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This film, because of it's unavailability, has garnered much attention among Harryhausen fans. Indeed, many are familiar with it only because of they've either read about it or they had the viewmaster reel featuring scenes from the film. Irwin Allen, a name synonymous with disaster films and sci-fi on TV, had made a film entitled THE SEA AROUND US in 1951, which won him an Academy Award in the documentary category. He decided to follow-up on the project with a film based on the beginnings of life, THE ANIMAL WORLD. Allen contacted several people, as he had in THE SEA AROUND US, to help assemble the footage for the film. The would consist of mostly naturalist photographers and universities and institutions who owned stock footage on animal life. The would be the beginning of a long process of assembling different pieces of footage together and attempting to make a coherent story about life on the planet before man.

Allen wanted to include a segment on dinosaurs so he turned to Willis O'Brien and asked him to help with the film. Knowing that he was pressed for time and was under avery tight budget, Allen also brought on Ray Harryhausen. Together they created a segment for the film that lasts approximately 10 minutes.

THE ANIMAL WORLD opens with narration about the beginnings of the earth that almost sounds like a re-write of the first several verses of the biblical book of Genesis. Moving to sea life, the film runs 10 minutes before arriving at the dinosaur segment. To begin with, this was not O'Brien's or Harryhausen's best work. They were pressed for time and have to make sacrifices for convenience sake. Some of the miniatures are actually wire operated heads made at a larger scale and operated like mechanical puppets. When watching the film, these scenes are very evident. Completing this segment of footage in six or seven weeks, Ray committed all the stop-motion animation scenes to the screen, the shortest amount of time he ever spent on any film.

In a way, this was the film EVOLUTION, that Ray had begun but never had a chance to complete. There is still plenty of impressive stop-motion work here with the Dinosaurs effectively animated. The Allosaurs and the Brontosaurus stand out as some of the best work in the film. Unfortunately, the film moves from the dinosaur footage back to the naturalist footage and the film proceeds like those 16mm educational films shown in classrooms around the United States during the 50's and 60's.

Allen has fond remembrances of working with Harryhausen on the project and referred to him as a total gentlemen, professional in all levels. Though he liked the stop-motion work, which received the most praise when the film was released, Allen didn't care for the amount of time it took to get this process on to the screen. When he returned to the world of dinosaurs for THE LOST WORLD in 1960, he would bring Willis O'Brien on board to help with setting up special effect shots, but all the dinosaurs were just big lizards with appendages attached to them to make them look like dinosaurs, which they never do. O'brien helped with the split-screen set-up used to combine the live action actors with the big lizards.

So why is this film hard to get a hold of? THE ANIMAL WORLD was released in December of 1955 but didn't get general release until 1956. Almost immediately, the many photographers who had worked on the film were claiming ownership the their segments. Since there were so many pieces of footage assembled into the film, Warner's left the property and copyright slip back to the owners of the original footage. Today all Warner Brother's legally owns is the 10 minutes segment put together by O'Brien and Harryhausen. By the time this film was released to the general public, Harryhausen had already begun work on EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS.