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Wednesday, 7 March 2012

Been watching: Planet of the Dinosaurs.

The poster makes this film look infinitely cooler than it actually is.
  Deep in uncharted space a starship has a catastrophic reactor failure. Only one shuttle and a motley collection of crew and passengers  survive to crashland onto a convenient planet. 
 Unfortunately  the planet happens to be occupied. 
By Dinosaurs.
Oops.

  The one thing everybody agrees on is that the dinosaurs are done quite well. Or at least done well by late 1970s low-budget standards. 
  And this is low-budget.  They certainly didn't spend more than they had to on the actors, most of whom are terrible. Available evidence suggests that the producers recruited people who couldn't get work in porn. That would certainly explain the natty facial sported by almost every single male character.   The one exception - the guy who looks like a beefed up Doug McClure and acts like a tranked up Doug McClure -  loses his shirt as soon as our heroes make planetfall and never manages to find it again. 
 Ah, but is there fanservice from the ladies? 
Sort of. 
The token blonde strips down to her underwear to go for a swim and quickly and fatally discovers why this is a bad idea on a world populated by large carnivorous reptiles.
There's also a random outbreak of drunken gogo dancing later on. The young lady concerned then  makes the tactical error of running the wrong way when a T. Rex pops up in the next scene. And I mean pops up.  Something the size of an elephant manages to sidle up to within spitting distance of a snogging couple before one of them notices.
D'you think the producers are trying to tell us something? 
In the interests of gender equality, the prize for "Biggest retard" goes to the obnoxious rich-boy who has spent the entire film being a spoilt, whiney prick. He stumbles across a clutch of melon sized eggs and overjoyed by the prospect of a decent omelette begins loudly calling for the mother to pop back and say hi. Obviously eggs that big mean a frigging huge chicken, right? 
 He's on a planet that has dinosaurs on it. 
 Dinosaurs lay eggs.
It never occurs to him that maybe he really doesn't want to meet the mother after all.
  Note the big-ass spikey horn. Guess who ends up getting a really close look at it?

  Can you imagine a cross between "Starcrash" and "One Million BC"?  Except with less budget, no name actors whatsoever and some quite impressive facial hair. There's also a soundtrack that entirely consists of somebody doodling on a Mini Moog.
 See that poster up at the top of the page? If the film was even a quarter as entertaining as the poster promised, it would be a decent way to kill a couple of hours. As it is, fast forward through the bits that don't have dinosaurs and maybe play a game of "Which 70s Arena Rock Band Does Each Character Belong In" 
A short taster, if you're interested.

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