Our movie opens with the stock-footage floodgates running wide open. Word comes to the President that a new planet has entered our solar system and taken up orbit relatively close to Earth. The President then calls for a special session of congress to approve a budget to mount an expedition to this new planet -- that it's discoverer has now named Nova. After all, we've got to get there first before those dang-dirty commies. More stock footage follows as a narrator (Marvin Miller) informs us what we're looking at (and thank heaven for him or we'd be totally lost.) We spy rocket booster tests, and some comical stress tests as airplanes fall apart with loud clangs on impact. All of this work is to help us get to Nova first (and according to the test footage, we're never going to get there in one piece).

These efforts are doubled when word comes that astronomers have seen life on Nova and feel we might be able to colonize the world. So we get more stock footage and more explanations from our narrator as we watch several V2-rockets launch. No, wait, that's the same V2-rocket launch. So's that one. And that one. Uh-oh, I'm sensing a pattern here. The narrator then gets plot specific while watching several hands poking and prying at a black box with several switches, diodes and gauges. I guess this is some kind of atomic battery that will provide all the power for the trip, and the astronauts will have to be extra careful because if the wrong switches are thrown, the battery will overload -- resulting in an atomic explosion. (Just don't push the big red button. The big red SHINY button.)

We get our answer quickly enough. Dr. Richard Gordon (William Bryant) is chosen for his expertise in zoology so he can identify all the new flora and fauna on Nova. We'll be referring to him as Sadistic Dick (and not because his first name is Richard.) Next, is Nora Pierce (Patti Gallagher -- a chick?), the expedition's mineralogy expert who has a one track mind and a thing for uncharted islands. Dr. Ralph Martin (Douglas Henderson) will be playing the square-jawed, but thick-headed hero of our piece and also provide the crew's medical needs. Rounding out the crew is Dr. Patricia Bennet (Wanda Curtis -- another chick?), who we'll be referring to as Worthless Pat for her habitual screaming and histrionics when the slightest thing goes wrong.

When Sadistic Dick and Nora join them (Ha! They fell for it! Now suffocate! Survivor rations for two now instead of four!), they start to take in the sights of the new planet. Now I think the director wants us to link the stock footage of all the jungle animals and then pretend that they're close to our astronauts and they're really looking at them. Okay, I'll play along. While leading them on a short expedition to a nearby lake, Sadistic Dick starts showing the first signs of going all alpha-male. An ominous chord strikes on the soundtrack when Nora spots an island in the middle of the lake and she becomes obsessed with wanting to go over and explore. (You've got this whole new friggin' planet to explore and all you care about is this stupid island?) Worthless Pat says Who cares about the island. Who's up for a bath? Ladies first. 

I assume after a bath, the expedition dons their gear and move on. Sadistic Dick's alpha-maleitus escalates as he starts stroking his rifle, saying they could survive on this planet for a long time. He then leads them off to a peculiar rock cropping that he spotted when they landed. (They even armed the women! Pretty liberal thinking in my book although I wouldn't trust Worthless Pat with a gun.) They find rocks, and Nora stops pining for the mystery island long enough to run some tests on them. Determining that the planet is younger than the Earth, she estimates that it is the equivalent to their planet in prehistoric times. Which means, WOHOO!, we'll probably have some dinosaurs here P/D/Q! (Okay, lizards with horns pasted on them pretending to be dinosaurs.) They decide to head back to camp, but these geniuses didn't figure on Nova having a shorter solar-cycle than Earth and are soon lost in the dark. Worthless Pat is harassed by snake that takes Ralph three shots to hit and kill, and unable to stand Worthless Pat's constant whining any longer, the others decide to make camp and then continue the trip back in the morning.

These guys may be hot stuff in their fields, but can't grasp simple physics when building a simple lean-to. They're also not very observant as the big tree they lean it against appears to have been knocked over by something very very big. Sadistic Dick takes the first watch as more stock-footage animals creep nearby. When Ralph takes over, Worthless Pat wakes up and they sit together and talk. They soon start smooching and she wants to know if they still plan to get married when they get back to Earth. (Methinks they were cooped up in that rocket a little too long.) Not wanting to disturb the others, they go for a walk. At the crest of a hill, Ralph trips on a rock and plummets down the slope, and to make matters worse, at the bottom of the hill, a stock footage alligator is waiting for him!

