I was less than ten years old, and I had no idea who Ray Harryhausen was, but I was fascinated by this poster and by the movie, which is of course about dinosaurs and cowboys. Here's some more images of Gwangi, the purple (not Barney) allosaur that starred in the picture:
I don't remember how old I was when I saw the film, but I thought the roping of an allosaur was the coolest thing I'd ever seen that had was not on Skull Island...
I totally believed, in my childhood, that this dinosaur was alive...
So they finally catch ole' Gwangi and take him back to town, kinda like Kong...
So, Gwangi breaks out and fights an elephant, which also happens in 20 Million years to Earth, another one of Ray's films...
But I didn't care...
So, after he fights the elephant, Gwangi razes the town, which is described as 'South of the Border, in the 18th Century' if I'm not mistaken. This is important because in 1972 my mom took my siblings and I to Costa Rica so that our youngest brother Ralph (who is now a BG artist on The Simpsons) could be born. So, when I looked at Gwangi I thought of Alajuela, the town my parents are from and I remembered walking around all of that Colonial architecture in Alajuela and somehow this all melted together for me, so even today when I think of Alajuela, I think of a giant purple Allosaurus running around Alajuela, lol.
...so it's strange for me to be so emotional about Ray's passing, because even though I barely knew the guy, he influenced me so much as a kid, even before I knew who he was.
In the middle of my 1972 Alajuela world was, to my childhood eyes, a cathedral known as La Agonia (the Agony), which is still there. My parent's parents lived right across the street from La Agonia...
...and I played on these steps as an eight-year old kid, with my siblings and cousins. My memory is foggy now, but it all somehow mixes together for me when I see this church where my parents went to mass as kids and I played in years later, and somehow transposing it onto a giant purple Allosaurus movie...
..so when Gwangi died, he seemed to die in La Agonia, which is weird to me I know, but somehow to the childhood me, it all made perfect sense.
