Dinosaurus! (1960) Review
Clips of several old dinosaur movies were used in a documentary
program I watched as a kid, and I made it my mission when I was older to watch
all of those movies, but many proved elusive to obtain. In the past few years,
though, lots of obscure classics have been re-released to blu ray, and now,
thanks to Kino Lorber Studio Classics, the last of the mysterious dinosaur
movies of my youth is finally in my collection! Before this month, I had never
seen Dinosaurus! because the DVD was
long out of print, the VHS was rare, and it wasn’t even available online
anywhere. I waited twenty years to finally see this thing, and it didn’t
disappoint.

Dinosaurus! is a
campy flick for its time and for all-time, but it’s among the most entertaining
dinosaur films of the era. When the dinosaurs are hauled up the beach, it
literally looks like a kid’s plastic toys being plowed through a sandbox. The
effects are a bit sub-par, even for 1960, but Dinosaurus! carries a sense of purposeful fun. It’s extremely funny
throughout, usually with intention (though often unintentionally because of how
dated the effects are), and some of the best laughs come from the caveman. He’s
confused, hungry, and even a little horny.
I love the T.rex
in this movie. It’s cartoony, but entertaining as hell, and has one of my
favourite roaring sound effects ever used for the tyrant lizard king. The T. rex and Brontosaurus are a mix of puppets and stop motion, but the two
techniques don’t really blend together very well. The stop motion is jerky and
the models lack detail, and the puppets are pretty good, but a bit limited in
motion, and many shots make it accidentally obvious how small-scale they are in
reality. It’s the kind of effects display that severely lacks realism and
consistency, but is still pleasing to watch.

For what it is, Dinosaurus!
is pretty great. The characters aren’t overly annoying, the dinosaurs get
plenty of great scenes, and it ramps up steadily in excitement (I mean, it has
an exclamation mark right there in the title). While I wish I could have seen
it for the first time as a kid, I think I probably appreciated it even more in
some ways having had to wait so long.
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