REVIEW: THE LAST DINOSAUR
REVIEW: THE LAST DINOSAUR: DEEP EXPLORATION SHIP "POLAR BORER"
PRODUCTION: ALEXANDER GRASSHOFF / SHUSEI KOTANI [ 1977 ] 106' / 95'
PRODUCTION: RANKIN - BASS / TSUBURAYA PRODUCTIONS.
CAST: RICHARD BOONE, JOAN VAN ARK
CAST: STEVEN KEATS, LUTHER RACKLEY
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:
WTF-FILMOMETER: A STRANGE BLEND OF MISOGYNISM AND RUBBER SUITS

Those of you who have been reading this site for the past several months may have started to realize that I have begun reliving my film-going childhood vicariously through this website. This review will be no exception and further ventures into the film world of my past should be expected.

THE LAST DINOSAUR is one of the earliest films I can recall seeing - coming even before the likes of THE GIANT CLAW [1957] or the various Godzilla epics. Vivid, if entirely skewed, memories of sitting on my parents' bed and watching this film still linger on in the back of my mind. Two scenes from the movie, in particular, traumatized me for some time - the first being the near trampling of Joan Van Ark by a rear-projected Unitatherium and the second being the sad and squishy end of Tetsu Nakamura. While its nearly impossible, now, for me to believe that this film has any capacity to frighten much of anyone at any walk of life I can clearly recall being quite scared of it myself. . .

How times do change.

I haven't a clue as to how old I was at that first viewing - it's possible that I was as young as four - but it's hardly the last time that THE LAST DINOSAUR would crop up in my youth. In the days when the TBS cable network sucked considerably less than it does now they used to run weekend marathons of dinosaur films, primarily including THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT [1975] and its sequel as well as AT THE EARTH'S CORE [1976] and the film in question today. While more movies were broadcast, no doubt, these four are the ones that I can remember seeing most regularly. Indeed, there was at least one occasion in my elementary school career where I grew quite perturbed at the fact that, while away for Thanksgiving in Washington, D.C., the VCR at my grandparents' house had failed to record such a marathon (though it had been programmed).

That one had been sadly missed, but I would go on to catch many more of them in the years before TBS changed its format from mostly crap to all crap. Towards the end of elementary school I picked up a bargain bin VHS of this film, which had become quite ingrained in my psyche by that point, at the local K-Mart. Its hard to think that the film could ever look worse than as presented on that horrid Mintex Entertainment release. Sourced from a murky video dupe of a 16mm television print and complete with bleeding colors, audio hiss, and sub par EP-speed mastering, this tape was how I viewed the film for a number of years.

Thanks to my dear friend over at CALCINATOR DEATH RAY that cassette-recorded abomination will never have to be removed from its tattered and crudely-illustrated cardboard sleeve again. . .

Thanks to him WTFFILM is now happy to own a DVD-R copy of the long out-of-print Japanese laserdisc of the film from the late 1980's. Though the contrast is off (black levels are far too light), this copy does present the film in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 (the Mintex VHS - and, I assume, most if not all other copies are cropped down to 1.33:1 from this and do not present the open matte version of the film) and at the full running time of 106 minutes. While I didn't notice any obvious additional footage - I'm assuming most of what was cut for the American television version of the film was dialogue and, while some have stated that the fish-eating scene is absent from US video releases (it's been in every cut I've seen), I noticed no added dinosaur bits - seeing THE LAST DINOSAUR in its original aspect ratio was something of a revelation and more than enough reason for a review.

THE LAST DINOSAUR follows, primarily, the exploits of one Masten Thrust (Richard Boone) - the dreary head of the character totem to the left. Graced with a beer gut and embarrassingly old fashioned, Masten is supposed to be the richest man in the world. An oil tycoon by trade and a big game hunter for fun, Masten is also supposed to be the womanizer to end all womanizers. Given that he looks more than a little like a silly putty ode to a dead Walter Matthau, one can only assume that the women he bags are looking less at his face than at his wallet. After giving his latest fling a huge gold bullet and leaving her by his car at the airport, Masten heads off to take care of business. It seems his latest project - the Polar Borer - has recently met with something of a snag. . .

