La planète des dinosaures

Planet of the Dinosaurs contains some terrific animation, all performed on a budget that would make Harryhausen blush -- and he worked under some very tight restrictions. The plot and the acting are not exactly gripping, but the filmmakers themselves agree that it was basically an exercise to exert some early filmmaking chops and possibly make a modest profit. Their primary motivation was love for stop-motion. It shows!

Ctomvelu1 -- Jim Danforth painted mattes but the animation was performed by the others listed in the credits, Steve Cerzkas and Doug Beswick. I invite anyone who enjoys stop motion to visit the Facebook group Stop Motion Monsterland, where pros and fans both hang out to discuss this unique art form. Also on FB are The Ray Harryhausen Appreciation Society, The Fantastic World of Ray Harryhausen and When Jim Danforth Ruled the Earth. The same people cross over these groups with daily frequency.

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.

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 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

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..