King Dinosaur (1955)

Posted on Jul 18, 2007 under "Cold", Sci-fi |

Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Written by Tom Gries, based on a story by Bert I. Gordon and Al Zimbalist
Starring
- Bill Bryant
- Wanda Curtis
- Douglas Henderson
- Patti Gallagher
- Marvin Miller
Produced by Bert I. Gordon
Executive produced by Al Zimbalist

Let’s deal with the obligatories:

Directed by the legendary Bert I. Gordon hey his initials spell “BIG” and that’s just like his movies with oversized lizards and bugs and I bet we could call him “Notorious B.I.G.” ha ha ha get it please stop

Now that that’s out of the way:

King Dinosaur was one of Gordon’s earliest features (his second as producer and first as director), though at a heavily-padded 59 minutes it could almost be considered a short. And yet I dare you to find any cinematic work of comparable length which feels soooooo looooooong. The entire absence of plot, suspense, characterization, acting ability, or any of those features which we consider essential to engaging moviemaking leaves even this hour feeling like the Bataan Death March. As Gordon was credit not only the director and producer but also as co-creator of the story, I believe we are justified in concluding: Just because you know how to use bluescreen mattes and rearscreen projection doesn’t mean you know bugger-all about storytelling.

If anything is ever a sure sign of the paucity of entertainment value in a movie, it’s this: a nonstop parade of stock footage for the entire first act. I’m not talking about a simple establishing shot or two; from the moment the narrator (Marvin Miller) starts droning on about how a new planet had somehow found its way into Earth’s orbit, we are accosted with footage of observatories, government installations, instrument panels full of toggle switches, and rocketry tests. Because (as the narrator informs us) as soon as the new planet is noticed, the governments of the world go into overdrive testing rocket motors, metallic alloys, and yada yada yada. This steady stream of narrated stock footage is only interrupted twice: By a static shot of the Earth hanging in space, accompanied by Planet Nova (which appears to be a crater-blasted rock, unlike what we will see later); and establishing “portrait” shots of the four people who have been chosen to make the inaugural exploratory voyage to earth’s new neighbor. I could regale you with their names and scientific specialties, but since their personalities turn out so thin as to be unworthy of individual names and their scientific expertises are never invoked in the plot, I will simply summarize thus:

“I’m gonna go over there and take a leak. No peeking.”

Two men (Bill Bryant and Douglas Henderson), two women (Wanda Curtis and Patti Gallagher), one blond(e) and one brunet(te) of each. The blondes are involved, as are the brunettes, and they frequently pair off, which simplifiies things even further, as I can just refer to the actions of The Blond(e) Team or The Brunet(te) Team. And collectively they have the combined charisma and intelligence of toast. Not fresh, crisp toast, either; stale, slightly soggy toast that maybe a fly has been camping on.

You may think, once the characters are introduced, that they may become involved in the sequence of events which stands in the place of a plot. But no. Stock footage engines continue to be tested, a stock footage V-2 rocket is readied, and eventually it blasts into “space.” It travels a long time through space (a span of weeks and months which the narrator helps us imagine we’re experiencing) until the rocket finally approaches the surface of Planet Nova, an effect achieved by turning the test rocket footage on its side (!) and superimposing it on a slow pan of the horizon. And when the rocket finally sets down…

Grab your socks, people. This is it. At twelve minutes into the movie, we finally get some dialogue from one of the putative protagonists. Unfortunately, the conversation was so tepid, I can’t recall it in detail. It went something like this:

“Well, we made it.”
“Yep, we’re here.”
“Boy, I’ll say. I thought we’d never get here.”
“But we did!”
“Sure did. We’re standing here right now.”
“And that’s a fact.”
“You can say that again!”

The above is delivered by the Blond(e) Team, dressed in the space suits which are familiar to anyone who’s ever seen Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) among other things, standing in a grassy clearing in an evergreen forest. Because when piloting a rocketship to a new world, it’s okay to set your craft down in the middle of a woodland, provided that woodland looks exactly like what one might find in a cheap shooting location in California.

Beakers? Of colored liquids? But that must mean — there’s SCIENCE going on here!

Once the atmospheric tests are done, the Blond(e) Team shucks their suits, and the Brunet(te) Team comes on down the ladder. Everone is now dressed in super-futuristic khakis. (In deference to gender equity, the womenfolk are permitted to wear gauchos rather than real skirts.) They decide that the first order of business is to explore, so dressed like they’re on a Sunday outing, they leave their equipment and space suits sitting on the glass, and stroll without any weapons over to the nearby lake, where the women insist on bathing.

Your tax dollars at work, folks. Millions and millions of dollars of feverish R&D to send four morons into space.

And look what followed us to Planet Nova — more stock footage! Thus, the foursome continually points off-screen at very terrestrial-looking birds, lizards, bearcubs (!), and a sloth (!!). After the (unseen) bathing, they decide to trek far from the ship for some geological samples (no reason is ever presented as to why they can’t start taking samples somewhere closer), so the men shoulder some packs, and they even take a rifle this time. And they go get lost.

No, seriously. They trek far enough away that they can’t see the ship, and they start to worry about losing daylight, though they admit they have no idea how quickly this planet rotates (seems to me that SOMEBODY could have been studying that from Earth while everyone else was firing test boosters). The brunette geologist-girl finally finds some dirt she likes, and promptly declares this planet much younger than earth. (”What era?” “Prehistoric.” Need a scientific professional for such precision, you know.) Then on their way back, they realize that have no freaking idea where they are. So they build a Gilligan house. And the blonde girl sees a snake and screams like there’s no tomorrow. Because that’s the kind of person they want exploring an alien world.

