When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth Part II: The Classics

"You mean dinosaurs eat people? Oh hell"
A younger more innocent Me

Jurassic World just broke $500 million this weekend at the box office, I still haven't seen it yet. But in the meantime, I have seen these classics. As I stated when I first started this series off, I love dinosaurs. Maybe not as much as I used to but don't think I won't be in line at some point to throw some hard-earned money at Jurassic World, give me time. Hell I only saw Mad Max: Fury Road the other week. If anyone by now was not aware, I'm perpetually 5 minutes late to anything cool even if it is on my radar.

So before continuing onto any more different week themes I have 3 more entries in this series: Classics, cartoons and games.

Yet I still wanted to see
this as a kid

First and foremost I won't be covering some other classics here under the pretense they fall into an entirely separate series about All Monsters Attack (named after Oru kaijû daishingeki, or Godzilla's Revenge if you prefer): so in no particular order Gorgo, Reptilicus, Godzilla, Giant Behemoth, Beast from 20,000 Fathoms... they all technically are dinosaurs, or rather mutations of them usually from radioactivity but hey it's my show so with out any further ado, let's go digging up some dinosaur bones.

First up Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds (Kyôryû kaichô no densetsu) by Toei films. Released in 1977 it tries desperately to be like Jaws in a Japanese lake at first. A woman is rescued from a forest near Mt. Fuji ranting about dinosaurs and eggs. At Lake Saiko, lake goers begin disappear, livestock is found devoured (and in a tree!), and Fuji is giving warnings of a possible eruption. One scientist believes it's a dinosaur but no one believes him (go figure). That is until some kids trying to pull a prank wind up being lunch much to the chagrin of their buddy.

Jaws didn't have the quite same bite to it after this,
this movie having predated it in my cinematic timeline

While everyone's looking for the pleisosaur, a rhamphorhynchus emerges scaring the flying holy bejeezus out of the lakeside community. The pleisosaur and and rhamphorhynchus duke it out in true prehistoric kaiju fashion. Mt. Fuji erupts and everyone perishes in a fiery volcanic inferno. What's hilarious is how graphic the movie actually is and how it was marketed in the Just For Kids lineup of Japanese import movies paired alongside the Gamera movies.




Not only that but the dubbing in certain sequences was the stuff of many an American joke about how bad it could be. I thought this was the case with the American version of this scene... but no... this is the Japanese version... the dog... just... the dog...

Literal meaning to the term Necking

But anyhow moving right along... next up we go back to 1960 with Dinosaurus!

God I love the posters of this era

This one is kinda short simple and right to the point: a T-Rex, a Brontosaurus and in an anachronistic caveman are found frozen in the Caribbean but soon defrost and run amok. As a kid this movie made my day, I could've given a crap about the human element, just give me more monsters. The same applied to the aforementioned Legend of Dinosaurs or any monster movie: less human talk and more monster action. I will add one thing though, the finale of the film does seem to have planted the seed for the Man vs Monster using a Machine where the T-Rex gets handled by a digger.

It was at this point Rex finally understood that No Means No

Caveman meets gun-fu
Steam shovel fu
Dinosaurs in civilization run amok!
4 stars Roll it

Dinosaurus (1960) - Feature by FilmGorillas

And now for another close personal favorite of mine, Planet of the Dinosaurs. I remember picking it out a the local video store purely for the cover alone, the T-Rex looked epic enough to get my sick day's attention after going to the doctor. Just makes me long for the days of perusing the local mom and pop video store for whatever had the coolest looking cover in the sci fi section... horror would still be a few years off at this point. This rough gem from the 70's stuck out in my mind for the cool dinosaurs, lame acting, a decent body count and a notable opening scene. Since just after crashing on this new planet, a woman strips to her underwear to get gear from the sinking ship then gets promptly eaten all in the first 5 minutes.

Dammmn...

Damn!

After crashing on this strange planet and losing one crew member, from there things go from bad to worse as supplies and weapons are lost and behind each new corner lurks a deadly carnivore, or a deadly spider in one instance! There's this one greedy asshole in the movie named Harvey who get's impaled and falls off a cliff. The T-Rex wrecks (get it) havoc on the remaining crew and it's up to them to make a stand to survive. It's high 70's schlock at it's finest with lots of human on dinosaur action.

                                                                 3.5 stars, roll it









Planet of Dinosaurs - 1978 Full Movie by TheCryptoCrew