''The Valley'' is a 1976 short film made by a then fifteen-year-old
Peter Jackson with his friends. It was strongly influenced by the films of
Ray Harryhausen
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation". His works include the animation for '' Mi ...
. It was filmed silent on a
Super 8 camera and was shown on the children's television show ''
Spot On''.
Plot
''The Valley'' is about four prospectors who walk into a valley and unwittingly enter a rift in the time/space continuum. As they journey down the valley, one of the prospectors (Ian Middleton) gets taken away by a
harpy. Another prospector (Peter Jackson) falls off a cliff. The two remaining (Ken Hammon and Andrew Neal) have to fight and destroy a
cyclops. They build a raft, float across a lake, and see a building in ruins. This ruin, unbeknownst to them, is the
Beehive
A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus '' Apis'' live and raise their young. Though the word ''beehive'' is commonly used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature ...
building of
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...
city – they have not travelled back in time but ahead into a
post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...
world taken over by mythical beasts.
Cast
*Andrew Neal as Prospector #1
*Ken Hammon as Prospector #2
*
Ian Middleton as Prospector #3
*
Peter Jackson as Prospector #4
*
Pete O'Herne stars in an unidentified role
References
*''Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of the Rings'' by Ian Pryor
*''Good Taste Made Bad Taste'' (Documentary) by Tony Hiles
*''Recreating the Eighth Wonder: Making King Kong'' (Documentary) by Michael Pellerin
External links
*
Films directed by Peter Jackson
New Zealand short films
1976 films
Amateur filmmaking
1970s English-language films
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