After having enjoyed Willis H. O'Brien's The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy,I decided to take a look at his IMDb page,and stumbled upon a title which I would be a real "chicken" to not view.The plot:Struggling to take care of his dinosaur/chicken hybrid, (you don't see many of those round today!) the caveman gets angry at the animal when a near by neighbour plays a joke that he blames on the animal.Wanting to show that it has done nothing wrong,the animal decides to get its revenge on the neighbour.View on the film:Made just a year or so after Missing Link,director Willis H. O'Brien displays a remarkable progression with the visual effects of the movie,thanks to the faces of the stop-motion characters being extremely detailed,and O'Brien also having the characters fully interact with the environment.Whilst the punchline is sadly not a real knock out,O'Brien more than makes up for it with the delightfully weird dinosaur/chicken creature,which leads to this prehistoric chicken being a real golden egg.

Prehistoric Poultry (1916) ** (out of 4) Three-minute short has a cavemen being part of a prank but thankfully his pet chicken is there to get revenge. The whole key to this film is whether or not you find the prank to be funny. If you do find it funny then I'm sure you'll enjoy the film as a comedy but I didn't find the prank to be too funny so that's why the movie didn't work for me. The claymation effects from O'Brien are fairly weak when you compare them to his earlier films dealing with the cavemen subjects but they are still fun to look at. The flying chicken sequence at the end was a real blast to watch as were a few of the earlier scenes with the chicken. The film doesn't run long enough to get into any type of story so that's why it's important to either find the prank funny or not. The film certainly isn't a bad one but it's probably the weakest I've seen from the director.

Running at about 3 minutes long, O'Brien had what look like a lot of fun making this stop motion animation, set in prehistoric time. You can see how this film was a stepping stone for "The Lost World". Though the animation is a bit crude, it is amazing what he was able accomplish here. This film is quite funny. You can find it as one of the additional features of the abridged version of "The Lost World", though there is no mention of it on the DVD. Scroll to the end of "The Lost World" movie will have a few short films that will include another O'Brien film "R.F.D., 10,000 B.C. A Mannikin Comedy". I think this is a must see for O'Brien fans!