Part Two of the Complete Cinematic History of Tyrannosaurus Rex

Here’s part two of my spotlight on T. rex in movies. Check out part one if you haven’t already!

 

B-movie era (1950’s-1970’s)

For the first few decades of cinema, T. rex was cast as the ultimate villain: a bloodthirsty killer that would stop at nothing to eat every living thing in its path. Most of the stories to feature it were fantastical in nature, with humans discovering it amid other prehistoric creatures on remote islands or unexplored corners of the globe where time had stood still, or in ahistorical worlds, where humans and dinosaurs are shown to live at the same time in the ancient past (which, just to be clear, didn’t actually happen). Coming into the age of colour, though, T. rex would pop up in some more diverse tales, but would retain its status as an antagonist.

The first movie I have to talk about is Godzilla (1954). Of course it is, you might be saying. Godzilla is a made-up movie monster (one of the most iconic, at that), but the creators of Big G used real dinosaurs as their inspiration for his design. Originally producer Tomoyuki Tanaka envisioned a creature that was part whale and part gorilla, which is where the Japanese name Gojira comes from (gorira = gorilla, kujira = whale), but they decided to combine the features of Tyrannosaurus (a two-legged predator with a long tail and toothy jaws) with Stegosaurus (spikes along his back) and Iguanodon (a plant-eater with long arms and thumb spikes). So even though Godzilla isn’t a true T. rex, he carries part of one in his appearance and spirit.

When those vintage dinosaur films like The Lost World and King Kong were released, they were viewed as impressive displays of cutting-edge visual effects. If you think about it from the perspective of way back then, it’s understandable, but of course to a modern viewer those effects look dated. Well, there are a lot of movies from this era of dinosaur films with effects that not only don’t hold up today, they didn’t hold up back then, either. The Land Unknown (1957) features a T. rex that’s just a man in a rubber suit, lumbering along with a gaping jaw and blank white eyes (it does have the right number of fingers, though). Apparently, they spent so much of the budget on the suit that they couldn’t afford to film the movie in colour—not exactly money well spent. At least Dinosaurus! (1960) was in colour and had a mix of stop motion effects and puppets. I mean, the T. rex still looks kind of silly, but at least it has a great roar and many memorable scenes, including battles with a Brontosaurus and a heavy duty digging machine which topples it over a cliff at the end.

For most of the 1960’s T. rex was actually not used as often as the main villain, instead replaced with other species of giant meat-eaters like Ceratosaurus and Allosaurus in an effort to keep it fresh. The Tyrant Lizard King made a big comeback by the end of the decade in The Valley of Gwangi (1969). There is some discrepancy about whether Gwangi is a Rex or actually an Allosaurus. In the original script it was described as an Allosaurus, but stop motion maestro Ray Harryhausen based his design off the famous T. rex painting by paleo artist Charles R. Knight, and the influence is undeniable. Gwangi has three fingers as well, so since it’s never stated in the film, you could call Gwangi a Rex or an Allo, but to me, it’s a Rex. It looks a lot like the one from King Kong, too…which apparently they sometimes referred to as an Allosaurus on-set. C’mon, guys, stop mixing them up! Gwangi is also purple, making him the true first of his kind, even though most people think of Barney when they think of purple dinosaurs.

The special effects to bring T. rex to life were definitely all over the place during this era in terms of quality. After seeing the impressive stop-motion in Gwangi it’s hard to watch a man in a rubber T. rex suit fighting an equally phony-looking Triceratops in The Last Dinosaur (1977) and not laugh out loud. Planet of Dinosaurs (1978) reinstates T. rex as a main antagonist again, this time on another planet that’s millions of years behind in evolution. The stop motion effects are great, and this particular cinematic Rex is by far the best one from the 1970s.