So amid the hooting of (stock footage) owls, they go to sleep with Blond Doctor Guy on watch. But because he and Blonde Chemist are an item, they decide to go for a walk toward the lake… where they get attacked by a crocodile. To the movie’s credit, this isn’t a stock footage croc; to its demerit, it’s about five feet long, and it “wrestles” with its trainer, who bears absolutely no resemblance to the Blond Doctor for whom he’s supposed to be doubling. (Hint: The Blond Doctor’s only distinguishing characteristic is that, well, he’s blond. Do you think, perhaps, that the man doubling for him should make some attempt to appear blond?)

“I seriously need a new agent.”

The brunet(te)s follow the frantic screams and rescue the Blond Doctor, who has “lost a lot of blood” (this said while daubing off the few dribbles of stage blood to be found on his skin). Gee, too bad the doctor’s the one who got injured. I’d call that a clumsy attempt at irony, except somehow that feels like giving this script too much credit. So come morning, the doctor’s still unconscious and thus unable to travel, so the brunet(te)s leave them behind (!) as they try to find the damned ship.

It takes them at least a full day to find it and get back, too. (Compasses. Nobody thought to pack compasses. Or radio transmitters. Or breadcrumbs.) Long enough for the doctor to eventually regain consciousness, and then immediately shoot a badly-superimposed insect which was “menacing” them. Good thing he woke up when he did, as we know for a fact that Blonde Chemist Girl is good for nothing except screaming.

The Brunet(te) Team arrives back with some equipment, and after another night in the Gilligan leanto (in which Brunet Guy just sits by and stares while a fourteen foot python climbs all over his sleeping companions, because he just can’t figure out what to do), the Brunet(te)s decide to explore the island in the middle of the lake, just because. (Brunette Girl’s got a fixation on it.) So they leave the Blond(e)s behind AGAIN, and accompanied by Joe, the native kinkajou (!) they’ve picked up as a pet (!!), an take an inflatable raft to the island.

Now, THIS looks a lot more like an alien planet. By which I mean, it looks a lot more like Bronson Canyon. They stumble around, seeking the source of the strange thunder-like roaring they hear, until they find — a giant iguana! (Or, as Brunet Guy claims, “A Tyrannosaurus Rex! Which accounts for the title of the movie. Because they couldn’t call it Big-Ass Iguana and expect to book it at the drive-ins.) Brunette Geologist, true to her inner self, screams and screams and draws its attention, so they have to hide in a cave for it while it poses and slithers and sticks out its tongue and slithers some more and generally acts menacing at length.

“Fee, fi, fo, fum. I smell interplanetary dumbasses.”

But because they really can’t interact in any way (mattes, you know), the iguana gets an opponent more his size: A caiman. (To his credit, Brunet Guy does not immediately declare it a brontosaurus.) What follows is without at doubt the most disturbing part of the movie, because it’s dead obvious that unseen hand from off-camera are pushing the two reptiles together so they’ll attack one another and twisting their tails to make it seem like they’re “flipping” one another as they fight. Animal cruelty for entertainment is never justifiable, but to see it occur in the service of such an ill-conceived piece of flotsam as this is positively reprehensible.

Seeing no way to get away from the giant lizards, even while they’re wholly absorbed in each other, the Brunet(te) Team sends up a flair. The Blond(e) Team, sitting around bored like Mr. and Mrs. Howell, immediately come to their aid, bringing their handy dandy atomic bomb and ***

Hold UP there.

Nobody brings a flashlight, a compass, a walkie-talkie, or even a pair of long pants for either woman, but they decided to bring their A-bomb on their little interplanetary overnighter? What in the hell for? Were they worried they wouldn’t be able to get their campfire going? Had they planned to leave a glowing crater in lieu of a flag to claim the planet on behalf of the U.S. of A.? For whatever reason, the Blond(e)s bring the nuke (which looks like an oversized radio) with them as they paddle over to the island.

Blond Doctor crouches around, wondering what to do, while Blonde Chemist Girl screams. The Brunet(te) Team escapes from their cave with absolutely no help from the Blond(e) Team, and then they set the bomb to go off in ten minutes. Excuse me again, but what the frigging hell? It’s not like this will help the escape any; by the time the bomb goes off, if they aren’t well clear of the island, they’ll be the first human victims of human stupidity on Planet Nova. The only possible motive I can think of to read back into the character (aside from the more obvious motivation, which is naturally to use some atom bomb test footage somewhere) is to punish the enlarged reptiles for the sheer effrontery of frightening their faint-hearted women. So the four least-deserving survivors of all time paddle away frantically, and watch from behind a small hill as they bring “civilization” to this new planet — their word, not mine. (Once again, I could almost assume that to be some crude attempt at irony, but…)

Here’s hoping they got enough radiation to prevent them from breeding.

In a movie that scrapes bottom continuously, it’s hard to point any one exceptionally bad aspect. The plot, moronic beyond all descriptions acceptable for public discourse, is hardly worse than the one-note acting, the stilted dialogue, and the flatly functional cinematography and editing. The one moment of rudimentary skill in the production, the “dinosaur” encounter, is so overshadowed by its reprehensible character to be unworthy of any regard. Even at under an hour, this clumsy excuse for cheese overstays its welcome several times over.