The next morning, Sadistic Dick yells at Worthless Pat for wandering off with Ralph alone. Ordering her to wait at the camp, since Ralph can't be moved, he and Nora will go for supplies from the ship. After they're gone, Ralph eventually wakes up from a feverish delirium that Worthless Pat cured by plopping down on top of him to warm him up. And he's recovered just in time, as a giant stink bug invades their camp. While the bug drones a greeting, Worthless Pat screams and flails her arms around, and Ralph gets his rifle and kills it (including an extremely funny shot of the bug lying dead on it's back.)

"I'm croaking. Kee-roak! Kee-roak! Keeeee-roak!"

Nora and Sadistic Dick return with one -- count 'em one, bag of supplies and a new friend -- Joe, the friendly lemur -- that Sadistic Dick likes to yank around by the tail. They all quickly fall in love with Joe, and Worthless Pat offers to make everyone dinner. (Do you think they'll cook Joe or the giant stink bug? That's six drumsticks vs. four?) With Ralph's accident, the mission's time table has been severely compromised. They have to launch tomorrow if they want to get back to Earth, so to get things done, they decide to go against protocol and split up. (But you split up once already?) Nora is still damned determined to investigate the mysterious island, so Sadistic Dick and Joe will take her. They'll just have to go all the way back to the rocket and get one of the rafts first. Meanwhile, Ralph and Worthless Pat will stay behind and gather more samples to take back. Before they go, Ralph tells them to fire a flare if they run into trouble. After they're gone, Ralph wants to play house but Worthless Pat says No go until they're properly married back on Earth. And the sooner they get their job done, the sooner they can go back.

We cut back to Ralph and Worthless Pat, happily collecting samples, wondering how the other two are doing. Back at the cave, the monster redoubles his efforts to get in, unaware that a giant crocodile has lumbered on scene. Inside, Sadistic Dick goes over the Polaroids he took of the monster and claims it's a T-Rex. No, sir, that's an iguana. He claims it's the discovery of the age -- the King Dinosaur (hence the title!), but Nora panics and rips up the picture, claiming they won't live to tell anyone about it. Outside, the gator bellows a challenge to the *ahem* T-Rex and soon the monsters are locked in deadly combat. The stage blood flows (at least I hope that's stage blood) as the monsters tangle and maim each other. Sadistic Dick uses the distraction to fire off a flair.

The *ahem* T-Rex dispatches the other lizard (and I really hope that lizard is okay because it doesn't appear to be breathing anymore) and turns it's attention toward our heroes. Ralph monkeys with the atomic battery -- and I call no-friggin-way, the atomic overload has a timer! -- and he sets it to overload in a half-hour, then they make a run for the boats. With the *ahem* T-Rex is hot on their trail, the group must also dodge several stock footage shots from One Million B.C. -- including a giant armadillo, and a fur-clad "mammoth." As they run, Sadistic Dick seems bound and determined to knock over Worthless Pat as many times as he can in an effort to hurry her up. What a creep.

They reach the boats and pile in. (Relax, Joe made it, too. Sadistic Dick drug him all the way there by his tail.) All four start to paddle for the mainland, when the *ahem* T-Rex mounts some boulders on the shore of the island and spots them. Ralph keeps glancing at his watch. Five minutes to detonation. Four minutes. Three minutes...

So we come to the great King Dinosaur conspiracy portion of our program. No, we're not here to argue over whether dinosaurs actually existed and are just part of some large conspiracy put on by a bunch of wacko-evolutionists (Nathan's already done that over at Cold Fusion), but a greater mystery: What higher power is conspiring to prevent me from seeing the conclusion of King Dinosaur? I have not one, but TWO, factory copies of Science Fiction Theater's release of this film and they both poop out at the exact same moment: The climax is upon us; our intrepid explorers are paddling for their lives; the atomic clock is ticking down; and the tension is thick as I await the conclusion when the tape runs out, stops, and then automatically rewinds to the beginning cutting the film short. Now, the film barely breaks an hour. What speed were they taping it on? SSSSP!? 

