Just Screenshots: King Dinosaur (1955)

King Dinosaur (1955)

Although he's universally (and righteously) considered as one of the worst directors in history, I admit to be a fan of the notorious [Bert I. Gordon]! ... the writer/director/producer of several inept and incredibly low-budgeted horror and Sci-Fi movies during the 50's, 60's and 70's. "King Dinosaur" was his debut feature in 1955 and it still stands as probably the worst dinosaur movie there is to find .... "King Dinosaur" contains all the bad and laughable elements that the MST3K crowd enjoys so much: horrible acting performances, a thoroughly idiotic script and dumb dialogs, footage that is borrowed from equally bad films, cheap set pieces and small, harmless animals that are ridiculously enlarged in order to look like gigantic menacing creatures. The film nevertheless starts promising and in a typically 1950's manner, with a stern voice-over informing us that an entirely new and never before noticed (!) planet has entered our solar system. Earth has got a new neighbor and all the great intellectual minds agree that this new planet – Nova – has the same inhabitable atmosphere. The good old US of A promptly puts together a space expedition featuring four scientists; two men and two women that are romantically involved. FOUR people, none of whom have any astronaut experience, is apparently enough for the most important mission of all time! When they arrive on Nova, it actually looks like they accidentally landed somewhere in Montana. There are forests, lakes, deer and honey bears. One of the crew members even wrestles with a crocodile! Only around two-thirds into the film, half of the mission's crew heads out to a volcanic island on the planet and comes face to face with the titular King Dinosaur. Two-thirds! Don't name your film "King Dinosaur" if the dinosaur is only a footnote in the whole stupid thing! Anyways, the character states that he resembles a T- Rex, but in fact it's an ordinary lizard filmed through a magnifying glass. He's supposed to be a relentless monster, but it's a damn lizard and they can't act, so he actually looks kind of cute and completely unaware of what he's doing. As said, this is one hopelessly inept hodgepodge of a film. 50's Sci-Fi flicks, as silly and cheap they generally are, have a certain enchantment value. "King Dinosaur", however, has no such thing whatsoever. It's a dumb ensemble of moronic plotting, unsympathetic characters and rubbish special effects. I would still warmly recommended it to bad cinema fanatics, though, because there are too many idiotic details to list! And at least the film is never boring, like so many of its contemporary genre colleagues. (IMDB Coventry)