Colorful and picturesque dinosaur movie set in modern times on a tropical island (filmed in the Virgin Islands), which isn't as well known as most other dinosaur films. A construction crew is dynamiting in the area and uncovers a couple of dinosaurs buried in the water just off-shore - a T-Rex and a Brontosaurus. These are in a frozen state, but that night there's a storm and lightning strikes thaw out/awaken the creatures. In addition, a caveman is awoken in a similar manner. These three out-of-their-time beings go their separate ways and cause their own kind of havoc, but eventually things come together, highlighted by a battle between the T-Rex and a big digger machine (there's a lot of construction site machinery around).
The FX for the dinosaurs are kind of a rough, incomplete version of Harryhausen's, but it's interesting to see that some scenes - notably the T-Rex's first big scene - are copied in Jurassic Park (1993). The T-Rex lowers its head to gaze inside a tram bus with people inside and then crushes it by stepping on it. This was virtually duplicated in the T-Rex's first scene in Jurassic Park. Many of the scenes, especially with the confused caveman, are on the goofy side (of course, cavemen & dinosaurs don't really belong together) and there's the usual annoying kid character. But, there's an entertaining villain and some notable action bits, such as when the caveman attacks the T-Rex with an ax, and an amusing scene of the caveman and a modern woman in a cave. BoG's Score: 5 out of 10
Dino Trivia: the Brontosaurus also made an appearance in the Twilight Zone episode, The Odyssey of Flight 33 - the FX crew filmed the TZ scene while they were working on this film. There was brief footage from this film - of the dinosaurs - showing in a theater in a scene from the monster parody Schlock (1973), also produced by Jack Harris, this film's producer.
BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
Posts : 3265 Join date : 2010-02-28 Location : Earth-1