The mystery deepens, and grows more diabolical, when I reveal that a six-hour TDK recording tape "mysteriously" ran short at five hours and 53 minutes. What's the big deal you say? Nothing, until I tell you that I had taped three two-hour episodes of Mystery Science Theater on that tape -- The Rebel Set, The Lost Continent and, brace yourself, King Dinosaur. The taped episode ran out at almost the exact same moment. This time our heroes at least made it to shore, but whatever happens after that I don't have a clue. Did the bomb go off? Did they become Iguana kibble? Does Sadistic Dick forcefully push Worthless Pat around some more while swinging Joe over his head by the tail? One can only sit and wonder. (Although I like to think they took Joe back to Earth with them and he carried an alien plague that wipes us all out.)

King Dinosaur is the big screen debut of Mr. B.I.G. himself, Bert I. Gordon (the I is for I likes 'em big and transparent.) ordon co-wrote the story with Al Zimbalist (who had a hand in the equally gloriously inept Robot Monster) and the two shared a producing credit. Robert L. Lippert distributed the film for them. Owning a chain of theaters, Lippert got into the production business and became an independent movie producer in the '40s and '50s. Known mostly for westerns, Lippert also had a couple of genre pictures, including Rocketship X-M and Lost Continent. He also distributed Roger Corman's first picture, too, with Monster from the Ocean Floor. AIP was about the only independent production and distribution company to survive out of the '50s. After Lippert dissolved his company, he joined up with Fox Studios and produced second features for them, including The Fly and Gene Evan's hugely underrated Korean War piece The Steel Helmet -- directed by another fledgling first timer in need of a break named Samuel Fuller. Lippert also produced The Last Man on Earth for AIP, and helped finance Hammer picture's The Creeping Unknown.

Even without watching the credits, one can guess by the first "special-effect" shot of the giant (and sometimes transparent) stink bug menacing our heroes that old Bert I. and his trusty traveling matte are behind it. Bert made a career of having really small things super-imposed and blown up to make them look huge and menacing, or had them running amok over scenic post cards of his locales to give them scale. He usually combined the two effects on people, bugs, lizards and spiders with often hilarious results.

The whole film was shot over just three days. I assume one day at Yosemite or another national park, another at the all too familiar Bronson Canyon, and the third day was used for staging the lizard fights. That all takes up about half the film, while the other is nothing but stock footage, and for the most part, it's the same piece of stock footage looped over and over and over. So what it all boils down to is this: King Dinosaur is quickie exploitation piece that's only 63 minutes long. It's about 30-minutes of narrated, nonsensical stock-footage of rockets and animal jungle footage, 10-minutes of bad super-imposed special effects shots, 15-minutes of live lizard combat (that will either have you squirming or laughing depending on your personal tastes), leaving about five-minutes for the actual plot, character development and the inevitable moronic romantic interlude.

Watch it. It won't kill you, and you won't want to kill who made it or played in it. Of course, I was under the influence of several controlled substances while watching it. (Was the movie supposed to have a green haze around it?) Crocked or sober, it's not much of an investment of your time or much of a sacrifice of your already short lifespan here on Earth. Gordon's done better and more entertaining films, and this film just has a sense of meanness oozing from it -- from the treatment of it's female actors, to the brutal combat of the reptiles -- that will turn a lot of you off (and I didn't even mention the scene when Sadistic Dick just watches as large boa constrictor slithers into camp and crawls all over Ralph. Was he hoping to have both women for himself?)

If nothing else, you can find out if some mysterious force doesn't want you to see the end, either. We could start a cult. It might be fun. Oh, man, time for more medication. Whose up for a Benadryl with a Vodka chaser?

Posted: 07/11/03. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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