Watch King Dinosaur For Free

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Bert Gordon may have hit the nadir of his career with King Dinosaur. This one is a stinker of massive proportions just like the creatures discovered on a new planet in the solar system.The first third of the film is documentary like with the solemn tones of Marvin Miller telling us how four select scientists, two men and two women got chosen to explore the new planet Nova. After that the players take over none of whom you will ever have heard of.A lot of nature films fill in as the explorers discover a planet that looks like a giant national park. But there's a lake and a mysterious looking island in the middle. So two of them paddle over in a rubber raft.The island is Jurassic Park with stock footage from One Million BC used as it is in a slew of cheap science fiction films. What to do, but blow the place up.And for that the expedition has packed an atomic bomb. With a timer too. Just set it for a half hour delay and then run and paddle for your life. The end the island blows up so future explorers will never see a glimpse of real prehistoric life. To think scientists did this and none of them is a nuclear physicist.It's one of the worst science fiction films ever done and definitely one of the worst productions to come out of Lippert Pictures which was on its last legs.If you watch it you'll find it frighteningly ghastly.

Note: Anyone who is sensitive and dislikes the idea of watching reptiles rip each other apart should NOT watch this film. PETA members in particular are warned! This is a sad excuse for a film, but it is so bad that bad movie buffs might enjoy watching it just to laugh at how bad a bad movie can be. Did I mention it was bad?! The most obvious problem with the film is that the film makers took a ton of stock footage of practically EVERYTHING and strung them together in a "brilliant" attempt to pad the film and stretch it out to just over an hour while doing little actual filming. At the beginning of the movie, tons of stock footage of jet planes, V-2 rockets and military stuff fills the screen. Later, on the "other planet", we are treated to even more stock shots--most of which are nature clips that are sloppily integrated and rather irrelevant. It's made worse when the actors(?) all react rather poorly to these wonderful delights! Uggghh! I don't think I've seen another film (other than documentaries) that used so much stock footage.The film is about an expedition to a new planet that just appears out of the blue and drifts into an orbit near the Earth. How convenient, huh?! The four best and brightest(???????) that the USA had to offer would seem to indicate that people in the 1950s were all idiots, as again and again they do stupid things that anyone with a brain or training would not do. First, they explore so far from their ship that they get lost. Second, at night when one of them is supposed to be keeping watch, he and his hot babe go out in the darkness and he nearly gets torn to pieces by one of hundreds of animals that look EXACTLY like those on Earth. Third, every time anything bad happens, the blonde lady begins screaming or crying hysterically--even though she's supposed to be a respected scientist. Fourth, although they are to briefly survey the planet and return to Earth, they go way out of their way--many miles and into dangerous situations that they should have avoided. And, speaking of dangerous situations, the dinosaurs from the title are such scary monsters as iguanas and baby alligators that are filmed up close fighting. Oooh, scary stuff, huh?! To make things worse, the film makers actually toss the iguana onto the gator and just let them fight for real!! That poor iguana!! Even though in the film it supposedly wins this fight with the gator, you can clearly see the gator tearing into the iguana's flesh. There are also fur-covered elephants and giant armadillos (yikes).Although most of the planet seems awfully nice (except for the island filled with monstrous reptiles), the team's response to these discoveries is to nuke the island! Yes, I said nuke it!! I think the film makers chose to do this because, frankly, they had footage of a nuclear explosion (even though there was a hair stuck on the lens) and couldn't resist using it--even if it made no sense!! And the ending credits appear over top the mushroom cloud as the film then fades! Overall, a truly awful film--and one that even Ed Wood would have probably disliked! By the way, I could be wrong, but I think the 'pet' they discovered on the planet was a kinkajou.