At a press conference it is revealed that Polar Borer expedition 5 went off course while searching for oil under the polar ice cap and inexplicably found itself in an area of warm weather. Four of the crew left to investigate the oasis at the top of the world, leaving junior team member Chuck Wade (Steven Keats) behind to mope. An unfortunate choice, it seems, as they were all eaten by a huge Tyrannosaurus Rex shortly thereafter, leaving only Chuck alive to tell the tale. In no time at all, Masten mounts another Polar Borer expedition to find the oasis - and the dinosaur - again. The team will include Chuck, an imminent but useless Japanese doctor by the name of Kawamoto, a Masai tracker named Bunta (6'10" former NBA player Lester Rackley), and one lucky reporter.

Enter Joan Van Ark as the famous news photographer Frankie Bands. She's braved just about every situation worth braving, and now she wants to brave Masten's dinosaur expedition. Masten vehemently refuses to allow her to join the team - in spite of the press pool voting unanimously for her to go - until the fateful night of the expedition's going-away party. After performing a pathetic striptease, talking about hunting, and dragging Masten back to a bedroom to show him her pictures, Frankie gives in to the carnal desires of Thrust's personal Polar Borer and, thusly, ensures herself a place on the expedition.

Audiences are given ample time to vomit before the expedition gets properly underway - the team, sans Masten, dons white jumpsuits and helmets and heads into the Polar Borer (which looks more or less like a ripoff of the Iron Mole from the previous year's AT THE EARTH'S CORE). The countdown commences and, before you know it, the machine has laser-bored through the sea floor and popped up in the warm water oasis - we know it's the warm water oasis because an embarrassingly floppy Pteranodon is there to greet us. The group disembarks from the borer and heads to shore in an inflatable raft. After a moment or so of talk they are charged by a grossly disproportional and potentially retarded Unitatheriam (misidentified as a ceratopsian dinosaur by Chuck, the team's supposed paleontology expert). Frankie is nearly crushed to death by the spastic and lumbering animal thanks to her first (of several) display of utter stupidity in the face of danger - Masten saves her in the nick of time, sadly, and the group sets up camp.

The next morning everyone sets out in search of the as-of-yet elusive Tyrannosaur (referred to more regularly as "that dinosaur", "that animal", and "that damn thing") sans Doctor Kawamoto, who stays behind at camp to look at mushrooms and stuff. After Frankie is given a chance to make a fool of herself from the back of a giant turtle, the group discovers very large Tyrannosaur tracks. It isn't long before Bunta is up a tree and scowering the landscape for the beasty as the rest of the team looks on. He appears in short order - though described throughout the film as being 20 feet tall and weighing 8 tons, the Tyrannosaur on display is easily twice that or more. Bunta jumps down from the tree, Frankie and Chuck run, and Masten wastes no time in breaking the oath he made with Dr. Kawamoto - that he would only study the dinosaur - by shooting.

If (and if, how) he misses is never really made clear, but the perturbed and floppy beasty makes his slow way after his would-be discoverers just the same. A riverside confrontation takes place that ends with the dinosaur being speared by Bunta and wandering off in the opposite direction. Chuck lectures Masten as Frankie scowls on - the two of them just can't believe that a BIG GAME HUNTER could possibly want to HUNT an animal that was making every possible effort, albeit slowly, to do the same to him. This is only the first of many confrontations about the welfare of the dinosaur that will occur throughout the film and they don't get any less ridiculous from here on out.

In the meanwhile, the dinosaur has wandered off in search of easier prey - after catching and eating what must have been a colossal fish the pesky critter heads over to the encampment of the Polar Borer team. It isn't long before the place is a mess and the consistently-referred-to-as-brilliant Dr. Kawamoto is people patty. Soon the Tyrannosaurus is heaving the Polar Borer out of the water and into a prehistoric bone yard, where the best of the film's paleontological missteps resides. While moving the ship about the Tyrannosaur accidentally stumbles upon an absolutely gigantic Triceratops that has, somehow, managed to bury itself in a cliff face. The two, predictably, do battle and, after a bit of truly terrible rubber suit choreography, the Tyrannosaur is victorious.

