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I gave this sci-fi outing a 5 because of the incredible special effects. A stranded space crew must fend for itself on a primitive planet full of dinosaurs and the like. The dinosaurs are classic stop motion creatures, most probably by Jim Danforth, a student of Ray Harryhausen's and best known for his work on "The Outer Limits" and "Jack the Giant Killer." Danforth, if it was indeed he who worked on this film, obviously learned well from the master, not just the quality of the stop motion work but the blending of live and animated footage, employing a technique invented by Harryhausen called Dynamation or Super Dynamation. The human actors in this flick are pretty awful, and the plot is from nowheresville. But the dinosaurs make up for a good deal. I understand Harryhausen visited the set during production, so I'm not surprised by the excellence of the animated sequences..

Planet of Dinosaurs is an ultra cheesy camp sci-fi tale that leaves a lot to be desired.

It tells the story of a spaceship (With oddly skeletal crew) which crash lands on a planet filled with dinosaurs. They must seek shelter, food and safety and figure out their next move.

With sfx that are bad even for the day, they look like plastic childrens toys used for stop motion animation. The performances are generic, the cinematography is lifeless and the thing doesn't scream B-movie it screams D and that's perhaps me being kind.

When dinosaurs are on screen it's cringe inducing, when they aren't it's incredibly boring. Ugly, lifeless mess.

The Good:

Concept isn't terrible

The Bad:

Looks hideous

Criminally boring in places

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Moustaches were a legal requirement in the 1970's

Space outfits in the 70's for women looked like they should have a Hooters logo on them

If you have people rooting for the dinosaurs, you've ballsed up

They didn't have the budget to get that one guy a shirt

Planet of Dinosaurs was one of those movies which I wanted for ages but got hold of it eventually.

A spaceship crashes onto a mysterious planet and its occupants discover they are millions of years into the past as this planet is occupied by dinosaurs (more of which later). After setting up camp following the spaceship's sinking in a lake, they explore the planet and start to live like stone age man. Several of the crew are eaten by the dinosaurs and the survivors accept they will be never rescued and have no choice but to make this planet their home.

Now to those dinosaurs, which are done in stop-motion and look excellent. These include a T-Rex, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, Policanthus and also a giant spider.

The cast is made up mostly of unknowns and their acting is certainly not brilliant.

Despite this, I rather enjoyed this movie and is worth watching just for the dinosaurs.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

A spaceship in some unspecified future where human beings are equipped for space travel and have laser guns for weapons, crash lands on a strange young planet where dinosaurs are coincidentally also evolved and only on this world, have not gone extinct...yet. The survivors of the crash, roughly ten bland characters wearing blue, white, and yellow suits, fight for survival against the alien prehistoric monsters.

"Planet of the Dinosaurs" is a peculiar movie. Like I said in my summary above, the stop-motion animated dinosaurs in the film are the only colorful actors. The models are crude, but effectively animated. And they are much more fascinating and intriguing than these characters portrayed by inexperienced actors and speaking lines from a script that must have been written overnight without a single revision. Obviously, most of the budget was put into the dinosaurs, and although there is a fair share of them, there's not nearly enough to save us from our boredom. These human characters are only there to scream, run around, and mutter these poorly-written and verbose speeches about survival. And unfortunately, not nearly enough of them get eaten by the dinosaurs.

Overall, "Planet of the Dinosaurs" is not a film I plan on seeing again. Some people will simply love it for being so cheap and so poorly made. Sometimes, I enjoy movies like this. But this particular film is just too long, too boring, and very exhausting on the mind.

Remember the first 40 minutes of the original "Planet of the Apes" in which the surviving team of a spacecraft explore the desert-like environment of the mysterious planet wherein they crash? (It was the best part of the movie, except for the very end). Okay, imagine that scenario for an entire 84 minute flick, albeit WITHOUT notable actors, great soundtrack and first-rate filmmaking; not to mention replace the apes with dinosaurs. If you can picture that, and it sounds like your cup of java, you might want to pick up "Planet of the Dinosaurs."

This film is so amateurishly done on most levels that the average person would likely rate it pretty low. I grant it 5/10 Stars, however, for five reasons:

• The picture was filmed at Vasquez Rocks, Northeast of Los Angeles (I visited this park in July of 2003). If you're not in the know, this location is where many of the original Star Trek episodes where filmed, such as "Arena" wherein Captain Kirk fights the Lizardman.

• The stop-motion dinosaur animation is very good for the time period and, I hear, won some kind of an award when the film was released in the late '70s. It's pretty much on a par with "One Million Years B.C."

• There are four (count 'em, four) female survivors of the space wreck and two of them are babes (the other two aren't that bad either, that is, if you're stranded on a deserted planet). One beauty unfortunately gets eaten almost immediately, but the other survives for quite awhile. The latter, by the way, appears to be of Native American ancestry and her tight outfit shows off her midrift and bellybutton the entire stint she appears in the film. And, trust me, if you have any doubt that American Indian women can be truly beautiful, you need to see this fine piece of womanhood.

