La planète des dinosaures

Planet of the Dinosaurs is one of the funniest unintentional comedy movies that I have ever seen. It is right up there with "Twin Sitters," "The Ice Cream Man," and "Maniac Cop 3." The acting is awful, the special affects are terrible even for their time (Star Wars came out a year before it), and the logic of the crew is comparable to a pack of drunk gorillas.

The only saving grace of the film is Harvey Shain's performance. His wisecracks are second to none, and he seems to be the only one that realizes what a piece of crap he is appearing in, and therefore doesn't take it seriously. He also has the funniest death scene ever recorded on film.

The only reason I would recommend this movie is for a good laugh.

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+

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..

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.

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.