Dinosaurus!

I have an emotional attachment to this movie, as it was the first movie I ever went to a theater to see. As a six year old living in Fairbanks, Alaska, I begged my mother to take me to see this move about my childhood passion, dinosaurs. Thirty years later, I stumbled across a copy of this film at a video store and purchased it. I was surprised to find that, despite the rather unrealistic dinosaur animation, the movie holds up pretty well. Although much criticism has been directed against the leads in this film, Wayne Treadway as Dumpy ("Dinosaurus!"), Jack Younger as Jasper (Jasper: "Well, we're looking for a caveman, right? So, I think we ought to look in a cave!" Hacker: "Very good, Jasper, I had no idea you were an anthropologist." Jasper: "Not a very good one, boss. I haven't been to church in years.") and Gregg Martell as the Neanderthal Man turn in excellent performances in supporting roles. Martell, especially, combines comedy and pathos in his portrayal of a man caught out of his time but still very much a human being. The scene where Julio (Alan Roberts) rides the back of his pet brontosaurus thrilled me and the final battle between the T-Rex and the steam shovel gave me nightmares for years. How many good movies can you say that about?

How well I remember this film Dinosaurus from seeing it in the theaters way back when I was 13 years old. I liked the special effects in creating the two dinosaurs and the climax is a very exciting one still. Of course now I can spot some of the ludicrousness of the story.

The location is a small Caribbean Island where a group of construction workers are dredging a harbor to make it a deep water port. Their dynamiting has unleashed a cold underground river and two dinosaurs, a tyrannosaurus and a brontosaurus are released from being cryogenically frozen for a million years or so. As is true in a flock of other science fiction films they thaw out and lightning strikes them and they come alive like Frankenstein's monster.

Of course they're kind of hungry and the brontosaurus has a nice tropical rain forest to feast on. But T-Rex is a flesh eater and there's lots of people flesh around as well.

Unknown to everyone else a caveman also was washed ashore and he thawed out as well. He was found by Fred Engelberg who has to be one of the stupidest villains ever on record. In the absence of the governor he's in charge. I'm assuming the island is an American possession, the rest of the natives have Spanish accents both white and black, but Engelberg for reasons I can't figure out has a French accent. He wants his caveman to make a profit off of and even with a raging T-Rex around he's going to capture that caveman. As the natives of the island would say, Que Pendejo.

The climax involves the lead actor and construction boss Ward Ramsey dueling with Tyrannosaurus using a steam shovel as a weapon. That has stuck with me since childhood and it's very excitingly staged.

Dinosaurus is still a suspenseful and exciting science fiction film to watch with its no name cast and nice special effects for their time.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean this is a bad film....quite the contrary, in my humble opinion. Sure, the story has some huge holes, but don't you watch a film to be entertained and just to let yourself relax without the need to think every minute? This film is definitely right up your alley, if you enjoy dinosaurs and stop-motion animation.

Basically, this is the story of a construction crew that finds the bodies of a T-Rex, Brontosaurus and caveman frozen in the waters off a tropical island. With the help of lightning, the beasties and the caveman are brought back among the living and the remainder of the story is all the action that takes place when you place three pre-historics out of their element. Good clean fun, some decent stop-animation effects and a great way to spend an afternoon.

A group of Americans come to a remote island to find minerals only to uncover dinosaurs from the bed of the ocean with underwater explosives. Not only do they find two frozen and incredibly intact dinosaurs millions of years old, but they also find a million year old caveman. The premise is by itself somewhat plausible, but when you add trite and inept dialogue, some of the worst acting imaginable, cheap dinosaur effects, and one ridiculous caveman you have one funny picture. Dinosaurus will leave you in stitches if you appreciate badly made films. The dinosaurs themselves really are not that bad, but the acting....the acting...is on par with something found in an H. G. Lewis picture. Almost no one has any acting savvy whatsoever. The best actor in the film is a young teenage boy who befriends the caveman and the brontosaurus. Once again the T-Rex is the bad one, chasing anything that moves across the island.

I was 10 when I saw DINOSAURUS in a theater. While the acting left much to be desired, and the film was obviously shot on a shoestring, the animated dinosaurs seemed pretty awesome for the time. Ray Harryhausen this ain't, but for a dinosaur-loving kid like myself, it definitely hit the spot. A caveman and two dinosaurs, one of them a T-Rex, are discovered and accidentally revived in 1960. In the end, it takes a modern mechanical marvel to subdue the rampaging T-Rex. The caveman befriends a little boy, whom I assume we tykes in the audience were meant to identify with. Good fun. Best seen on a big screen with booming sound, and today that's possible right at home with a large flat-screen digital TV and a 5.1 Dolby home theater setup.