King Dinosaur (1955)

... aka: El planeta infernal (The Hellish Planet)

... aka: Monstruos de otro planeta (Monsters from Another Planet)

Directed by:

Bert I. Gordon

Gordon just passed away a few days ago (March 8, 2023) at the ripe old age of 100, so what better way to celebrate his legacy than to take a look at his directorial debut? At least that's what I was thinking going into this, but my initial plan pretty much backfired on me! It wasn't until afterward that I discovered, of the 20+ films Gordon made over his 60-year career, this is generally considered his very worst film. Doh! While it's still of interest in that it helped to establish a template for many of the director's size-obsessed later offerings, this not being Gordon at his best means I probably picked the absolute worst film possible for some kind of appreciative retrospective review. With that said, I'll stop right here before I get into all the negatives and point out that Gordon did make a number of enjoyable movies. I particularly liked his ghost film TORMENTED (1960) and his sleaze-filled crime drama The Mad Bomber (1975). Also, some of the giant monster films that he's mostly famous for, while not exactly "good," are at least fairly amusing. Unfortunately that's not the case for King Dinosaur. 

Shot over the course of a week in the fall of 1954 (partially at the ever-popular Bronson Canyon) on a budget of just 15,000 dollars and featuring a cast of just four people, this shows all of the tell-tale signs (stock footage, stolen footage, endless filler to stretch the running time to barely over an hour, patchwork narration courtesy of Marvin Miller...) of a film cheaply spat out with the express purpose of making a quick buck from unsuspecting moviegoers. And that it apparently did as Gordon would start churning out very similar films at a steady quip just a few years later.

In a preposterous, reality-defying plot that's certain to give science geeks everywhere a good laugh, astronomers are startled to discover that a large rogue planet has drifted into our solar system and latched right on to the Earth's orbit. It's now not only close enough to be of moderate climate but scientists also suspect it also could have an identical atmosphere capable of supporting life. A powerful telescope is used to take a closer look at the planet's surface, which uncovers that vegetation is indeed there. That prompts a space race between nations around the globe to see who can be the first to explore our new neighbor. There's only one thing that's missing: A "space rocket" capable of transporting astronauts there. Hey, this is 1955 we're talking about here! The narrator goes into painstaking detail about various tests, developing a brand new metal, etc. over boring stock footage until the craft is finally completed. Naturally, the first country to make it there is the U.S. of 'Murica.

A curiously tiny team (considering the importance of such a mission) is put together to go to the new planet, which has since been dubbed Nova. Dr. Richard Gordon (Douglas Henderson), an "expert of zoogeography" and the man who discovered the famous tar pits of Salt Lake City is the first signed to the mission. He's followed by mineralogist Dr. Nora Pierce (Patti Gallagher), physician Dr. Ralph Martin (William Bryant) and chemist Dr. Patricia Bennett (Wanda Curtis). No trained pilot? No problem! The rocket launch is successful and the quartet speed through their months-long journey to Nova. Since apparently there was little of interest to do during the trip, and space can be a lonely place, the two men and two women have paired off and are now romantic couples.

Upon landing, Ralph and Patricia slip on their suits and become the very first humans to touch ground on Nova, which they're delighted to discover is filled with trees and lush vegetation and has a pleasant temperature of 78 degrees Celsius. They first run some tests to see if the atmosphere is suitable for them. Though 40% of the microscopic bacteria detected is unknown to man they do what all highly intelligent and educated scientists would do in a similar situation: Say screw it, throw caution to the wind and remove their cumbersome suits. Early discoveries made include breathable air, potable water and identical animal species (deer, vultures, owls, bears, sloths...) that are found on the Earth. Analyzing some rock samples, Nora determines that the planet is comparable to Earth during its Prehistoric era. And you know what that means: Dinosaurs! Eh, kinda, well, not really...

