THE LAST DINOSAUR

Steven Keats and Richard Boone

THE LAST DINOSAUR (1977). Directors: Alexander Grasshoff and Tsugunobu Kotani.

"A creature forty feet tall and weighing eight tons with the mind of a pea has just destroyed one of the greatest minds of the century."

 Masten Thrust Jr. (Richard Boone of I Bury the Living) is not only a famous hunter but one of the world's wealthiest men. He has developed a vehicle called the Polar Borer, that uses lasers to drill through the Polar Ice Cap, discovering a hidden world in a prehistoric valley below that is warmed by a volcano. Four men have already died at the teeth of a T-Rex, that appears to be the only one of its kind, although there are other dinosaurs in the valley. Returning to this land with the only survivor of the first expedition, Chuck (Steven Keats), Thrust also brings along Professor Kawamoto (Tetsu Nakamura of The Manster); an expert and silent seven foot tall tracker named Bunta (Luther Rackley); and a perky photographer named Francesca (Joan Van Ark). Although the original plan is only to study the tyrannosaurus, when it proves aggressive and even squashes the poor professor underfoot, Thrust determines to destroy the creature. But then the big beast snatches up the Polar Borer in its teeth and the whole group is stranded in the valley with time running out ...

The rubber T-Rex

The Last Dinosaur has a workable plot line, but it borrows very heavily from the film The Land Unknown, and the Polar Borer (which hardly looks large enough to hold so many people) reminds one of a similar machine in At the Earth's Core. Of course it's just another imitation of The Lost World minus diamonds and "fire gods." A bigger problem is the FX work, which features some crude but effective process shots and a rubber monster brought to life with "suitmation" -- a man in an dinosaur suit. The creature also lets out metallic wails that are borrowed from Godzilla. The shame is that the film does manage to work up some suspense -- as in Land Unknown there's a small window of opportunity to get out of the valley if they can survive the beast's attacks -- and this could have made a very exciting picture had Ray Harryhausen brought the creatures to life. A battle between the T-Rex and a triceratops does not compare favorably to a similar battle in Harryhausen's The Valley of Gwangi.

Bantu takes after T-Rex with a spear -- good luck with that!

The acting in the movie is professional, if uneven, with Richard Boone creating a colorful if contradictory character, and William Overgard's screenplay does do its best to bring some of the people in it to life. There's some decent art direction in the movie, but the score is pretty terrible. This was meant to be a theatrical film, but it was released to television in a somewhat edited version. The film makes much of the fact that the title refers to Boone as much as it does to the tyrannosaurus.

Verdict: Hardly the "last" dinosaur we've ever seen in film. **1/4.