When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth – 1971
I’m having difficulty assessing a movie that was so terrible in so many respects, and yet give proper credit to its many competent special effects. On the one hand, the film was little more than an exploitation film, an excuse to have mostly naked men and women running around and being primitive. There were gorgeous women with big boobs in fur bikinis wrestling in the waves, and super fit hunks in loincloths wielding spears against stop-motion animated dinosaurs. Never-mind that humans and dinosaurs never existed on the Earth at the same time. But what do I know? The film was popular at the box-office.
Maybe it was because, as far as those Claymation monsters went, they were filmed surprisingly well… mostly. I am reminded of the 1949 Best Special Effects Winner, Mighty Joe Young, or even the 1964 nominee, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Both of those movies also used miniature figures and stop-motion animation, and did it pretty well. But they were still noticeably clunky on the screen. In this movie, the motion of the dinosaurs appeared much smoother and thus more realistic. Somehow, the technique was improved, making the way the dinosaurs moved more real than anyone had ever seen before.
Not only that, but the way the dinosaurs interacted with the actors was also pretty impressive. We know that they were miniature models that were filmed and composited into the scene, but when the actors threw a spear at a dinosaur, we got to see it stick. There was even a flying pterodactyl that attacked an unfortunate caveman and carried him to the top of a mountain. He was able to use his spear to tear the monster’s wing, causing it to fall to its death.
But the problem was that the effects were too inconsistent. For example, there was a scene in which the cavemen fought a triceratops. The dinosaur looked and moved wonderfully, but only until the battle was over. As it retreated to its cave, its motion looked clunky and jarring. And that pterodactyl, was amazingly detailed with really cool looking wings, in which you could see veins and arteries. But then you look at the creature’s head and it was as if it had been sculpted by a child.
And I have to make mention of some of the sub-par green-screen effects. In one scene, a dinosaur is set on fire. As the smoke and flames rose, they curiously vanished when they reached a certain height on the screen. Or sometimes the actors were obviously backlit, with no light sources behind them. At least the movie’s climax was done right. A giant tidal wave rose from the ocean and nearly sunk the raft onto which our prehistoric heroes were clinging. The massive winds and waves were well done. But there were just too many effects that were either executed poorly, or just looked bad because of the hit-or-miss production design.