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‘His time is past, there are no more,’ warbled Nancy Wilson in her theme song available here. ‘Oh, he is the last din-o-saur!’ This is a Rankin-Bass production who, along with the Japanese Toho Godzilla effects house, specialized in children’s television entertainment. The production team from the United States and Japan, directed by Shusei Kotani and Alex Grasshoff came up with this concept. They managed to blend the suitmation style that is common in kaiju cinema with bold style above average American television films and a heavy handed attempt at making a point. There is a distinctly classical lost world theme like in both The Land Unknown and the Savage Land from marvel comics, such that after an Antarctic mountain range there exists a temperate zone where prehistoric animals and tribes of cave dwelling Asians live.
Multi-millionaire Masten Thrust, an industrialist and a big-game hunter, is an eccentric character who is on an expedition to a lost world. He has a brain-sized ‘dried pea’ and gets eaten by an angry T-Rex while a tall Masai trapper, whiny Chuck Wade, and a photojournalist are trapped with him in a vehicle called the ‘Thrust Polar Borer.’ The photojournalist, along with other reporters, covered a different boring story related to the ‘Thrust Polar Borer’ and are stuck with Masten. Boone’s exciting narration spins this wild tale of Masten effortlessly. While some may call his attire peculiar like his leopard-trimmed safari hat, calling his character name over the top seems to be an understatement. While being deprived of modern weapons, angered and shipwrecked on a foreign island, William Overgards puts out a creative smirk. Throughout these events, Thrust comes to enjoy being unfettered by the weight of his wealth and the company of Uncle Sam. With a thick accent that implies him being English, he exclaims ‘Look what that magnificent bastard has done!’ Unleashing the great T Rex call. With all weapons destroyed and presence of the O Ringers, the capturers of Earth’s most deadly soldier came along, this was indeed the time to be captured.
The character ‘Thurst’ may come across as dull, but his cinematic debut against a dinosaur has him as the center of attention. It is with his notorious outlandish behavior where we are able to escape the tiresome mundanity that formulaic scripts provide, which is why I can appreciate the craftsmanship of the other Lost World movies released between his time and 1977.
Elucidating all of the underlying issues related to a woman’s perspective on accessing adventure seemed rather pointless and irrelevant at times, particularly when Andrey Gutsenko’s character modestly complains about wigs and housework while enduring a post Vietnam War experience. In an uncomfortably positioned sub-plot, the expeditions are undertaken by a cave woman (Masumi Sekiya) who is derived from Hazel the comedy sitcom maid, using her for household chores, which leads to her seemingly developing an affectionate relationship with Thrust during bedtime (but this direction is not explored). The results are inconsistent, and the central T-rex figure has foam rubber bent features, which make ghastly attempts at being threatening while only resulting in comical ones. The miniature suits worn by the wrestlers do sometimes excel in the Godzilla movies Taken for style, but look ridiculous next to American acting methods. Some consideration has however been taken in the shooting of the monster scenes (where low angle shots make the dino appear much larger) and in the usual more blood is shown in the rex-stegosaurus conflict. Which is not excellent, not even good, but a lot of fun.
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