it scampers across the desert. But that’s not the only strange creature they find. Nope, there are pterodactyls and the titular Gwangi, a mid-sized T-rex that they capture and put in the circus, which the dinosaur doesn’t like, as is evident when it fights an elephant.

Valley’s second half is a lot more exciting than the first, which starts off pretty slow. But the one thing that is consistent throughout is — as always — the excellent stop-motion effects work of Ray Harryhausen. Yet another collaboration with producer Charles H. Schneer, this was his last picture of the 1960s, capping an extraordinary run that included Jason and the Argonauts; only two more Sinbad adventures and one Clash of the Titans were to follow Gwangi before retirement beckoned. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.