In my experience, when a gypsy tells you to stay away from a place known as the “Forbidden Valley,” you do it. But the poor dumb cowboy stars of The Valley of Gwangi can’t leave well enough alone. “Defy the law and perish!” she warns, suggesting she may be from Texas. For their folly, the cowboys are doomed to a horrible fate, and by watching Gwangi so was I.

At its essence, Gwangi is a B-movie about cowboys battling some Ray Harryhausen dinosaurs. But despite the cool premise (and the admittedly excellent effects), the movie is a chore to endure. The first significant creature, a miniature horse, doesn’t occur until twenty-five minutes have passed, and each one goes by like slow, torturous agony.

The repellant plot involves a thief and conman named Tuck (James Franciscus, who never met a role passed on by Charlton Heston he didn’t like) living in Mexico in the early 1900s. He returns to the rodeo and the girl he abandoned to find them struggling in his absence. While he was gone his lady T.J. (Gila Golan) has been forced to jump a horse off a diving board into a pool of water for the amusement of spectators. Horses jumping into water don’t excite me. If they were jumping into pools of lava, then maybe I’d be interested.

The rodeo’s about to be bought out – most small businesses in movies are usually on the verge of bankruptcy, it makes a good story – but T.J.’s got an ace up her sleeve. She acquired a tiny horse in the desert and plans to feature it as the centerpiece of a new rodeo act that will revitalize their fortunes. The obvious problem that no one seems to address here is why people would pay money to attend a rodeo whose main attraction is too small to see from their seats.

Eventually the horse is stolen and Tuck and T.J. rush off to rescue it. How dare someone else steal and attempt to exploit that which they have already rightfully stolen? The trail leads back to a remote valley – the one they are told is forbidden – where the cowboys find living dinosaurs. The effects are great, but the humans are so despicably greedy that by that point in Gwangi I began actively rooting for the dinosaurs to defeat the cowboys. When the T-Rex chomps one up, I got so excited I might have started salivating.

To my eternal disappointment, Tuck and his cohorts manage to capture the T-Rex and decide to bring it back to the rodeo. If a miniature horse is good, then an oversized lizard with aggression issues is even better. While transporting the dinosaur back to civilization, they meet the gypsy again, who vows danger for all involved if the dinosaur isn’t returned to its valley. The T-Rex is chained and caged and placed on a giant stage, which, as anyone who has ever seen a monster movie knows, is big trouble.

As the rodeo begins, the gypsy sends her helper midget to release the T-Rex, setting the beast loose on a village-leveling rampage. What kind of two-bit gypsy is this? She predicts something then actively works to make it happen? I can predict you’re going to get food poisoning, but if I’m the one blowing my nose with your McGriddle I’ve got about as much psychic integrity as Miss Cleo.

There is one interesting nugget to chew over in Gwangi. In many Westerns, the church plays an important ideological role in the plot, acting as a symbol of the civilizing force of the East coming to the West. Here, Gwangi (the gypsy name for the T-Rex) chases the villagers through the streets and follows into the unfinished town church. Tuck traps the dinosaur in the church and then starts a fire that eventually kills Gwangi and brings the building crashing down. In a smarter movie, this might have been a comment on the power of religion, or on the savagery of the West overtaking and destroying the order of the East.