 

Family Film Era (1980’s-1990’s)

Going into the 1980’s, T. rex underwent some changes. A very fat, stupid one pestered Ringo Starr in the comedic adventure Caveman (1981), and in one of the most memorable scenes accidentally eats some cannabis-like plants, which gets it so stoned it falls off a cliff. This is one of the most comedic portrayals of the Tyrant Lizard King, again realized through stop motion animation, but an even more ground-breaking version would emerge in the 80’s using a slightly different technique its developer referred to as “go-motion.” Prehistoric Beast (1984) is a short experimental film that was thought up by Phil Tippett, who used motion blur to make his stop motion dinosaurs move even smoother and appear more lifelike than any before. This short film would later be used and expanded upon for the CBS documentary Dinosaur! (1985), which is where I first saw footage from Prehistoric Beast, and it terrified me as much as it left me awestruck. A Tyrannosaurus ambushes a Monoclonius (relative of Triceratops) in a forest at night and kills it. While the short film still had multiple scientific inaccuracies, this tyrannosaur was one of the most realistic depictions up to that point, with a less upright posture and more accurate proportions.

But Prehistoric Beast was an exception to the way dinosaurs were predominantly portrayed on the big screen in this era. Family-oriented entertainment is where you would find them most often in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Easily the most famous is the children’s film The Land Before Time (1988), directed by one of the preeminent animators of his time, Don Bluth, and produced by Steven Spielberg (we’ll hear more about him in the next era). The T. rex returns with a similar look to Fantasia, sporting red eyes and dark scales, plus it acts comparably ruthless and bloodthirsty. This was the scariest the Rex would be in what would end up being a long running franchise; with the next direct-to-video sequel, the cute, youthful protagonists from Land Before Time would befriend an equally cute and harmless baby “sharptooth” named Chomper, and while his parents would remain the vicious antagonists for the sequel, they would never again be as bone chilling as in the original. When Chomper turns up again in The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island (1997) he can speak just like all the other herbivores. His mom and dad don’t speak words, still just roar and growl, but they are given subtitles this time, and to my knowledge, only this time.

Animation in general would keep the mighty predator toned down; We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (1993) was also produced by Spielberg and had a friendly Rex in the lead, and a toy version of the creature would try to act scary in Toy Story (1995) but was just another lovable resident in Andy’s toybox. But, T. rex had plenty of roles in live-action films during this era as well. There was My Science Project (1985), about teens tampering with time travel, and the scene where a Tyrannosaurus wanders through a portal into the modern day then is subsequently shot to death by the teens with machine guns is actually one of the better depictions (and most violent) from the 80’s. Prehysteria! (1993) took the king in a totally different direction, featuring a friendly miniature version of it affectionately named after The King of Rock and Roll (Elvis) with miniature versions of other famous species, all of them also named after famous singers. Elvis and his comrades were brought to life with puppets and stop motion, and while the movie is by no means a classic, he’s still a neat, unique-looking example, and would return for two sequels.

Unfortunately, most other depictions from this era were not so great. Adventures in Dinosaur City (1991), a made-for-TV movie, featured anthropomorphic dinos that really put the “terrible” in “terrible lizards” and featured a T. rex by the name of simply “Rex” (Wow! So creative!) but this embarrassment to the Tyrant Lizard King’s true nature pales in comparison to one of the worst depictions ever put to celluloid: Theodore Rex (1996), which is a buddy-cop-style comedy that teams up Whoopie Goldberg and the Cretaceous carnivore. Theodore Rex (A.K.A. T. rex—get it? Hilarious!) talks and looks very similar to the dinosaurs from the TV sitcom Dinosaurs which aired around the same time—that is to say he is clearly a guy in a suit.

The strangest one of all from this era has to be Tammy and the T-rex (1994): a movie that was made only because the director knew someone who owned a robotic Tyrannosaurus. Seriously. What’s weird about it is it was filmed with the intent of being an R-rated comedy/horror, but the gory scenes were cut and it was marketed as a more palatable family film. The long lost “gore cut” was released by Vinegar Syndrome in 2019. One of the funniest things about Tammy’s T. rex is a moment when it answers a payphone and its arms extend to five times their actual length.

Check out the conclusion to this epic cinematic history in part three!

 

PART THREE:

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/02/part-three-of-complete-cinematic.html

Reviews:

Dinosaurus! (1960): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2019/10/dinosaurus-1960-review.html

The Valley of Gwangi (1969): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-valley-of-gwangi-1969-review.html

Planet of Dinosaurs (1977): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2019/10/planet-of-dinosaurs-1977-review.html