Since the down of cinema man, Hollywood has tried to pass off lizards, puppets and men in monster suits as dinosaurs. Now that we have Jurassic Park to look forward to, it's a good time to look back at the long line of movies designed to part a 10-year-old from his allowance.
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Movers and Shakers, the 1985 satire about the movie industry, opens with the unveiling of a statue of a Tyrannosaurus rex that is to stand, permanently, in the midst of the film studio that spent a fortune on the dinosaur, but never made the movie it was built for. That neat gag--Hollywood worshipping the proverbial film that got away--is even funnier than screenwriter Charles Grodin could have intended: while he was obviously inspired by the megamillion-dollar giant ape that was constructed, but scarcely used, in the 1976 remake of King Kong (in which Grodin starred), Movers and Shakers happened to come out the same year as Disney's fateful Baby...Secret of the Lost Legend. Before Baby, dinosaurs had always been put on film by any on-the-cheap method at hand--stop-motion animation of clay miniatures, lizards, guys wearing monster suits. The core audience--kids of all ages--certainly didn't care; they were only too happy to suspend disbelief at the first sight of what was obviously someone's pet Gila monster. But Baby went the costly E.T. route--little people inside teensy dinosaur suits--which resulted in a phenomenally expensive brontosaur family that couldn't pass muster on a Disneyland ride, let alone in closeups in a movie. Grodin had it right: surely Disney's execs ended up wishing they'd erected a statue of a young bron-tosaur instead of making a movie about one.
This year, there's plenty of "state of the art" chat about the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and while we wish the filmmakers well--we'd love to see the T2 of T. rex movies--we thought it was time to take a glance back to see how dino movies of yesteryear look today.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959)
If the casting of '50s teen idol Pat Boone as a singing scientist isn't enough to convince you that this flick has very little to do with the Jules Verne novel of the same name, then consider that he and fellow scientist James Mason take the plunge, as it were, with aging beauty queen Arlene Dahl and a duck named Gertrude in tow. The movie only gets goofier from there. As our stars travel deeper and deeper into the planet, they encounter such natural wonders as gaily colored plastic rocks, a forest of giant mushrooms (where Dahl whips up hot mushroom porridge), and an underground grotto (i.e., a swimming pool on a soundstage). Now, every dinosaur movie ever made provides some reason for an attractive bimbo in the cast to strip for the camera, but here it's Pat Boone who flings off his garments to have a subterranean shower.
"If I had my gun, we'd have fresh meat for dinner!" exclaims one member of the expedition. No, he has not just caught sight of Boone; he's talking about the appearance of what you'll recognize immediately to be a pet-store lizard that has been photographed so that it seems to loom ominously over the entire grade C cast. It's hard to believe that the moviemakers thought they could pass this silly reptile off as a dinosaur, but in fact they bought out an entire pet shop, as if more lizards might be mistaken for more convincing. It gets worse. Someone decided that the lizards would seem less tame if they were decked out with huge, fan-shaped fin contraptions along their backs--but these only make them look like a fleet of prehistoric Cadillacs.
While wandering around the lost city of Atlantis later in the film, the cast finds a friendly-looking Gila monster masquerading as a dinosaur. What kind, you ask? Well, as crack scientist Pat Boone observes, it's "a monster!" When this beastie attacks Mason--you may not want impressionable children to finish reading this sentence--by wrapping its long tongue around his leg, the moviemakers pull out all the stops and show us a shot from inside the lizard's mouth as the tongue finds its target. You assume that this, the first point-of-view shot from a dinosaur's tonsils in movie history, is as daffy as any movie could ever get, but you are wrong. When Atlantis is destroyed by an earthquake, the "monster" dino returns, its skin now inexplicably bright red (a "special effect" you can get at home by rolling your Gila monster in paprika), only to loiter, none too menacingly, on a perch--looking exactly like Snoopy on a tree limb pretending to be a vulture. Fortunately, before it can tongue the stars to death, it's killed by a falling papier-mache rock followed by a lava flow.
DINOSAURUS! (1960)
"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it!" gasps a bad actor after seeing "two huge, ugly dinosaurs!"--and these are the very words you'll say after watching this film. This low-rent island epic is perhaps the cheapest dino movie ever made outside of Japan, so it's really mind-boggling that the bad-beyond-belief cinematography, by the once great lensman of The Magnificent Ambersons, Stanley Cortez, is in costly CinemaScope.
