User Reviews

One of my favorite shows as A kid, But its serious enough to be enjoyed by adults as well with A modern family getting trapped in A prehistoric world and helping a prehistoric family get along usually applying some modern technology and know how to solve various problems, couple that with the children adding to their problems you have A very entertaining show for both the young and young at heart, I only wish it had A longer run (I believe it was 16 episodes or so) than 1 season and I would like to see it released on DVD soon, lord knows there are some shows released to DVD that are A lot worse and not near as enlightening as this show!

I avidly watched this series as a 10 year old in 1975, when it was shown by the BBC on children's TV, and thoroughly enjoyed it!!

OK, I may be 42 now but I would love to own this series on DVD just for old times sake!!

Sad I know, but I don't remember seeing an episode I didn't enjoy!

Yes the idea of a family being propelled into a lost world is silly, but the story lines were always original without being overly moralistic....as far as I remember...it's been a long time!

Does anyone know if Hanna Barbera have any plans to release it?

Am I being nostalgic? Or am I just having a mid-life crisis? !!!

I personally liked "Valley of the Dinosaurs", and for the record, the Butler family did *not* arrive in a plane as a previous poster wrote, but in a rubber raft while on a trip down the Amazon (I believe). A whirlpool sucked them into a land that time forgot--not that different from the live-action "Land of the Lost", which I also liked.

"VOTD" was to me, underrated because it was very educational as well as adventurous. I learned a thing or two about submarines, paddleboats, air pressure, as well as expanding sticks of wood that could split a cliff! I think somebody from H-B actually did some reasearch!

The Butler family, along with Garak's family, was always barely staying ahead of the dinosaurs that wanted to, say we say, feast on them (at least the carnivores, that is). I enjoyed the ways how they could get out of their predicaments. I recalled that me and my mother enjoyed the cartoon very much when I was around ten. Yes, Garak's family, for a "backward caveman's", spoke English, but so what? It was a fun show to watch! And before Daria Morgendoffer, there was Katie Butler. Now, *there* was a girl who could hang with Daria in the sarcastic department! She could give a funny crack even during the most dangerous of situations, and I laughed! Good show, that was...

In addition to never meet your heroes, in general, I think it's best to not re-watch TV shows you thought were awesome when you were 6 years old.

Still, I loved Valley of the Dinosaurs so much when I was six I decided to break the second rule and streamed some episodes from Amazon.

And I was more than pleasantly surprised. For Saturday morning kiddie fare, this wasn't half-bad. Hellz I'd stack it up against prime-time 'adult' TV shows of the same era such as 'The Brady Bunch Hour' any day.

Despite the title, the heart of the show was actually the dynamic between two families - one from modern times, and one from the stone age. If you can get past the convenience of the stone age family speaking English - it works quite well without being preachy as an example of how different groups can come together to become stronger as a whole. The modern-day Butlers brought very helpful scientific knowledge to Gorak's family; while Gorak and his family taught the Butlers how to survive in a prehistoric jungle. One episode the Butlers would save Gorak's family with some sort of improvised stone-age fire engine, submarine, drilling rig or what not; the next episode Gorak and crew would save the Butlers with their ancient knowledge of Pterodactyl egg medicine.

And the characters were quite likable and engaging - and much more believable than typical Saturday morning characters. Teenage daughter Katie in particular was just snarky enough to be believable; but still caring and sympathetic enough to be endearing. And each Butler family character was paired up perfectly with a Gorak family member. Father John with patriarch Gorak; mother Kim with Gorak's wife Gana; young Greg with Gorak and Gana's young daughter Tana; and of course teenage Katie with Gorak and Gana's strapping teenage son Lok - who gets in one of the best completely-over-the-heads-of-children lines ever when he brags to Katie of a 'giant snake' that he's had to tame.

That line alone makes VOTD one of the best Saturday morning cartoons ever.

With Jackie Earle Haley having an Oscar nomination this year for Little Children, I decided to check out what there was of one of his earliest works that I had watched 30 years ago, Valley of the Dinosaurs.

Haley did the voice of the small Butler child.

Valley of the Dinosaurs was the cartoon story about the nuclear Butler family (father, mother, sister, brother and a dog) who rafted their way down a whirlpool to the afore-mentioned valley, where they met their equivalent cave versions, father, mother, brother, sister and a pet stegosaurus.

They were all paired up accordingly for the fathers to work in the garage, the mothers to tend to kitchen work, the teen-aged daughter to have adventures with the strapping bohemian surfer dude teen-aged cave son (interesting that there never was an episode with Lok on some makeshift surfboard) and the young son (voiced by Haley) to wander off with the blonde cave daughter.

Ironically, the cave daughter, Tana, did bear an animated resemblance to Kathy Coleman, who played daughter Holly on rival Land of the Lost.

It really wasn't that much of a coincidence that Valley of the Dinosaurs and Land of the Lost both premiered the same year. Cartoon themes were very common.

An even better one was Speed Buggy and Wheelie & The Chopper Bunch, both Hanna Barbera cartoons.

But I digress.

My brothers were fans of LotL, and they even said LotL wasn't so much a dinosaur show, but was more fantasy.

VotD, on the other hand, was straight rugged, outdoor camping stories.

There was criticism that children weren't learning anything from Saturday morning fare and the like, so we were given Schoolhouse Rock, and, having seen the old primetime Planet of the Apes show with Ron Harper and James Naughton, I've been surprised at how instructional in gardening and the like that show was.

