King Dinosaur (1955) – Review

How do you make a dinosaur movie in only seven days and with an almost non-existent budget? Well, the obvious answer is “Rush out and hire Bert I. Gordon to write, produce and direct the film” and don’t bother with such follow-up questions as “Will it be good or even make a dime?” because those kinds of queries are inconsequential when it comes to the man the myth the legend that is Bert I. Gordon.

Taking place in the far-flung future of the year 1960 the scientific community is thrown into turmoil when a new planet suddenly enters Earth’s Solar System and the world’s industries are rushed into full gear to get a space program going when the idea that this planet, which is named Nova, could possibly support life. Four scientists are selected to become astronauts for this perilous mission to this planet; the crew consists of Dr. Richard Gordon (Douglas Henderson) a zoologist, Dr. Nora Pierce (Patti Gallagher) a geologist, chemist Dr. Patricia Bennett (Wanda Curtis) and Dr. Ralph Martin (William Bryant) their medical specialists, and to say these would be the last people I’d send on a mission like this would be the understatement of the century as they prove themselves to be incompetent in almost any field, though to be fair, the very premise of the movie is fairly incompetent.

Science Note: If a planet roughly the same size as our own suddenly showed up in an orbit near us we’d be torn apart by the cataclysmic new gravitational forces that it would create.

Upon landing on Nova the crew perform a few preliminary tests that determine that due to all the Earth-like animals wandering around that this planet could be very suitable for an Earth colony and as the place is simply abundant with such animal life as deer, bears and giant armadillos they immediately decide to explore. Things get off to a rocky start when during their first night on Nova we get Martin and Pat stupidly wandering off for a romantic interlude which results in him being attacked by a crocodile, which had me wondering if they’d stumbled into a Tarzan movie. With Dr. Martin laid up due to injuries sustained while rolling around with the croc it’s up to Gordon and Nora to take a raft and explore a nearby island that, for some reason, really fascinates Nora, and this is before the appearance of a giant armadillo.

And yes, this scene is as dumb as it looks.

When a rumble that Gordon assures Nora is “Just thunder” turns out to be, in fact, the roaring of titanic lizards – it should be noted that I’m using the word “titanic” in the broadest sense of the word – and soon our plucky astronauts find themselves hiding in a cave while one particular persistent dinosaur tries to eat them, though occasionally taking a break from trying to get at our “heroes” to fend off several other aggressive dinosaurs. When things seem dire Gordon fires a flare to alert Martin and Pat that they are in trouble but what he expected these two chuckleheads to do in this situation is beyond me, and when they do arrive “nothing” is exactly what they do…well, not exactly nothing, good ole Dr. Martin encourages them to run before setting the timer on an atomic bomb he brought with him. I must say this is the only film I’ve come across where the solution to troublesome dinosaurs is a nuclear detonation.  That the dinosaurs were located on an island, and this collection of idiots fled via rubber rafts across the lake, makes the killing of the dinosaurs completely unnecessary and would more than likely have resulted in killing themselves in the blast, not mention the fact that they’d now have irradiated a large portion of the planet they were hoping to colonize. Well done, you colossal asshats.

“We’ll meet again, don’t where don’t know when.”

Stray Observations:

• The narrator tells us it takes the rocket months to reach the new planet but when we first see Nova it’s almost as close as our Moon and thus should take hours not months to reach it.
• Upon landing on Nova Gordon spots an active volcano and explains to Nora that this means the planet is quite young, and I’m left wondering “Is this guy really a scientist or does him being a zoologist mean he simply doesn’t understand geology at all?”
• Pat’s instrument readings indicate that the air on Nova consists of 40% unknown bacteria and then she has them all immediately take off their spacesuits, declaring that the air is safe to breathe, clearly Pat is not familiar with how unfamiliar bacteria wreaked havoc with the Native Americans when the white man first visited. These people must have studied science at the same school as the people in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant.
• Martin and Gordon refuse to let Nora and Pat take a watch during their first night on Nova because you can’t have a proper 50s space travel movie without sexism.
• Nora is really hung up on visiting the island that they see in the middle of a large nearby lake, describing it as “primeval looking” but at a distance, it looks just like the rest of the forest around them, yet later when they land on its shore she remarks “What a desolate, forsaken place” and she’s right, it’s all barren rocks and mountains, so what the fuck happened to that primeval forest she was talking about earlier?
• While trapped in the cave by one of the “dinosaurs” Gordon states that “It resembles a Tyrannosaurs Rex” but it looks nothing like a T-Rex and we once again must question his standing as an expert zoologist.

Note to Filmmakers: It’s one thing to substitute iguanas for dinosaurs in your low-budget movie but don’t name-check what dinosaurs they’re supposed to be when they’re clearly not, it’s embarrassing.

The use of iguanas and monitor lizards in place of dinosaurs is nothing new but when they are forced to fight each other for the sake of an “exciting film moment” that is something I will always find appalling and that Bert I. Gordon snubbed the idea of using dinosaur footage that Ray Harryhausen brought in to show him makes it even worse, and even if you could overlook that troubling element of the movie you’re still stuck with a film that is 40% stock footage and narration with the remainder consisting of a small group of morons hiking through the woods and pointing out flora and fauna. I went into this film thinking “Spaceships and dinosaurs, that sounds cool to me” Alas what we got was lame dinosaurs and a weird romance between two of the shipmates.

Tonight on the Space Channel  “E.T. The Extra-Marital”

In conclusion, the premise of King Dinosaur is pretty far-fetched but I can let stuff like suddenly appearing planets slide if the following story and characters are engaging, that was not the case here and the end product was as big of a bomb as the one these idiots detonated at the end of the movie.