The cheesy (but pricey) tricks begin when the underwater ocean scenes which open the picture get the film's two bimbos, Ward Ramsey and Kristina Hanson, in a state of undress before we've even met their characters--any flimsy excuse will do to get them into the briny deep, so they can find two frozen dinosaurs.
Then Ramsey, who's building a harbor on the unspoiled isle, decides to haul "the critters up and put 'em on the beach." His foreman, Paul Lukather, warns, "We can't build a harbor around two dinosaurs!"--seemingly unaware that the filmmakers couldn't build this movie around 'em, either.
The script of Dinosaurus!--which posits that dinosaurs and a prehistoric man, frozen for a million years on the bottom of a tropical ocean, can be brought to life with a jolt of lightning--features dialogue like no other dino film. Ramsey remarks, about the villain, "I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw--a dinosaur!" Then there are those dinos, a Tyrannosaurus rex and a brontosaur, both apparently made out of children's clay, by children. Lousy stop-motion photography of none-too-convincing miniatures has long been the standard way to get the illusion of dinosaurs into a movie, but here we're talking about prehistoric animation: the bus the clay T. rex steps on and crushes is made out of clay, too. To keep from having to spend money on too many elaborate special effects like those, Gregg Martell, the film's recently thawed-out cave man, gets lots of screen time as he bumbles around the island, learning to throw pies and trying on women's clothes like some sort of cross-dressing Encino Man.
The movie's "big" set piece is well worth the long wait. In it the leading lady wanders through the jungle in a cocktail dress and attracts the unwanted attention of the T. rex. When the monster grabs her--actually it's a clay figure that just acts like her-- and heaves her up into the air, cave man Martell rushes in and hits the dino on the foot, which forces it to drop the lass--no! yes!--into his waiting arms. (We can only assume that this act of gallantry happens because he wants to try on Hanson's dress.) How does she thank him for saving her life? In a nearby cave, she cooks his dinner, then sings "Brahms's Lullaby" to him.
It all ends, as serious films exploring the thematic issues of modern man paving over the past in the ill-gotten name of "progress" must, with the T. rex battling a steam shovel.
ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1966)
Everything you need to know about this film's quest for authenticity can be gleaned by glancing at the first names of the actresses who play the film's prehistoric women: Yvonne, Martine and Raquel. Yep, this is the dino flick that made curvaceous, expression-free Raquel Welch a movie star, by giving her a chance to demonstrate her one real talent: her ability to walk, while soaking wet, toward a movie camera. Clad only in big hair, white lipstick and a fur bikini, Welch catches the eye of cave man John Richardson.
From the moment she enters the movie, walking, wet, toward the camera, the usual rules of dino films are reversed; here, dinosaurs must fight for screen time while the movie's bimbo pouts and poses and hogs the camera. When Welch saves Richardson's life--he's nearly squashed by a big sea turtle that wouldn't have been out of place in Doctor Dolittle--they fall in love, apparently drawn together because they're such ideal (or is that Mattel?) human replicas of Barbie and Ken dolls.
Welch takes him to live with her tribe, the highly evolved Starlet People--though no mention is made of it, we can see that they've already discovered eyeliner, peroxide and tanning beds--where she teaches him how to spear fish. A good thing, too, for only seconds later he must use these skills to harpoon a Tyrannosaurus rex that's every bit as man-made as Welch is rumored to be, but considerably more lifelike. Richardson's technique is worth mentioning here, in case you're ever in the same situation. First, you lie down on your back with a spear, wait until a dinosaur happens to walk over you, then take aim, stab it, and wave it around in the air: voila, dino kebab!
Later, the lovers are separated when another T. rex battles a triceratops, but they're reunited in time for Welch to stage a hilarious cat fight with cave gal Martine Beswick. When this escalates from hair-pulling to torch-waving, you can't help thinking, "Now, this is what fire was discovered for!" When Welch teaches Richardson the joys of frolicking photogenically in a lake--so she can again stroll, wet, toward the camera--she attracts the attention of a giant pterodactyl, who carries her off and tries to feed her to its offspring. Happily for us, the pterodactyl drops Welch into, yes, the ocean, so she can again walk, wet, toward the camera.
THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969)
Here's one dino movie that doesn't try to pass off Gila monsters as dinosaurs, so it's ironic that there's a Gila in the flick anyway: the leading lady. She is the monstrously bad European starlet Gila Golan, acting in that "I cannot talk-a so good maybe but you look-a dese!" way so dear to the hearts of connoisseurs of Starlet Cinema. Ray Harryhausen created the other prehistoric goodies, which are the most convincing ones ever made--especially Gwangi, the eponymous Tyrannosaurus rex--so it's too bad for Harryhausen that the script, set in Mexico at the turn of the century, is crammed with unintentional laughs from start to finish.
The story grafts together a cowboy flick, a circus movie and a dinosaur yarn. Since Golan plays the circus-owning cowgirl anxious to capture a dinosaur as the main attraction, the movie really ought to have been called Annie Get Your Gwangi. There's a moment of blissful camp when Golan does her best circus trick, riding her horse up, and then off, a tall diving tower into a tub filled with water--what other film has ever gone to such lengths just to get a bimbo into a wet swim-suit? The hilarity moves into high gear when Gwangi stomps into the film, killing cowboys and other dinosaurs (but not, alas, Gila Golan).
Though a fight between the T. rex and a triceratops is remarkably like the same sequence--by the same special effects wizard--in One Million Years B.C., and the scene where Gwangi breaks free of his cage in a crowded stadium is exactly like the finale of the King Kong remake, made seven years later, we're happy to report that the big finish of The Valley of Gwangi is like nothing else. With Gwangi on the rampage, frightened extras hurry into their village's cathedral and so does Gwangi. The film's other bimbo, cowboy James Franciscus, shouts to Golan what priests have been saying about sinners since time began, "Quick, out the back way! I'll try to lock him in!" Go ahead and laugh, ye of little faith, but it works: When the utterly unrepentant Gwangi tries to eat the church organ, Franciscus brings a new twist to the old movie cry "Torch the monster!" by burning the cathedral to the ground.
AT THE EARTH'S CORE (1976)
This film is to the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of the same name what its star, Doug McClure, is to acting: a hilariously awful also-ran. From the opening scene, where "geological engineer" McClure and his buddy, scientist/inventor Peter Cushing, hop into their invention "The Iron Mole"--a phallic-shaped ship with a giant corkscrew on its front--to drill deep into Mother Earth, the unintentional laughs never let up. When McClure extinguishes his big cigar before the voyage, and then relights it when they get to the earth's core, we half expect him to ask Cushing, "Was it good for you, too?"
What do they find in the center of the planet? Some guy in a terrible Tyrannosaurus rex suit, wearing a face mask that includes, of all things, a giant parrot's beak. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?" wonders McClure, who's apparently never viewed a Japanese monster movie. Cushing just waves the creature away, muttering "Shoo! Shoo!" Every time the fellow in the dino suit returns, he's wearing a different mask, or wings, in hopes of convincing the audience that there are lots of dinosaurs on the prowl. "How enormous!" dithers Cushing about one of the dinos. "The largest remains we ever discovered have never indicated a size much larger than an ordinary crow!" The only one swallowing this crow appears to be McClure, who somehow keeps a straight face when a bevy of fellows in winged dino suits take him prisoner and (you guessed it) force him to remove his shirt.
Things pick up during a sacrifice of comely starlets, because after McClure has rescued the film's other bimbo, Caroline Munro, he has to square off against a stupendously silly dinosaur--not a guy in a suit, but what appears to be a large-scale version of a three-year-old's pull-toy apparently made the night before, out of still-damp papier-mache. What have we learned when the fabulously tacky At the Earth's Core is over? Why, that dinosaurs were felled not by meteors, not by the ice age, but by bows and arrows! Too bad that no stray arrows slayed the moviemakers, for they survived to make The People That Time Forgot, before becoming forgotten people themselves.
