FANTASIA OBSCURA: Some Dinosaurs, a Neanderthal, and a Bunch of Stereotypes
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you’re promised one thing, but end up with something different — something that you didn’t know you needed until you got it…
Dinosaurus! (1960)
(Released by Universal Pictures; Dir: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.)
There’s an expectation that if you mention something in the title, you should get it. If you title something Gone With the Wind, something has to go before the end. If you call something She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, someone’s got to wear that ribbon. If your book is called The Man in the High Castle — okay, not a good example, but we’re just dropping Phillip K. Dick into this at random, so anyway…
So, if you have more than one prehistoric beast in your title (even if it’s misspelled), the film should have multiple animals, and on that front, if no other, then Dinosausus! meets its meager goals.
Set in what’s supposed to be St. Croix, where some brief location shooting was lensed (though mostly shot in what looks to be the parts of the back lot near the Gilligan’s Island set), the film gives us beyond its titular primitive fauna overused discarded stock characters. We get Bart Thompson (Ward Ramsey), the strong Anglo bringing civilization to the island by building a harbor, during which he uncovers a Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus in what looks to be suspended animation; his best pal Chuck (Paul Lukather) who stands aside when it’s time for the hero to shine; Bart’s Anglo girlfriend Betty (Kristina Hanson), who’s there for the scenery and to be threatened every so often to keep the film moving; the Governor of the island’s representative, the swarthy conniving Mike Hacker (Fred Engelberg), who hates progress and wants a big cut of whatever happens because, well, you can guess why; and the cute native orphan Julio (Alan Roberts), who in addition to checking off his requisite boxes fills the need for a he’s-a-kid-so-he-knows-all–about-dinosaurs quotient.
The rest of the support fills the uncomfortable needs of the script to put “exotics” on this island; they even have a drunk Irishman in Wayne Treadway’s “Dumpy,” which, coming so close to Kennedy’s election as President, feels wrong on a whole complete level of its own. By the time the two prehistoric beasts get revived by lightning strikes on the beach, you almost want to root for the T-Rex to do to all the cast what his descendant did to that lawyer in Jurassic Park.
There’s not a lot here that Yeaworth bothers to bring to the picture. The fact that his third, quickly funded film by the same church group that mounted The Blob shows none of the verve and skill that the first film did keeps this from being compelling viewing. Even had The Blob’s star, Steve McQueen, been available for the role of Thompson as reported in some accounts, there’s very little he could have done with the part to save the film.
As it so happened, salvation for this film that saves it from itself comes not at McQueen’s hands, but at the hands of Gregg Martell.
Martell, a character actor who was getting steady work since his discharge after World War II, had the role of the Neanderthal, who was also frozen in time at the same time as the dinosaurs — hey, like there’s any Paleolithic accuracy in here at all; roll with us, it’s worth it.
The Neanderthal, who’s frozen with the dinosaurs, gets awakened when the beasts do and has his own adventures wandering the island. We cut away every now and then from the dinosaurs, and watch as the caveman encounters such modern conveniences as windows and toilets, trying to come to terms with technology literally thousands of years outside of his experience. The scenes with Julio the orphan, who tries to help him navigate a modern kitchen, is when we see the real potential for the film and get treated to the storyline the picture should have followed.
Like going to see the Monkees and finding Jimi Hendrix is the opening act (which some fans got to experience), we wonder how two badly animated dinosaur puppets managed to retain the focus when we have a well realized caveman stealing the film from them. Had the picture been less The Lost World and more Encino Man, the film might have been a full-fledged classic in its own right, as opposed to a discarded throwaway as forgotten as most of the cast.
Of all the actors with speaking parts, only two members would find considerable work afterwards, with half of them never seeing another credit added onto their CV. Martell, like all good character actors, kept being in demand in TV and films for the rest of the 1960s, while Lukather got TV gigs through the mid-1980s, then switched to voice talent gigs for video games.
Even the brontosaurus got more work after the film than Engelberg and Hanson; the model dinosaur makes a brief appearance on TV in The Twilight Zone episode, “The Odyssey of Flight 33” which evokes the famous quote about small roles and small actors.
NEXT TIME: Speaking of there being only small actors, in all likelihood when Stanislavski said it, he wasn’t thinking in terms of millimeters…
