Thiel-a-Vision Review: Dinosaurus! / Jurassic Park III

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This is my first dual-review, but in one sense, these are the same film: Jurassic Park III is the Saturday-matinee flick that Dinosaurus! wanted to be.

Dinosaurus! was produced by Jack Harris and directed by Irvin Yeaworth, the same duo that two years earlier had been responsible for the 1958 version of The Blob. In its day, it was something of a rarity: a dinosaur-on-the-loose film that featured neither real lizards with glued-on fins nor men in rubber suits. The stop-motion special effects were handled by a team including Wah Chang and Gene Warren, who between them also worked on the original versions of The Outer Limits, Star Trek and Land of the Lost.

For the time, the effects aren't bad, but they are crude compared to contemporary efforts by Ray Harryhausen. One of the best sequences involves a Tyrannosaurus attempting to dig its way into a cave occupied by several potential human snacks.

The plot isn't much, but it doesn't really need to be. On a tropical island (actually shot on location), divers discover the preserved remains of a Tyrannosaurus, a Brontosaurus and a caveman (!). Very little time passes before they are revived by a lightning strike, leaving the under-gunned residents to flee to the relative safety of a nearby fortress. Meanwhile, both our heroes and a villain who wants to exploit the resurrected caveman find themselves chasing and/or being chased by the various beasties. 

This is basically a kids' movie, with a precocious, dinosaur-loving youngster befriending both the Brontosaur and the Neanderthal. I first saw it when I was very young, and appreciated it on the same level as the little boy on the screen. (After all, we both owned the exact same plastic dinosaur toys!)

Perhaps the best thing about Dinosaurus! is that it doesn't last long enough to outlive its welcome. There's some exceedingly lame comedy when the caveman fearfully encounters a houseful of modern conveniences. On the other hand, there's a fun final confrontation between the T. Rex and a handy steam shovel. From a modern viewpoint, it's ultimately underwhelming.

Jump ahead 41 years to Jurassic Park III. The first Jurassic Park was decent enough, though it seemed more of a special-effects demo reel than the promised thrill machine. The CGI dinosaurs were groundbreaking, though not so much realistic as merely occupying a new plateau of fakery. Next came The Lost World, which had enough plot howlers and gymnastic children as to make one wonder if Steven Spielberg was simply fulfilling a contractual obligation. In some ways, Jurassic Park III is just more of the same, yet I find it to be the most entertaining of the three films.

Maybe that's because it appears to want nothing more than to be the 21st Century Dinosaurus!: drop some humans onto an island of prehistoric terrors, stir repeatedly and bake for 90 minutes. There's no long build-up; twenty minutes into the movie, the first monster shows up and the action rarely lets up thereafter. 

The storyline, such as it is, finds Sam Neill--reprising his paleontologist role from the first film--enlisted to help rescue the son of William H. Macy and the always-delectable Téa Leoni from an island of genetically reengineered dinosaurs. While the Jurassic Park series--like Dinosaurus!--finds it necessary to work children into the adventure, at least this kid is capable and not merely a plot device.

There really isn't much more to it than that, but the pleasure comes from the impressive third-generation beasts which this time include some terrifying pterodactyls inhabiting a colossal bird cage. The chases and escapes are well-paced, and little time is wasted on sentimentality. It's what I want from a dinosaur movie: lots of running around, screaming and getting eaten. It's pure Saturday-afternoon entertainment, but that's in no way a bad thing.

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