• After the first 20-30 minutes I was able to mentally adjust and accept the film's limitations; I strangely started to get into the story at this point and even care about the characters.

• Lastly, this is definitely not a kiddy flick, nor is it goofy, comedic or even campy. It's a serious sci-fi story.

If "Planet of the Dinosaurs" had better actors, sound, music and worked out various other kinks in the story, direction, etc. I would give it a higher rating.

BOTTOM LINE: It's worth picking up if (like me) you're a sucker for Sci-fi survival-on-deserted-planet type flicks. Just keep in mind it's strictly Grade Z and mental adjustments will have to be made to appreciate it.

"Planet of the Dinosaurs" has garnered a worthy "guilty pleasure" spot in the cult/independent film section of my video library.

GRADE: C+

A spaceship crashes on a planet inhabited by dinosaurs and the (young, attractive, and scantily-dressed) crew struggles to stay alive. The special effects (the stop-motion dinosaurs) surprisingly good, for a low budget film. One by one members of the crew get eaten by carnivores, and you never know which one will be next. The debates amongst the crew members about various survival strategies are actually fairly reasonable, if you can get past the bad acting.

If you want to hear it with comedy riffs, get the "Rifftrax" version.

Now, I love bad, old skifee movies as much as most people. And I understand that a budget is a budget. That said, Planet of the Dinosaurs is as bad as a bad movie can get. The thing has no actors, and only one attractive female whom they kill off two minutes after swimming ashore. There are literally no redeeming qualities to be found in this pile of wasted celluloid. The only thing not wasted was paper...the screenplay must have been no more than four pages long. Surely no one actually WROTE dialogue this pointless. I'm constantly amazed that such movies ever got made, much less released. I'm only glad I didn't pay to see this waste of time. It's 75 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

1) Bad acting.

2) For a bunch of castaways on an alien planet, it sure looked like home, especially with the houses and roads you can glimpse in the background.

3) Terrible plot with stupid caracters making idiotic decisions and blithely losing precious survival equipment and clothing left, right and center.

4) Cool 70's scifi jumpsuits (possibly the only good thing about this movie)

5) Interesting ship at the beginning (this crew must have been watching Space 1999 a lot). Too bad it blows up so early. The escape ship also got sunk too fast. *sigh*

6) Anthropologists might find some aspects of the movie interesting in terms of primate group behavior.

Planet of Dinosaurs is not a terrible movie, but neither is it terribly good. The main attraction is the stop-motion dinosaur effects. They are done fairly well, but other than that, there isn't much to see here.

The acting ranges from passable (James Whitworth of The Hills Have Eyes), to downright wooden (Chuck Pennington as standard issue beefcake). The script does not manage to create any sympathy for our stranded astronauts, so it is merely a matter of waiting around to see who gets eaten by the dinos and who survives. By the end, I really didn't care. None of the cast behaves remotely like a real astronaut would in this situation and their performances aren't helped by the mediocre sound looping.

Another problem in the film is that several of the scenes taking place at night or in a cave are so badly lit that it is nearly impossible to see what is taking place. I know this was low budget, but couldn't they have gotten some decent lighting? The film is only 84 minutes so it passes quickly and rather painlessly, however, you would do better to rent an older Harryhausen film like Beast From 20,000 Fathoms or Valley of Gwangi to see how to do it right on a budget.

You could argue that the costumes are dated, the effects are unconvincing (at least to the Jurassic Park generation), and the acting is mediocre, and I probably wouldn't be able to refute you. This is a B-movie after all, and from the 70's no less. But in many ways, Planet of the Dinosaurs is the perfect movie. First of all, the movie is as plausible as can be hoped for in the genre of "astronauts stranded on prehistoric planet." The characters behave in a way that you can believe, their reactions to circumstances seem like those real people might have in that situation. Unlike a lot of sci-fi B-movies, this one has a strong inter-character plot. The main conflict is between Lee, the inexperienced and unsure captain, and Jim, his brawny action-minded subordinate. The conflict develops slowly as the castaways' situation becomes more dire, pitting Lee's "play it safe" philosophy with Jim's "kill or be killed" mindset. Comic relief is provided by a Gabe Kaplan-esque Harvey, the company man in charge of the doomed mission, and the (almost) quick-witted crewman Mike.

And in addition to the action, the effects (which were good for the time), and the character developments, the musical score stands out as exceptional. The score is provided mostly by synthesizer, and gives a strange, otherworldy yet technological feel to the movie. I watched this movie a lot as a kid, being interested in both space and dinosaurs, and when I noticed the DVD I decided I just needed to have it. Since then, I've grown just as fond of it as I was when I was young, and my friends too have realized the opus of charm and fantasy that is Planet of the Dinosaurs.

