Doug McClure hosts this lightweight and breezy trip down memory lane that shines a spotlight on the most popular dinosaur movies of all time. The films of the silent era, such as the animated Gertie the Dinosaur, the early stop-motion effort The Dinosaur and the Missing Link, and The Lost World are covered first. All these films eventually set the stage for the iconic King Kong in 1933. After the creation of the atom bomb in the ‘50s, dinosaurs in movies become symbols for nuclear destruction in films such as Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster, Reptilicus, and Godzilla vs. Megalon. The special then concludes with a look at the then-recent dinosaur flicks, Baby: The Secret of the Lost Legend and The Land Before Time.
McClure (who looks like he’s having a hard time standing and walking) appears in a museum next to dinosaur fossils during the dry host segments. While these sequences aren’t much to write home about, they are, at the very least, informative. Some of the background info on the early days of paleontology and/or moviemaking is kind of interesting. I did find it chintzy that half of the documentary is devoted to works of the silent era, which means it’s cheaper to acquire footage since it’s all in the public domain. (The later movies are often represented in footage from trailers, which also helps to keep costs down.) It is kind of neat though seeing the shift away from goofy, loveable dinosaurs like Gertie to more bloodthirsty variations over the years.
The cheesy opening set to Was Not Was’ “Walk the Dinosaur” is amusing. There’s a pretty good selection of talking head interviewees, like Jim Danforth, Forrest J. Ackerman, and Donald F. Glut (who seems preoccupied with pointing out all the inaccuracies in the movies) too. Overall, there’s nothing particularly earthshattering here, but if you enjoy these dated clip show packages like I do, you might get a kick out of it.
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