From my favorite movies..

A Disappointing Continuation

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Blistering performances.

Planet of Dinosaurs is a very low-budget space sci-fi movie from the late 1970s, featuring absolutely no-name actors, stop motion dinosaurs and awful dialogue. These elements, combined with the "music" provided by a cheap Casio keyboard (it sounds a lot like the music in Pod People, an equally dismal sci-fi movie from the early 1980s), mean that it is in solid B movie territory! But it is still fun, in a weird sort of way. It definitely has that 70s feel to it! Nearly all the male actors sport thick moustaches and open shirts, and the ladies look like they're ready for the disco floor, too. Pamela Bottaro, who plays Nyla, is particularly fetching, especially wearing that sexy halter top in the last 30 seconds of the movie... wow!

Lazy entertainment, which leads to a good way of spending your Saturday/Sunday afternoon. This low-budget, independent feature sees a stranded group of astronauts (in flashy sport tracksuits!) on a planet inhabited by dinosaurs. First they are simply trying to survive and wait for help, but eventually decide to turn that around and take on the predators. Largely that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex who's hunting them and goes on to demonstrate quite a few crushing headlocks.It's perfect b-grade fluff, which delivers on what the title suggests. It's hard to put my finger on it, but even though it's terribly shoddy and lamentable with it's laughably forced dialogues (moralistic claptrap), indifferent acting (with James Whitworth dominating the screen) and a chintzy electronic score with an eerie experimental side. However it consists of charm, some atypical touches and technically speaking the stop-motion animation looks impressive. For such a low-end production it's capably executed. Surprisingly it can be quite exploitative in its violence too. Director James K. Shea mixes many lively moments (mainly the prehistoric encounters) with ponderous stages (focusing on the turmoil or interactions between the group), but he commendably uses the weathered and rough terrain good enough.

"Planet of Dinosaurs" is a lovely little trash movie. Even if the stop animation looks 1955, it was made in 1978. The old-fashioned creatures have quite a variety in their looks and behavior, though, and certainly possess a naive charm. The screenplay isn't totally silly, since the astronauts who crash-landed on the planet have a decision to make: will they hide like barbarians in a cave, or will they maintain their dignity (almost a literal quote from the dialog here) and rebuild as much of a civilized world as possible? If the movie suffers from anything, it is not the FX or the dialog; it's rather the limited acting skills of most participants, and some poor action scenes, e.g. the first killing when a woman is caught in a lake, whereas the guy she followed swims twice across the same spot and nothing happens. Why doesn't the beast below try and catch him too? And let's not mention how clumsily the laser guns are handled - a bow and spear are more dangerous in the hands of these guys. A trash classic? Maybe not, but "bad" enough to watch it once or twice.

I thought I'd seen all the old dinosaur films. I thought this would be "Prehistoric Planet" with a different title. I expected dinosaur footage ripped off from other movies. I was pleasantly surprised. It's a new one on me and it's not that bad. I'm especially surprised that the special effects are so good for the standard of the acting and the budget it implies. It was nicely photographed and for its time the effects were comparable to the best in the genre and better than some - such as Dinosaurus. It looks as though all the budget went on stop motion animation - which is expensive - and the actors were dragged in off the street and paid in jelly beans or something. The story isn't bad. That's largely because it's kept simple. I was was also surprised that so many of the characters got eaten. It helped make it suspenseful not knowing who would survive. It was slightly predictable that the more obnoxious guy would come to a sticky end but other deaths were more shocking. Incidentally, the film was rather sexist. Generally the women screwed up and died because they were silly and girlie and clearly not capable of looking after themselves. The assumption was that women were not leadership material. The Alien movies laid that one to rest. The dinosaurs were so recognisable that I was expecting a corny denouement where they realised they were back on earth only through a time warp and millions of years in the past. Maybe they were. I'd like to think so. If so it's good that the writer and director left it for the audience to work that out. It would have been cleverer though if the last shot had somehow let us in on this while keeping the cast in the dark. Maybe the writer just wasn't that imaginative. I enjoyed how the sophisticated officers and scientists gradually devolved into cave people and then managed to climb back to civilisation. Satisfying but not particularly thrilling. Still worth a look if you like this genre.