THE LAST DINOSAUR (1977)
You'll realize you're in for something special during the titles, because this movie boasts a theme song with these lyrics, crooned by the once respectable thrush Nancy Wilson: "His time is up/There are no more/He is the last diiiino-sauuuur." From the movie's outset, Great Game Hunter Richard Boone, the richest man in the universe, pooh-poohs the very notion of one-of-a-kind animals: "They haven't even found the Loch Ness monster," he intones hammily, "but it's already on their endangered species list!" As Boone's manned oil drill, the "Polar-Borer"--a duplicate of the phallic-shaped corkscrew ship in At the Earth's Core--has discovered a prehistoric valley, he quickly rounds up a group to "safari" there with him: a male starlet, a Nobel Prize winner, and a "Masai tracker." Boone insists, "No women!" but liberated photojournalist Joan Van Ark changes his mind by first dressing up as a submissive geisha girl, then doing a striptease so we can see how she looks in a clingy evening gown! Boone makes cracks like, "Here's to a giant step backward for mankind!" but he can't help responding to Van Ark's ploy--his character's name, after all, is Thrust.
The aptly named "Bore Expedition" corkscrews its way to a land that's teeming with such fearsome inhabitants as dinosaur puppets and an elephant sporting a prehistoric toupee. Van Ark befriends a cave woman and helps to civilize her by showing her how to cook a chicken, then how to rinse out Van Ark's hair after it's been washed. The cave woman is such a help around the campsite that the cast starts calling her "Hazel the maid."
When, at last, the "last" Tyrannosaurus rex shows up and is just another guy in another bad monster suit, one of the actors says exactly what we're thinking: "Unbelievable!" After the dino eats the Nobel Prize winner--a warning to intellectuals everywhere--Boone wants to kill it, and when Van Ark says he shouldn't, Boone snarls at her, "You ding-dong!" then later thunders, "It will continue to plague us until we are chewed and swallowed!" However, it's Boone who's chewing--the scenery. Though they stone the T. rex with papier-mache boulders and hurl insults at it--"You punk!" and "You pea-brained nothing!" are our favorites--the group can't seem to kill the dino. In the demented finale, Boone bids adieu to his safari and stays on to battle the "last" T. rex till one of them drops. Oh, did we mention that Boone plans to settle down with the cave woman? Alas, a sequel was never made.
BABY... SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND (1985)
"Downright Jurassic," observes scientist Patrick McGoohan about an old fossil, but "downright Dumbo" would be the more accurate call on this film's old plot, the meant-to-be-heartbreaking-but-we're-afraid-it's-sidesplitting saga of a baby brontosaur whose papa is killed, and whose mama is stolen, by villainous paleontologists. That, however, is the least of the baby dino's problems, for it has the dispiriting task of acting opposite Sean Young. It's impossible to say which of these creatures gives the more artificial performance. Cast as a good paleontologist, Young demonstrates her knowledge of all things dinosauric when she says, about Baby, "Isn't her skin nice?"--at precisely the moment you'll be asking, "Jeez, what's this thing made out of, recycled Hefty garbage bags?"
But you won't be thinking about how the bronto looks for very long--not with a plot that includes such unintentionally funny howlers as Baby kicking Young's hubby, William Katt, in the groin, or Baby rescuing Young from a bat attack, or Baby getting its head stuck inside a pair of Katt's jockey shorts, a moment so preposterous that a monkey in the scene pulls them off Baby's face in disgust. There is, of course, more. Captured by a fierce tribe of West African natives, Young befriends them by taking Polaroids of them and, yes, getting them to pose in yearbook-style group shots. When Katt, the star of this film's bimbo sequence, strips to take a swim in the river, Baby sneaks up from behind and appears to goose him. This is topped by the scenes where Young and Katt start to make love, and Baby horns in on the action with his little head and long neck, like a sexually curious E.T. We're not making any of this up: one smooch scene winds up with Katt wailing, "It kissed me!" (He's talking about the dino, not Young.)
Although the movie seems to end with McGoohan killing Baby, no such luck. Baby's mother comes along to chew McGoohan to death-- which is patently ridiculous, since she's so obviously made by the same people who turn out all those Macy's Thanksgiving Day hot-air balloons--and the sound of the viewer laughing out loud apparently revives Baby from a near-death experience (but it's too late to save the movie).
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Brian Hirsch wrote "Be Careful What You Wish For" for the March issue of Movieline.