Masten, Frankie, and Chuck return to the campsite to find it in shambles - the foremost vows from that moment that he will hunt down and kill the big-ass Tyrannosaurus that ate his buddy. Nearly four months of time pass from that point during a single intermittent scene of the mission captain and one of his lackey's talking back at home base, and when we get back to the team they are being besieged by yet another of the film's scientific blunders - the furry native people of the oasis. Weaponless and growing desperate for food, Masten builds a crossbow out of scrap metal and wood and goes to war with the natives - it's the worst kind of old fashioned American machismo at work. A native girl starts following the group around and is eventually taken in - soon the team is teaching her to cook and clean just because she's inferior to them intellectually and seems interested.

Add in a few wisecracks about what a woman's place in life is and it becomes obvious that, in just four short months, the group has effectively destroyed the idea of sexual equality and un-abolished slavery to boot. Never noticed by myself while viewing this as a child, the constant references to the native girl's intellectual (and, presumed, evolutionary) inferiority and the pathetic way in which she is taught to do menial things like pluck chickens and wash Frankie's hair really grates on me these days. There's still a giant dinosaur bandying about the oasis, however, and who will survive the conclusion (featuring Masten, the dinosaur, a catapult, and one of the most embarrassing special effects and editing blunders I've seen in recent history) is something you guys will just have to discover for yourselves.

Pushing all happy childhood memories aside, its sad for me to write that THE LAST DINOSAUR really hasn't survived the test of time. The plot - an amalgamation of elements from better films like THE LAND UNKNOWN [1957], THE LOST WORLD [1925], and AT THE EARTH'S CORE [1976] - is plodding and generally un-involving and the special effects sequences helmed by Tsuburaya productions, while plentiful, aren't of a high enough caliber to do much of anything to save the proceedings.

Matte work throughout the film is reasonably well done but can't stand up to the stampede of unnecessarily floppy rubber monsters - I find the Tyrannosaurus to be particularly disappointing, though that may be simply because it gets the majority of the special effects screen time. While the two-man Triceratops is considerably less convincing and the laws-of-physics breaking Pteranodons potentially more laughable, the mighty and enormous Tyrannosaur, with his inconsistently shaped head, comfortingly mammalian eyes, and eternally flapping lower jaw, is the real killer here. Any attempts by the directors to build tension and put their characters in danger are laid to waste by the appearance of a monster too unconvincing to support the dramatic weight it's supposed to have.

Screenwriter William Overgard is to blame for many of the rest of the films obvious problems - he fills the film with monster movie cliches and a cast of lead characters that are unlovable at best and uninteresting at worst. The humorous conception of the character of Masten Thrust is one of the few high points (entertainment wise) of the film. Overgard worked himself overtime to ensure that Masten's masculinity was never in question - be it through his many affairs, his unwavering "my way or nothing" attitude, or the fact that his name is plastered on damn near everything in the film in bold capital letters (hopefully the Freudian implications of the word THRUST dominating the side of the Polar Borer have not escaped my clever readers), Masten's bombastic over-characterization is never anything but absolutely hysterical.

TV director Alex Grasshoff and Rankin/Bass regular Shusei Kotani (THE IVORY APE [1981] and THE BERMUDA DEPTHS [1978]) provide minimal direction for the project, succeeding only in covering the constant non-action of the film from several angles and making sure that everything was properly in frame. The musical score, provided by Kenjiro Hirose (GAMERA VS. VIRAS [1968]), ranges from being dated to completely annoying as far as quality is concerned - the plodding theme that accompanies the Tyrannosaur helps insure that many of the special effects sequences are ruined on an auditory level as well. A popular cast featuring Richard Boone and Joan Van Ark (and even William Ross, of THE GREEN SLIME [1968] fame, as the mission commander) is given nothing to do, more or less, and fails to elevate the film above anything but schlock level.

It's a pity this film isn't more enjoyable, particularly since it was such an integral part of my youth. Rankin/Bass' most popular foray into purely adult entertainment only serves to prove that they should never have stopped producing stop motion Christmas specials. The special effects aren't terribly special, the storyline is dull and unoriginal, and the entire film is little more than an exercise in tedium - originally intended for theatrical release, its easy to see how this one was kicked down to a TV-only release here in the United States.

Though still a dear old friend, THE LAST DINOSAUR goes unrecommended from this reviewer.