Engineers using explosives to enlarge a harbour on a Caribbean island discover the bodies of two dinosaurs, which have been frozen in a kind of suspended animation in mud beneath the sea floor.
The dinosaurs, a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Brontosaurus, get winched onto the island and are left lying on the beach. In the middle of a storm that night the big beasties are struck by lightning… and come back to life! Yay!
The prehistoric reptiles start roaming about the island and, to add to the fun, a caveman (Gregg Martell), who was also originally frozen at the bottom of the sea, reawakens too!
Mike Hacker (Fred Engelberg), the island’s mean-spirited deputy mayor, plans to financially exploit the caveman, but the Neanderthal gets away, becoming friends with an orphan boy called Julio (Alan Roberts). The caveman also takes a liking to Betty Piper (Kristina Hanson), who is the girlfriend of head engineer Bart Thompson (Ward Ramsey).
As the movie progresses, we get to see Hacker and a couple of his goons chase Julio and the caveman around the island, the Tyrannosaurus attack a busload of locals, Julio and the caveman ride on the back of the Brontosaurus, and Bart battle the Tyrannosaurus with a mechanical digger!
DINOSAURUS! was produced by Jack H. Harris, so you know the film is going to be low budget but a lot of fun, like some of his other productions, such as THE BLOB (1958), 4D MAN (1959), EQUINOX (1970), SCHLOCK (1973) and DARK STAR (1974).
Marcel (KING KONG) Delgado built the dinosaur puppets and the stop-motion was done by Tom Holland, Phil Kellison, David Pal, Ralph Rodine and Don Sahlin.
Tim Baar, Wah Chang and Gene Warren handled the special photographic effects.
Unfortunately, the table-top stop-motion lacks the finesse of Harryhausen or Danforth (supposedly the schedule was pretty rushed), so this tightly-budgeted movie is never going to be considered a top tier stop-motion dino movie like THE VALLEY OF GWANGI or WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH. However, on its own terms, DINOSAURUS! is a pretty watchable, event-filled fantasy that passes the time nicely.
Directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr, the movie boasts a bunch of fun scenes with the caveman, colourful cinemascope photography and it ends with a question mark, just like Yeaworth’s THE BLOB.
Okay, let’s talk a bit more about the movie’s special effects…
I actually think the large mechanical dinosaur models used in DINOSAURUS! look better on-screen than the stop-motion puppets. The cable-controlled T-Rex model, for instance, which is used in many scenes, certainly works better than the stop-motion version, with nice detail showing on its glistening skin.
(Fun fact: whilst shooting the stop-motion scenes for this movie, the FX crew found time to use the Brontosaurus model and the miniature jungle set to film a shot for THE TWILIGHT ZONE episode ‘The Odyssey of Flight 33’.)
Here’s a shot of the two cable-controlled dino models…
One of the great things about DINOSAURUS! is that it spawned loads of stonkingly wonderful posters.
Feast your eyes…
Some lobby cards…
A bunch of studio release photos…
The cover for the Dell comic book adaptation of the movie…
Super 8 home movie box art…
Here’s an American VHS cover that used the Dell comic artwork…
And, finally, let’s look at the original artwork (without the typography) that was used as the VHS box art for Mountain Video’s release of DINOSAURUS!
Yes… this UK company thought they’d put Harryhausen’s Gwangi on the front cover!
And don’t ask me what that green face is supposed to be on the back cover…
Monster Zone 