A young boy named Julio walks into a restaurant in which the two adult leads are having dinner. Julio interrupts their meal to show them his two toys, a brontosaurus and a tyrannosaurus rex. He says he got them by sending in cereal box lids. One would think toys this cheap would have came inside the box.
What follows is an awful piece of exposition, wherein Julio explains that the brontosaurus is an herbivore and the T-rex likes to eat meat. You know, just in case anyone in the audience wasn’t aware of this fact. Oh, and wouldn’t you know it? A dive to the bottom of the ocean just off the island has found those same two dinosaurs frozen in time! Wow!
Sadly, that brief interaction is the highlight of the dialogue in Dinosaurus!, an oddly titled 1960 disaster from Universal. It’s the story of a small island populated by natives and a group trying to turn it into a vacation spot. When they try to clear some of the land underwater for no apparent reason, their bombs reveal the dinosaurs.
Instead of leaving them down there for a scientific crew to excavate, they grab the bulldozers and pull. What could possibly go wrong with two dinosaurs frozen in suspended animation being pulled onto land? Apparently nothing if you lived in 1960.
A massive lightning storm awakens the beasts, along with a caveman, who somehow must have frozen to the dinosaurs way back when (even though the two never existed in the same era, but let’s give that one a pass). The caveman, played by Gregg Martell, invades a home and is amazed by the sights. It’s one of the few bright spots in the film as he discovers mirrors, plastic fruit, a radio, and kitchen utensils.
The dinosaurs begin to rampage through a plastic forest, animated poorly via stop motion (or controlled via puppetry). Not all of the blame lies with model creator Marcel Delgado. Steve McQueen was originally planned for the lead role after his performance in The Blob, but he was deemed too difficult to work with. Undoubtedly, the budget dropped when he did.
Universal also cut the model time short as well. Delgado worked on the 1925 Lost World, ’33 King Kong, ‘53 War of the Worlds, and more. There is no loss of talent, but Universal only gave him two weeks to design the models when they promised up to six. It’s hard to imagine any executive seeing these creations on screen and giving them thumbs up.
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