VotD does the same thing, perhaps a bit too much. We learn about wind conditions, how pulleys and levers work, siphoning water and various other helpful boyscout techniques.

To kids, . . . . . it was annoying.

Made worse would be the father, sporting that Race Bannon voice, telling kids not to do something, then the kids, usually Haley's character, would do it anyway, chaos ensues, who did it, the kid would confess and we would get a stern parental lecture.

A very stern parental lecture.

There would be other episodes where a rock was sacred to the cave people and it was sitting on top of a volcano, fish were put out for a crazy werewolf creature (with Scooby Doo's howl I might add) and the cave family would insist 'it is our tradition' and Father Butler would have to display a little scientific know-how to dealing with the volcano or the animal creature.

I guess about the worst one I have seen thus far was when the fathers and Lok used a giant turtle shell to maneuver underwater and (ready for this?) they polished up one side of the shell with sand to make it see-thru.

Each episode seems to end with the cave daughter, or sometimes the American daughter, observing one of the animals in some little situation and saying "Looks like Digger yadda yadda yadda . . . " and they all laugh.

Jayna of the Wonder Twins would repeat this finale on the Superfriends years later with ending each episode with 'Looks Like Gleep.' In the end, it doesn't compare to Land of the Lost. It is a different show, hardly a cheaper version to Land of the Lost's superiority or anything like that.

Now, over thirty years later, Jackie Earle Haley is nominated for an Oscar, against Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls.

Good luck, little Butler.

Strangely enough, there is an episode that deals with a windmill or something being used to signal planes that are flying over, which gives a hint that this was how the family got out of the valley.

This was one of the better Hanna-Barbera entries of the 1970's. It had interesting stories and many likable characters. Unfortunately, the same day that this show debuted, the Krofft brothers unleashed there masterpiece "Land of the Lost". In fact, that show aired at exactly the same time as this one and quickly overshadowed "Valley". This was pretty much an unusual show from H-B at the time due to the fact that unlike many of the other shows that were on at the time, this one didn't try to be preachy or ram a valuable life lesson down your throat each week. It was very action oriented without a lot of violence and it showed how the Butlers were trying to adapt to their new surroundings while at the same time trying to introduce all the modern advances of their world to Gorak's family and other cave people who inherited the valley. This was a really good show. Too bad it was overshadowed by that other good show that debuted the same day and the same exact hour as this one.

This was pretty good from what I remember, same old plot as Land of the Lost-but they seemed to take care to stay away from the shrill campiness of that particular show. I remember as a kid liking it, they seemed to work in some morales and psuedo-geological lessons amongst the action.

Plus the pet mini-stegosaurus was kinda cute too...

**1/2 outta ****, it worked...

As a kid faced with the scheduling conflict between this show and Land of the Lost, chose Valley first, unless it was a rerun.

It was definitely the better show.

It had a greater diversity of situations and cast...one can only stick the flyswatter in the carnosaur's mouth so many times before even a kid begins to roll his eyes and fall asleep.

More character development and better acting, too. Which is ironic since it was animated.

You know, that ten line minimum for making a contribution probably just invites a lot of boring filler at times like this, when being succinct would benefit the readers more.

Unfortunately,this animated series premiered the same year as Krofft's live-action adventure series "Land of the Lost"(which was on NBC),but was similar to Hanna-Barbera's other animated series,"Dino Boy in the Lost Valley" and recently elements films of that time, "AIP's(American International) The Land That Time Forgot",and Disney's "Island At The Top Of The World"(both were released the same year as this show came on the air in 1974)and there you have it..."The Valley Of The Dinosaurs",one of the underrated cartoons that Hanna-Barbera produced in the mid-1970's.

Of the 16 episodes that this series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for CBS-TV's Saturday Morning schedule,this show was one of many that didn't go beyond the norm of its precessdor like another H-B produced series,the live-action but short-lived series "KORG 70,000 B.C."(which was on ABC),which was very hokey since both shows(as well as the live-action version of Land of the Lost) premiered that same year in September of 1974,but it also offered a lot of high action and adventure but also some educational value as well dealing with scientific concepts,lessons of geological aspects and that's about it. The story consisted of The Butler family who on a camping triping while rafting goes down a whirlpool into a land where time forgot---filled with hidden dangers and unexpected surprises where they are saved by a unknown caveman and his family where each day is a fight for survival in a lost wilderness. It was good in some aspects,even though in only produced 16 episodes for CBS-TV from September 7, 1974 until September 4,1976 with only the original episodes airing in the first season while its second season consisted of repeated episodes which the network moved the show from Saturday Mornings to the bliss of its graveyard Sunday Morning schedule for the 1975-1976 season.

The voicework was done by a talent cast,most of them Hanna-Barbera stockplayers. The voice of John Butler,the father figure and leader was done by actor Mike Road. Road was known as the voice of Race Bannon in the Jonny Quest animated television series as well as the voice of Zandor of "The Herculoids" and other known H-B characters. His wife,Kim Butler was voice by Shannon Farnon,who was known as the voice of Wonder Woman on another successful Saturday Morning show "The Superfriends". Other voices were done by Jackie Earle Haley(aka Jack E. Haley as the voice of Greg Butler),Kathy Gori(Katie Butler),and Joan Gerber(another H-B stockplayer voicework cast member).