Planet of Dinosaurs (1977) Review

Planet of Dinosaurs (1977) Review

Some movies have really great concepts that are just terribly executed, and Planet of Dinosaurs is one such example. Imagine a planet just like earth, but millions of years behind in evolution, still dominated by dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Explorers in a far future crash their space craft there, and have to fight for survival. It’s a premise rife with possibility, but a cast of poor actors and the choice to devote the budget entirely to the creature effects resulted in a cheesy, though still highly entertaining, final product. 

In an unspecified future, the spaceship Odyssey (wow, real original reference, maybe the year is 2001?) crashes on an uncharted planet and sinks into a lake, but everyone escapes to dry land. Half the crew are dressed in tacky jump suits and the other half are dressed in typical 70’s fashion, bellbottoms and all, so already the illusion of these people being from the future is shattered. Then again, the instantly lame space ship effects already shattered all illusions of reality, so I guess it doesn’t matter. One of the crew members swims back to the ship to retrieve a radio to call for help, but she’s attacked and killed by an aquatic reptile: the crew’s first encounter with the deadly native life forms. Their main plan is to reach a plateau where they hope none of the large predators will be able to reach them, the deadliest of which is a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex. 

Planet of Dinosaurs is a bad movie, but I love it. The dinosaur effects are, believe it or not, fantastic for the time it was made. Prior to Jurassic Park, movie dinosaurs were created one of two ways, with clunky animatronics, or stop motion animation. Planet of Dinosaurs has some of the best stop motion dinosaurs ever created, rivalling such classics as Valley of Gwangi, One Million Years B.C, and When Dinosaurs Ruled. Most of those aforementioned dinos were animated by stop motion veteran Ray Harryhausen, and even though he didn’t do the stop motion for Planet of Dinosaurs, it’s very close to his level of quality. 

The Tyrannosaurus rex in this movie is one of the greatest to ever appear in any film, and that’s not a joke or exaggeration. This beast is ferocious, the stop motion is smooth, the model large and detailed, and it racks up some impressive kills, including a Stegosaurus and a large lizard, which is actually the same model that had been used for the Rhedosaurus in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The only thing about the T. rex that kind of sucks is its wussy roar, but aside from that, it’s the real star of the movie, as are all of the other dinosaurs.

Planet of Dinosaurs delivers in the effects department, but fails in pretty much every other regard. The music tries way too hard to be scary, with goofy synthesizer sounds and repetitive tracks, the characters are all forgettable or annoying, acting as nothing more than food for the dinosaurs, and all the effects aside from the dinosaurs (props included) are shoddy, but this movie is seriously entertaining, in a very campy way.