Valley Of The Dragons (1961)

Starring Cesare Danova, Sean McClory, Joan Staley, Danielle De Metz, Gregg Martel
Directed by Edward Bernds
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

Two men during a duel to the death are swept off the Earth onto a comet, where they discover prehistoric creatures and join tribes of early cave people.

Very loosely based on a Jules Verne novel, this film, had it been made with a larger budget, might have made for a really unique adventure film, but there's so much stock footage utilized here, it's hard to make a convincing case for judging the movie on its own merits.  Although other films had used footage from Hal Roach's One Million B.C. before, I don't think any had used the vast amount of footage they use here, clearly scripting and costuming the picture around the 1940 film's scenes.  The special effects in One Million B.C. are still impressive, but passing lizards off as dinosaurs isn't any more acceptable in 1961 then it was twenty-one years earlier.  The filmmakers also use footage from the much more recent Japanese kaiju film Rodan to stand in for a prehistoric pteranodon which audiences of the time had to notice.  That being said, I still enjoy this film and it has a high fun factor.  Danova and McClory are engaging leads, Staley is entertaining as a cavewoman who doesn't let anyone come between her and Danova, and Ruby Raksin's score is fun and atmospheric.