King Dinosaur (1955)

I didn't believe the rating it because MST3K sheeple rate movies low for no reason. I've seen good movies with abysmal IMDb rating because of fans of MST3K who are completely unable to form opinions, like The Unearthly. And even now, completely agreeing with a score I don't think my reasons are not what made the people score so low. The reasons are mostly nonverbal misogyny and animal cruelty. One of the male doctors is really casually violent with his partner, pushing and pulling for no reason etc. It like transcends the movie and you can feel it's some the actors bottled aggression. There one scene where (again for no reason) he pushes the actor and you can see she bumps her head against the rock and grimaces in very real pain. But the really feel bad stuff is animals. Iguanas and little crocodiles (?) are portraying dinosaurs, and that would be completely fine and funny in an endearing way if they were not put together to fight. Little crocodile twists the iguanas arm for like 720 degrees, doing the legendary crocodile twist. That can not NOT end in broken limbs. Bites also happen. Awful stuff.

This is a story of four likable astronauts who land on a very Earthlike planet with giant lizards.The astronauts are neatly paired as two men and two women.Fortunately, we don't have any psychotic bad guys in the group. It becomes a survival quest in a strange land.However, Gordon never really seems to make up his mind about what direction to go. That's the weakness of the movie.We get such a standard fare of actions, and shots of giant lizards, that we wonder if there is a direction. There is none.On th good side, the characters aren't one dimensional. They are basically likable, some braver than others, some more foolish than others, but basically likable.The weakness here is that what should have been a good original dram, stage play type, of survival Robinson Crusoe style, becomes hyped with ridiculous footage of giant lizards, and of an atomic blast.We get the feeling that the movie was made around these images. Someone wanted to show a giant lizard and an atomic bomb, so the rest of the movie was made around it. We get a feeling that the action scenes were shot first, and then the rest of the movie made later. This is the mistake of letting a storyboard artist write a script.The movie should have gone in either direction. Either the complete monster movie, or the survival drama. Obviously, the survival drama would have worked better. A Swiss Family Robinson in space, so to speak. We wouldn't even need all of the "monster" footage. Most of it could just as easy been dramatized without showing the monsters.

Although he's universally (and righteously) considered as one of the worst directors in history, I admit to be a fan of the notorious B.I.G! No, not the murdered gangster-rapper, but the writer/director/producer of several inept and incredibly low-budgeted horror and Sci-Fi movies during the 50's, 60's and 70's. "King Dinosaur" was his debut feature in 1955 and it still stands as probably the worst dinosaur movie there is to find (yes, there are a lot more of them than you might think). "King Dinosaur" contains all the bad and laughable elements that the MST3K crowd enjoys so much: horrible acting performances, a thoroughly idiotic script and dumb dialogs, footage that is borrowed from equally bad films, cheap set pieces and small, harmless animals that are ridiculously enlarged in order to look like gigantic menacing creatures. The film nevertheless starts promising and in a typically 1950's manner, with a stern voice-over informing us that an entirely new and never before noticed (!) planet has entered our solar system. Earth has got a new neighbor and all the great intellectual minds agree that this new planet – Nova – has the same inhabitable atmosphere. The good old US of A promptly puts together a space expedition featuring four scientists; two men and two women that are romantically involved. FOUR people, none of whom have any astronaut experience, is apparently enough for the most important mission of all time! When they arrive on Nova, it actually looks like they accidentally landed somewhere in Montana. There are forests, lakes, deer and honey bears. One of the crew members even wrestles with a crocodile! Only around two-thirds into the film, half of the mission's crew heads out to a volcanic island on the planet and comes face to face with the titular King Dinosaur. Two-thirds! Don't name your film "King Dinosaur" if the dinosaur is only a footnote in the whole stupid thing! Anyways, the character states that he resembles a T- Rex, but in fact it's an ordinary lizard filmed through a magnifying glass. He's supposed to be a relentless monster, but it's a damn lizard and they can't act, so he actually looks kind of cute and completely unaware of what he's doing. As said, this is one hopelessly inept hodgepodge of a film. 50's Sci-Fi flicks, as silly and cheap they generally are, have a certain enchantment value. "King Dinosaur", however, has no such thing whatsoever. It's a dumb ensemble of moronic plotting, unsympathetic characters and rubbish special effects. I would still warmly recommended it to bad cinema fanatics, though, because there are too many idiotic details to list! And at least the film is never boring, like so many of its contemporary genre colleagues.

