The Last Dinosaur (1977)
[極底探険船ポーラーボーラ]
Director: Alexander Grassoff, Tsugunobu Kotani
Starring: Richard Boone, Joan Van Ark, Steven Keats
Synopsis:
A wealthy industrialist leads an expedition to a volcanic basic deep in the Antarctic where dinosaurs are said to still survive.
Impressions:
A collaboration between Rankin/Bass and Tsuburaya Productions probably wasn't on your bingo card, but it gave us this little gem. I actually watched this movie quite often as a kid, because dinosaurs, but this most recent viewing was my first time rewatching it as an adult. Unlike most Western films featuring dinosaurs prior to the rise of CGI, this film is notable for using the "man in a suit" approach rather than stop-motion. The design of the T-Rex isn't all that accurate even by the standards of the time, but it does have a certain charm to it. The scaling is often inconsistent and it can feel a bit floaty at time, but I always did like the Triceratops fight and the low angle shots of it stomping are a nice effect. As far as the human story is concerned, "Maston Thrust Jr." is quite the name for your protagonist. Him being as much the eponymous last dinosaur as his nemesis the T-Rex is a decent thematic core for the story and having Richard Boone in one of his last few performances works well to that end. You're likely to find the female lead Frankie to be annoying, but her serving as a foil and a wedge between characters does have its merits. I'd forgotten how much of the story is just the crew trying to survive in the basin while fending off the resident primitives. You may or may not feel the story would have benefitted from a shorter internal timeframe and strict focus on the main antagonist, but so it goes. It's not perfect by any stretch, but if a Lost World-type story blending 1970s American storytelling sensibilities and Japanese tokusatsu sounds interesting to you, give this a watch.
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