The Last Dinosaur (1977)

As I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for dinosaur movies.  Especially the pre-CGI ones.  Representing dinosaurs in screen prior to CGI required considerable ingenuity - the best were achieved via stop motion animation, but this was time consuming and expensive, so budget minded producers were always on the look out for cheaper ways to recreate dinosaurs on screen.  Photographically enlarged lizards and other modern reptiles, often with stuck on horns, fins and frills, were probably the most popular option, if the least accurate.  In reality, most of these 'dinosaurs' were actually stock footage from 1940's One Million BC, endlessly recycled through ever cheaper B-movies. Colour versions were used as late as 1960 for Irwin Allen's The Lost World and stock footage of them was then used over and over in films and TV series.  Men in suits were another option - one used extensively  in 1948's Unknown Island.  As well as using photographically enlarged lizards (in, for once, newly filmed footage) and a man-in-a-suit to create its dinosaurs, The Land Unknown (1956) also added another method: a life size mechanical model, in this case an Elasmosaurus, (strictly speaking not a dinosaur, but a giant sea reptile of the same era).  By the time of The Last Dinosaur (1977), with public knowledge about what dinosaurs really looked like much higher, either stop motion or various forms of puppets, (cousins to that mechanical Elasmosaurus), had become the norm for representing them on screen, (although, in truth, there seemed to be very few dinosaur pictures made in the seventies).  This film, however, bucked the trend, opting to go the throwback route and use the man-in-a-suit method for creating its dinosaurs.

A US-Japanese co-production, The Last Dinosaur is a curious concoction that leaves one wondering exactly who the target audience was for the film.  The fact that the Rankin/Bass, who specialised in animated TV series, was the US end of the production might imply that it was aimed at younger audiences, a notion reinforced by the fact that the Japanese production company Tsuburaya also focused on producing family orientated 'tokutatso' TV series.  Yet the the levels of violence, the overall environmental themes of the film and the characters seem to indicate a more adult audience was intended.  Even the unsubtle naming of the main character, Maxton Thrust - an over sexed alpha male millionaire white hunter, implies a more adult orientation for the production.  Indeed, when we first meet Thrust, he is busy groping the breasts of a woman he is trying to impress with his hunting exploits aboard his private jet.  Yet the special effects - men in dinosaur suits stamping around a miniature set, (which matches poorly with the real Japanese locations used for the actors), back projected behind the actors - are of a level you'd find in a children's film.  The miraculously warm and fertile arctic valley that serves as the film's lost world is bordered by mountains that are all to obviously matte paintings, with obvious model pteranodons circling overhead on strings.  Of the other dinosaurs on view, the Triceratops and the Unitherium, (incorrectly identified by a geologist character as a ceratopsian, but actually a prehistoric giant mammal that lived several million years after the dinosaurs), both of which involve two men in a suit, pantomime horse style, are actually quite effective.  The last dinosaur of the title, a Tyrannosaurus, is much less effective.  Not only does it vary in size throughout the film, but it is all too obviously made of rubber, fake rocks causing indentations in its head that quickly push back out again, for instance.  It is never remotely convincing and consequently never truly threatening.

The plot itself certainly has potential, with a 'polar borer', used by Thrust's company to look for oil in the Arctic, discovering a lost world of prehistoric survivals, resulting in Thrust personally leading a small expedition to the valley, ostensibly to study the dinosaur.  Of course, Thrust really wants to hunt and kill the beast, the ultimate challenge for the hunter and, potentially, the crowning glory of his hunting career.  Naturally, the party get stranded there and alternately bicker and bond in order to survive, with Thrust's quest to kill the dinosaur becoming an obsession which threatens their chances of rescue.  The problem is that the script is packed with implausibilities, (even beyond the presence of living dinosaurs).  Thrust, for instance, has taken a Masai warrior with him to help track the Tyrannosaurus, yet this supposedly infallible tracker is twice taken unawares by the dinosaur.  The idea that a Tyrannosaur could sneak up on anyone, let alone a top tracker and hunter, is clearly absurd.  The characters, as well as being entirely unsympathetic, are also poorly drawn, with Thrust coming over as so obsessive, abrasive and borderline psychotic that it is impossible to believe that he might be capable of running a successful multi million dollar company, while the geologist hero is sanctimonious to the point of absurdity when he isn't being plain bland.  The main female character, a journalist attached to expedition, is inconsistent, one moment condemning Thrust, the next trying to help him kill the dinosaur or jumping into bed with him in order to get a story.  The whole thing also has a less than subtle sub-text (rammed home by the title song) that juxtaposes Thrust and the tyrannosaurus as being 'the last dinosaur', both effectively being creatures that have outlived their eras and now exist as living anachronisms.

The script doesn't help, with too many longueurs between dinosaur appearances and sudden narrative jumps that leave the viewer unsure of timescales.  (There is, for instance, a sudden jump between scenes, with the characters abruptly looking more disheveled, with torn clothes and covered in filth, with a throwaway snatch of dialogue indicating that two months has passed).  The tone also shifts abruptly from light-hearted scenes to some surprisingly brutal action, (including Thrust's cold blooded killing of a caveman with his home made crossbow in order to deter the rest of the tribe from harassing him and his companions - something that the otherwise sanctimonious geologist happily goes along with).  Yet, despite its inadequacies, The Last Dinosaur isn't unentertaining.  For one thing, Richard Boone gives a typically forceful performance as Thrust, rising above the script's poor characterisation to create the film's most memorable character.  Moreover, some of the model work provided by the Japanese co-producers is of a high standard, particularly the aircraft and he scenes of the 'polar borer' entering the valley.  As noted, though, others, such as the tyrannosaurus scenes, are far less successful.  In the end, your enjoyment of the film will be dependent upon whether or not you can reconcile the mismatch between children's TV type special effects in key scenes with an apparently serious script aimed at adults.  

Not surprisingly, the film failed to find an audience back in 1977, with US distributors passing on it, with The Last Dinosaur instead debuting, in truncated form, as a TV movie in the US.  In the UK, however, it was released at its full 106 minute running time on a double bill with a shortened version of William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977) (re-titled Wages of Fear).  A truly bizarre double feature, if ever there was.