The film begins with a narrator telling us about how a new planet has moved into our solar system (?!). There are many shots of what looks like Mount Wilson or Mount Palomar Observatory as they "discover" the planet (even though in reality you wouldn't need "the most powerful telescope in the world" to see a new planet right next to Earth). Yes, this is a kind of a silly sci-fi adventure movie that begins very seriously as if it was a docu-drama about space exploration. But the scientists in this movie are the kind that don't even carry a compass and don't have any idea how long the daily light cycles would be on this new planet ("it might spin faster than the Earth" says one big busted female scientist). Notice how the male scientists carry rifles and the female scientists carry pistols, and the men collect firewood while the women collect kindling. Good patronizing stuff, even if they do have a blonde chemist! I love how the outer space expeditions in these movies look more like they belong in a jungle movie than a sci-fi movie. These people aren't fazed at all by seeing normal earth wildlife on the strange new planet. Of course the strange new planet has an uncanny resemblance to Griffith Park.......And then there's the "strange island" that one of the woman just feels drawn to... gotta love how the women in these movies have strange urges like that which make them wander out into places they shouldn't go.The first really hilarious scene in the movie is when the two blonde scientists (yes there's a blond guy/girl and a brunette guy/girl) go off for a walk together. He stumbles on something and literally hurtles himself into a ditch where he has to battle a crocodile. It's the classic sex/death connection just like in the slasher films 20 years later... don't go off into the woods with your gal, never mind what planet you're on! The dialog in this movie is just painful at times. These are scientists who don't even speak English with good grammar. And the film's idea of good snappy dialog is to have the injured scientist say stuff like "I need some medicine" right before kissing his gal. Ugh.Bert I. Gordon movies are so great. This is his first movie and he's already up to his tricks. Just like how the spider roared like a lion in "Earth Versus the Spider", in this one we have a roaring snake! I guess Bert Gordon didn't think that a monster was scary if it didn't make noise. Maybe he's right, but it sure is goofy on screen! Logic shouldn't get in the way of the movie. Even though they have been attacked by snakes and giant insects, the leader scientist decides "we haven't run into anything we can't handle" and decides to split up the party so he can go investigate the island. Even though they already said that exploring the island was not supposed to be part of the expedition, they brought 2 rafts along in their spaceship.I guess I should expect to be disappointed but sadly when we finally do see "King Dinosaur" it turns out to be just an iguana photographed with rear projection. "It resembles the T-Rex of ancient Earth".... well not really but nice thought. Of course the hero's rifle jams up so they have to run into robot monster cave. Hilariously, after all the things that they have seen the hero says "nobody is going to believe this!" as if a planet comes into our solar system full of meercats and bears all the time but a giant iguana? Never! Of course a giant alligator shows up to distract the ignuana, just like in the old H.R. Haggard movies. From the way they battle, I don't think this movie received the blessings of any animal rights organizations. They don't run for it for some reason but then later they decide to run away when a gila monster attacks "King Dinosaur." In the meantime the action has caused him to take off his shirt and her skirt to get ripped up the side, allowing for some nice 50s light exploitation. The other couple has been called to the island by way of flare gun apparently so they can sit there and say "over here! go faster!" to the other two without doing anything to help them. And then the blonde scientist says the best line in the whole movie: "I brought the atom bomb. I think it's a good time to use it." I mean, smart scientists usually destroy alien species as soon as they encounter them.Next thing you know, we have a giant armadillo! Who knew it was a Tod Browning movie? (sorry, kind of an inside joke... watch "Dracula" really carefully and you'll see what I mean). There's even some bison and a woolly mammoth. Why the "dinosaur" doesn't just eat those instead of the tiny humans is another question better not asked.And then let's not forget the cryptic lines at the end of the movie. "Well, we've done it." "Yeah, brought civilization to Nova." ??? Was it supposed to be ironic? Who knows.I can't say the movie was supposed to be funny or that it was a good movie, but I enjoyed watching it.