After a day out in the field, our fearless foursome get lost on their trip back to the shuttle and are forced to camp out for the night. What follows would basically become Gordon's speh-see-ality later on: one animal attack scene after another. Patricia is menaced by a boa constrictor, Ralph has a wrestling match with an alligator, some kind of giant bug shows up at camp, makes some weird noise and is shot dead and the snake makes a return visit after dark. They also "adopt" a kinkajou (played by Little Joe - The Honey Bear) and spend much of the rest of the movie jerking the poor thing around by its tail.

Nora becomes infatuated with a nearby volcanic island ("What a desolate, forsaken place!") and eventually talks Richard into taking an inflatable boat over to it to check it out. There, they discover it's filled with giant reptiles, which I suppose are the "dinosaurs" of the title even though they're played by an iguana ("It resembles the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the Earth's prehistoric age" - Not!), an alligator, an armadillo and a salamander. The iguana and alligator engage in a duel to the death and the victor of that match-up then gets to battle the salamander. Nora and Richard become trapped in a cave as the "monsters" rampage outside, but manage to shoot off a flare to alert their colleagues. Can they get there in time to save them?

I'm used to the stock footage (though perhaps not the first ten minutes of a film being almost exclusively stock footage!) and the bad acting and the junk science and the laughable dialogue in Grade Z sci-fi films from this era, so none of that particularly bothered me with this one either. That said, there are few schlock movie transgressions worse than luring your audience in with the promise of one thing but giving them something else entirely. No matter how one films them, lizards (even ones with plastic horns glued to their head) and gators are not dinosaurs. And neither are armadillos. Not that this would have sucked any less had it been called King Lizard instead, but the deceptive title and marketing is certainly annoying. Had Gordon put someone in a rubber dinosaur suit or even just shot a plastic head that somewhat resembled an actual dino I'd probably have been more satisfied than what he did here. Even then, there are worse aspects to this production to bitch about...

Firstly, how these scientists decide to get themselves out of their predicament is one of the most astonishingly stupid things I've ever seen. As they're fleeing the island, one of the men has his light bulb moment. "I brought the atom bomb," he says as if he'd just remembered where he left his car keys, "I think it's a good time to use it!" They then make it back across the lake, detonate the briefcase bomb (set up to a timer!) and blow the entire island and all of its unique creatures to smithereens as if it's nothing! The crew then beam in the light of the atomic cloud, proud that they have "brought civilization to Planet Nova." There are so many logical and ethical issues with this that I don't even know where to begin!

Even worse is the treatment of the real animals. As bad as Gordon's special effects could be at times, they're certainly preferable to he and his crew mates throwing a couple of lizards together on a set and having them fight and kill one another. This is a topic that's frequently discussed in horror circles and viewers usually fall into two separate camps. There are those who argue that animals do this anyway and nature documentaries feature animals killing one another all the time so it's OK. And there are those (including myself) who believe that no animal should ever be harmed or killed for the sake of a movie and that documenting wild animals doing their thing is not the same as trapping them together to provoke conflict / fighting / death and then turning your camera on them. I mean, is that really much different than dogfighting, which is illegal in most of the world for a reason? To me, these scenes act as a dark cloud hanging over what is already a dull, stupid, poorly-made movie.

While no one is credited with doing the film's special effects (one can assume it was Gordon with assist from his then-wife, Flora M. Gordon, as per usual), the most impressive one is the brief appearance of a woolly mammoth, which was actually swiped from One Million B.C. (1940). The credits says it's based on a short story called "Beast from Outer Space" written by Gordon and Al Zimbalist (also one of the producers). Tom Gries, who'd later go on to make the excellent Manson TV movie Helter Skelter (1976), adapted the story. Many of these same people were behind another film called Serpent Island (1954), which Gries directed and Gordon produced.

There have been several DVD double feature releases for this 63 minute film. The first was from Retromedia, who paired it with the gorilla reincarnation (?) film The Bride and the Beast (1958). The second is from Kit Parker / VCI, who've paired it up with The Jungle (1952), which involves woolly mammoths in India. This was also ridiculed in a 1990 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which itself was released on DVD by Shout! Factory.

R.I.P. B.I.G.

★