Planet of Dinosaurs is a short, easy film that asks little of you. The plot is simple and silly, the acting and editing lousy, the costumes charmingly 70s (Bellbottom spacesuit) - overall, it is a couple of laughs when drunk with friends and not much more.

The best feature is definitely the Harry Hausen-style claymation dinosaurs, which look good and interact well with the human cast for what they are. The rest of the movie is entirely forgettable but inoffensive.

It attempts some depth with a man-versus-nature narrative that hasn't aged well, but at least it tries, I guess.

The movie is trashed for bad dialog and bad acting. My criticism is that they snuff the super hot blonde who has the hottest body in the cast wayyyyyy too early. When she stripped off that space suit revealing a skimpy bra and panty I nearly exploded.

She needed to do some nudie cutie scenes with Bronty.

The girls wear space suits with bell bottoms! There are some funny moments like wen a girl falls in the water and one of the guys saves the space gun before trying to save her! Low budget I guess.

The music is horrible.

Shea must have been a big fan of stop motion animation because all the money in the budget went to really good dinosaurs! Not the dumb lizards wearing rubber hats for spikes that you see even later on in film making.

Truth is, the dinosaurs save the movie and it's a must to see for anyone who is into stop motion. Honestly, it's about as good as anything Harryhausen did.

For a film released in 1977 the special effects in this film are actually very good. The dialogue is pretty terrible and most of the acting is bland and unconvincing. There are so many cliches but its a movie about a planet inhabited by dinosaurs so there isnt much you can do to make it a well rounded film. It did scare me and disturb me a little as a kid but for any other fellow dinosaur lover it is worth a watch.

A spaceship, due to a mishap has a nuclear dispersion. This leaves a small shuttle crew to land on an uncharted planet. Low and behold it is a primitive Earth-like planet. Now they must do what all survivors do. But can they, do it?

This is a low budget, and it shows. The stilted dialog is too hokey to be campy. Looks like borrowed from Ray Harryhausen (Oh they did some).

Every cliché possible and every dumb character. At least the real dumb characters get dispatched. Get munched on in the water, fall of a perfectly good cliff, get gouged for harassing a dinosaur, be eyed by a spider (a big one), felt up by a T-rex, etc.

I cannot wait for it to be over and hope they all end up as dinosaur-chow.

At least let us hope they do not propagate.

One positive aspect is that they show the pictures of the character with the actors' names so we can relate. Too bad the T-rex was not named Macha after the T-rex in El cavernícola (1981) Ringo Starr.

This is a great, classic movie that is so unbeleivably cheesy that its just good. The soundtrack is hysterical, the dialogue terrible, and the stop motion animation amazing for its time. If you are a fan of cheesy sci fi flicks, then this is right up your alley. If you're expecting Jurassic Park, then you will be sorely disappointed, and deserve it for expecting so much.

Years ago, I bought this on VHS for five bucks as a kid from a bargain bin. Being a big fan of dinosaurs and old-fashioned, stop motion monster movies, I figured it'd be worth at least a watch.

At an unspecified point in the future, the spaceship Odyssey explodes after a sudden and unexplained reactor malfunction. Only nine survivors, ostensibly "technicians", escape in a shuttle and crash land on a nearby planet that is Earth like, only tens of millions of years younger. And so, it is inhabited by Dinosaurs, such as Stegosaurus, Centrosaurus, Brontosaurus, and a T-Rex that serves as the main antagonist. Making matters worse, they lose their radio, meaning they're cut off and must survive on the planet somehow until they're rescued. IF they're rescued.

Obviously, most of the budget was spent on the special effects, and it shows, since Jim Danforth, a student of the great Ray Harryhausen, was on board. For 1977, the stop-motion dinosaurs looked great. The battle between the Stegosaurus and T-Rex was no doubt the pinnacle of the film. There was even a cameo of the monster from "The Beast of 20,000 Fathoms". This film earned its Saturn award in 1980. The Odyssey ship model in the beginning looked decent too.

Unfortunately, the dinosaurs only appear sparingly, thanks to the limited budget. Most of the film actually consists of long, boring walk cycles as the survivors travel across the unknown planets landscape, which is the admittingly beautiful Vasquez Rocks in California.

There was barely enough money left to pay the "actors". James Whitworth and Louie Lawless were the most experienced actors, and even they weren't very remarkable. The rest are glorified extras who mutter their lines as if reading a newspaper, and probably did more work in adult films since they were likely chosen based on how much fanservice they provided, like Chuck and Cindy. The dinosaurs were better actors and more enjoyable to watch.

The characters they play are all inept morons who you can hardly sympathize with. They spend more time bickering with each other than actually fighting dinosaurs. Otherwise, they're screwing up by dropping their food off a cliff, constantly losing their weak laser guns, or building a flimsy stockade that completely fails to protect them.

Whether you're into classic, cheesy flicks with bad acting or are just into dinosaurs in general, then this is definitely watchable.