The Animal World

The major problem with The Animal World, which which renders the film practically unwatchable today, can be traced directly back to this quote from Irwin Allen, the writer-director-producer of this nature documentary: “We don’t use the word “evolution.” We hope to walk a very thin line. On one hand we want the scientists to say this film is right and accurate, and yet we don’t want to have the church picketing the film.”

You can’t play this information both ways, especially if your goal is to show the progression of life over time. Allen is injecting something that is very much not scientific into something that is purely scientific theory and fact. For every moment of the beautiful images and narration detailing the hard scrabble evolutionary chain from aquatic single-call organisms to the more complex fauna we currently find, there’s thrown in a section about Jonah in the body of the whale, a snake described as the first great villain of society for the way it tempted Eve.

The Animal World is only notable by modern standards for a ten-minute sequence involving stop-motion dinosaurs animated by Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen. We various dinosaurs eating, laying eggs, fighting, and generally engaging in routine animalistic behavior, this sequence was Walking with Dinosaurs or Jurassic Park before either of those properties were even glimmers of artistic inspiration. This is the only part of the film anyone talks about or remembers, and with good reason. Harryhausen and O’Brien bring energy and true awe-inspiring artistic brio detailing these creatures and their ultimate destruction. Watch The Animal World for this section, that’s what everyone else does.