King Dinosaur (1955)

All things must have a beginning. 1955’s King Dinosaur marked the start of producer/director Bert I. Gordon’s career. Eventually known as “Mr. BIG,” Gordon constructed a résumé chock full of B-grade creature features, most of which center around abnormally large animals or people. He also had a penchant for working as cheaply as possible, frequently using stock footage to pad the running times of his movies. It didn’t take him long to establish his trademarks as King Dinosaur includes copious amounts of archival footage and corner-cutting at every opportunity.

For the first 15 minutes — which is literally one-quarter of the movie — a narrator (Marvin Miller) informs the audience that a planet has wandered its way into our solar system. During a seemingly endless montage of men flipping switches and rockets launching, we’re told that the countries of Earth are preparing to launch an expedition to the planet. Of course, the United States manages to build the first spacecraft that doesn’t explode on the launching pad and assembles a crew of four scientists.

After what appears to be a World War II-era V2 rocket “lands” on the planet (via reversed film of a launch), we’re introduced to the first speaking actors in the film. The four scientists — two men and two women — might be the most inept crew of humans that could have been placed in such a situation. They seem to possess no scientific acumen or logic. The men shoot at anything that might be remotely dangerous and the women do little more than scream or placate the men.

While the movie’s poster proclaims that you’ll see a “prehistoric world of fantastic adventure come to life”, the film doles out snakes, owls, and birds as the primary wildlife the crew encounters. This “world of fantastic adventure” resembles my backyard. Eventually, though, the intrepid scientists encounter the titular “king dinosaur,” which is merely an iguana that is forced to fight an alligator and a monitor lizard to provide what the script passes off as action. I couldn’t help but feel bad that animals appeared to suffer for the making of this monumentally boring slog of a movie.

Fans of Z-grade 1950s science fiction should enjoy the laughable dialogue, fishbowl space helmets, and the inclusion of “Little Joe”, the honey bear the crew takes as a pet. Everyone else should steer clear of King Dinosaur.