Cover Art

Credits

Director: James K. Shea Starring: James Whitworth, Pamela Bottaro, Louie Lawless, Harvey Shain Screenplay: Ralph Lucas Music: Kelly Lammers, John O'Verlin Tagline: Trapped in a nightmare world of prehistoric monsters. Country: USA

I'd been dying to see this film ever since I was really little, and I'd never been able to find it anywhere. Some people may remember this – back in the Eighties, there was a television special called Dinosaur! which, hosted by Christopher Reeve, talked generally about dinosaurs, but had a large number of clips from various dinosaur classics such as One Million Years B.C., The Valley of Gwangi, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and King Kong (to name just a few). There was also a slew of fantastic stop motion sequences (courtesy of stop motion and effects guru Phil Tippet) that have been reused here and there for other documentaries (prior to the advent of CGI technology). However, having seen most of the films that were featured in the special, there were a number of fantastic stop motion sequences that I didn't recognise, but loved nonetheless. It took me around sixteen years to find out what this film was called, and just the other day, I finally had Planet of Dinosaurs in my grubby little dinosaur-loving mitts.

Now, if you're not a dinosaur fan, you have absolutely no reason to watch this film. It's awful. Really, really awful. Made somewhat surprisingly in 1979, Planet of Dinosaurs sees a group of tracksuit clad astronauts escaping the imminent destruction of their starcruiser thanks to a runaway reactor – whatever that means. You're immediately treated to possibly the most spectacularly crap opening sequence that pretty much sets the standard for acting and technical proficiency for the rest of the film. Anyway, seven of them get away in an escape pod before the ship blows and end up crash landing on an uncharted planet, which just so happens to be inhabited by dinosaurs, and as their ship sinks into the swamp they crashed into, the crew soon find themselves stranded with no way to communicate off the planet and hunted by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. As the film progresses you begin to realise how futile their efforts to escape actually are, and ultimately, how pointless this film really is.

As soon as the actors open their mouths, you know that you're watching a movie with a haggard script. The general mis-en-scene is flat out atrocious and the acting is amateurish at best. The only cast member to really do anything vaguely recognisable outside of this film is James Whitworth, the mutinous survivalist who also played Jupiter in The Hills Have Eyes parts 1 and 2. Everyone else just seems to meander through with their generic characters in their rather comfortable looking tracksuits from the future and it becomes another hilarious game of "Who Dies Next?" The entire male portion of the cast is probably the most formidable collective of stale acting you'll ever lay eyes on (except for one guy, who plays it up so much he looks like a complete jackass), and it's even harder to take them seriously when they all have hilarious 'porno' moustaches and sideburns and wear space suits rivalled only by the Robinson family in terms of fashion sensibility and practicality. At least the women try – especially Mary Appleseth, who plays Cindy, the comms officer. She tries really, really hard – so hard in fact it looks as though she's passing a stone with every line. She's also the only member of the female cast to wear a bikini under her space-tracksuit… they must have had Jacuzzi's or something on their cruiser…

As much effort seems to have gone into the camera work and lighting as the acting. It may have just been the budget DVD transfer, but there are portions of this film that are almost visually unwatchable (thankfully, none involving dinosaurs). They're so poorly lit or exposed that all you can see is a mass of black and blue and a couple of blurry shapes ambling about on screen. The only way to tell what's going on is by listening to the dialogue – if there is any. This could come down to being a fault of the DVD transfer, or the print it was sourced from, as I'm sure the clarity in the Dinosaur! documentary was light years ahead of this. Every shot is a static shot, so there are no neat little tricks with the camera here, and some of the shots go on way longer than necessary. Some are even repeated a few times over, especially in chase or travel sequences.

On top of all this bumbling hilarity of a film is one of the most bizarrely inappropriate soundtracks you are ever likely to hear. The whole time, I was picturing some New Wave, experimental, German synth guru wearing big sunglasses, surrounded by keyboards and gigantic Apple computers, randomly tapping keys to create the most bizarre cacophony of noise he could, then loudly proclaiming it to be his finest work. The sound that accompanies the laser beams is equally hilarious.

Still, in spite of all of this, chances are the only reason you've bought a film called Planet of Dinosaurs is to see some dinosaurs. In fact, if you have bought this film, or are planning on doing so, you have a care factor of zilch when it comes to anything but the dinosaurs, and thankfully, this is where Planet of Dinosaurs truly delivers the goods. The stop motion in this film is pretty damn good. No scratch that – it's really damn good. It's not Harryhausen for sure, but for a no-budget film almost completely devoid of talent anywhere else, the dinosaur effects are surprisingly awesome. The only sad part is, much like any other stop motion dinosaur flick, the actual dinosaur sequences are far between, though not as few as others have been in the past. It's obvious that the people who made this film realised that people want to see dinosaurs when they come to these films, so they appear a bit more frequently than in films like Gwangi and One Million Years B.C., even if they don't serve any purpose other than to be seen. The Tyrannosaurus Rex pretty much owns this film and dominates everything it comes up against, and it's one of those forces of nature that you really wish would come out on top in the end. There's a hilarious sequence where the jackass I mentioned earlier disturbs the eggs of a Styracosaurus, and finds himself chased across a plateau. He tries shooting it with the laser, only to discover it has no effect on the beast and winds up being gored and dropped over the edge of a canyon. The editing that follows is a comedic goldmine!