This is one of the worst 'monster island' type early fifties cheapies. It's note worthy only, however, for the mind boggling ending. This time the 'monster island' is actually a new Earth like planet, Nova, that has suddenly appeared near the Earth. The premise, development, dialog and acting are full of laughable 'science' making this an outstanding choice for Mystery Science Theater 3000. For some this also means it qualifies for the "So bad, it's good," category, but this is just plain bad film making. The great 'SBIG' movies, like Ed Wood's 'Citizen Kane,' 'Glen or Glenda' (1953) or 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' (1959) have absurd or unique qualities in the writing, photography, use of stock footage and acting.You always hope that the dinosaurs in these films will not be men in monster suits as in 'Unknown Island' (1948), or close ups of iguanas and salamanders. But no-- there are the iguanas, but we also get a gila monster and a Kodomo dragon (monitor lizard).It was Roger Corman who broke ground by creating his own monsters for his mid fifties science fiction films, definitely the peaks of the fifties genre with such wonders as 'The Day the World Ended,' (1955), the amazing story of the Ultimate Collaborator (Lee Van Cleef) in the under rated 'It! Conquered the World,' (1956), 'Not of This Earth' (1957), and 'Attack of the Crab Monsters' (1957), leading the way. But not Bert I. Gordon.Usually when the characters first land and see a volcano, you know that at the end of the movie, the volcano is going to explode and destroy the island, a cliché done to death in countless movies (and serials) since the 1930s. But wait! This one ends differently! As two of the four scientists rush to the island to save the others, the man is lugging a rectangular box, and as they are reunited, running away from the 'dinosaurs' he says "I brought an atomic bomb. This is a good time to use it!" !! He sets the timer for 30 minutes, and they escape in rubber rafts to the mainland, hiding behind a knoll just as the A-Bomb goes off. As the mushroom cloud rises and blooms, one man says to the other, "Well, we did it!" The other replies, "Yes, we certainly did! We brought civilization to Nova!" Your jaw drops in disbelief. The unintentional meaning of this according to our current reading (i.e., Civilization equals destruction by man-- see also the Catholic Church's list of new sins; Oppenheimer's naming the bomb Shiva, and the new definition of man as the species destroying the earth through global warming and causing extinction of other species) must be in stark contrast to the fifities' meanings, I'm assuming, which must combine "wiping out evils paves the way for civilization," and America's ability to wield such a weapon 'proves' that we are the forefront of 'civilization,' both referenced by our dropping of the A-Bomb on Japan.Is that what they were thinking? Other than the ending, this movie was not absurd or well written enough to merit more than a 1.NOTE: The current DVD version has another Lippert production, 'The Jungle' (1952), supposedly filmed in India, with a great Indian sound track, and some pre-Bollywood native dancing. Filmed in sepia, it's a better film.

OK, never mind that this film seems to be 30 minutes of actual movie time, padded with another 33 minutes of stock footage (some of it swiped from 'One Million BC') process shots and traveling mattes. Never mind the 'emotional scientists', especially the blond housewife who goes to pieces so often she should have come pre-assembled like a box of Legos. Never mind the brain-dead science on display, where Planet Nova appears to be exactly like Wisconsin, except for the lemurs, giant bees, rubber alligators, and a lake with an island full of dinosaurs. Never mind that at one point, the blond lady says, "Maybe we don't need to keep watch. Joe (the lemur) seems to be pretty good at shouting alarms!"I can get past all that, in the name of 50's sci-fi conventions and low budgets. But 5-6 minutes from the end, after one couple has rescued the other from the cave where they were trapped, and the two 'dinosaurs' are wrestling with each other, the blond towheaded guy says, and I am pretty sure I got this right: "I brought the Atomic Bomb. I think this would be a good time to use it!"So not only do the scientists nuke the island and kill everything on it for no good reason (the friggin dinosaurs never leave the island, and the party could have simply rowed away from the island and never seen the dinos again)...they set the timer for 30 MINUTES and trust they can get across the island ON FOOT past all the other dangerous wildlife, get into their rubber rafts, paddle them across the lake to the other shore and find shelter. In THIRTY FREAKING MINUTES!?!? I realize this is just an excuse to try to inject some suspense into the ending, but for crying out loud! That timer clearly could have been for several hours, and the scientists could have STROLLED back, instead of running in a panic for their lives. (There is a hilarious shot in the rubber raft as they near shore where the towhead appears to be repeatedly shoving the blond lady back down on her face for no coherent reason.) I feel bad for the four actors in this silly exercise in White Manifest Destiny. A couple of them went on the do a lot more work, but working on this thing must have seemed like a death-knell to their careers at the time. And if there was any justice, Bert Gordon wouldn't have had a career after this movie either.1 star added to the deserved 'awful' rating for sheer goofiness, and also for the naiveté and optimism that permeates the film.