NOTE- This was originally published on my Facebook. It is being republished here.
Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies is one of those movies that is really hard for me to be objective about, the reason being because without this movie it’s quite possible my interest in movies would be far different today. You see, as a child I liked dinosaurs and enjoyed movies like Godzilla and had a pretty general interest in Horror films, particularly the 1930’s Universal ones. This movie though changed how I watched those kinds of movies as I learned just how many there were. After gaining this knowledge, I set out to watch all the movies featured here you see because, Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies is a collection of trailers from various “dinosaur” themed movies stretching from the silent era all the way to 1981 with The Loch Ness Horror. Even with video stores and cable, my task proved to be impossible, and even now, with the internet I still have yet to see all these movies, though that’s more to blame for my laziness and having more diverse genre interests than I had back then. So yeah, this movie was hugely influential in my tastes in movies. Sure there are lots of trailer compellation films, including many better ones like the excellent 42nd Street Forever series, but none of those hold quite the nostalgic magic this one does.
Still, there is plenty to enjoy in this one. It’s a collection of trailers, so there is no real plot, though there is a bit at the beginning where a narrator discusses the importance of dinosaurs in pop culture, particularly film, and there’s also a small bit about the special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, but for the most part it’s just trailer after trailer. The trailers are shown in absolutely no order, so don’t expect any sort of coherent narrative on the development of dinosaurs on film, but it still works pretty well. As I mentioned before, this spans from the silent era to 1981, but for the most part, the films shown here are from the 1950’s and 1960’s, which isn’t all that surprising considering the glut of Sci-Fi and Fantasy movies that were made back then. Also, though this is called Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies a lot of the creatures featured here aren’t dinosaurs. I don’t just mean that in the sense that the plesiosaurus and the pteranodon aren’t dinosaurs (although that’s true) are that this features a lot of fictional dinosaurs like Godzilla (though that’s true toe) but also that this movie features a lot of giant insects and mythical monsters like dragons, cyclopes, and stuff like that. Anyway, this thing is still a lot of fun. It’s a general rule in Horror and exploitation fan circles that the trailers make the movies they are advertising for look a lot better, so with that in mind, many of the best bits of these movies are on display right here. That’s not to say all these movies are bad. Sure a lot of them are stinkers, and a few of the others are so bad they’re good, but there are also some legitimately good films presented here, so this is a good way to find new films to hunt down. This movie was made in 1990, which is interesting because three years later, Jurassic Park would come out, and drastically change the “Dinosploitation” movie forever, meaning that this one essentially acts as the last hurrah for the genre before everything became judged in the light of Jurassic Park. Sure this isn’t a deep film by any stretch of the imagination, but it pretty much delivers what it says it will, and for that, well, I can’t really complain. Check it out!
This isn’t really the type of film I think can be given an “out of 10 rating”
Bad Movies for Bad People 