Movie AND book review: At the Earth's core (book 1914, film 1975)

There are no dinosaurs in this movie. Nor in the book. But don’t panic-we’ll find something prehistoric!

It’s a real shame that of the three series of pulp novels that Edgar Rice Burroughs penned, only Tarzan ever took off into other mediums. The others didn’t have as strong a central character, but made up for it in worldbuilding. I suspect that it was budget that really made Tarzan the preferable screen adventure; jungle sets, trained animals, gorilla suits, and black extras were cheap, while aliens and prehistoric creatures were far too complicated. It took until 2012 that a Barsoom movie was made. However, when Burrough’s Land That Time Forgot was made into a film in 1975, it proved to be successful enough to warrant two sequels and a production of At the Earth’s Core.

So today, I’ll be taking on the film of the first book of the Pellucidar series, and I’ll discuss the book while I’m at it.

Movie Review: Planet of Dinosaurs

It’s Friday again, and this week I’m going back to bad movies. Yeah, not happy about it, but I went with a movie that’s bad in a very special way. Some movies are bad because they have talent but no character or action, like Lost Continent. Others are too cheap to have anything but an idea sank by trash, like King Dinosaur. Others are simply bad decisions about the direction of the story, like the 1960 Lost World. Some are good movies crippled by terrible executive decisions, like Walking With Dinosaurs. Others have too many characters and not enough time to flesh them out, like Dinosaur.  This week’s movie has all these problems combined, but in its own way has charm and not a little bit of potential.

The movie Star Wars had a huge impact at the end of the 1970s in terms of filmmaking. Unknowns could become superstars, and science fiction and fantasy were given new fresh life.  A lot of people didn’t have the talent to pull it off, and others didn’t have the budget. One team of filmmakers, James K Shea, Jim Auppearle, and Ralph Lucas didn’t have either, but they had a great deal of ambition, and made Planet of Dinosaurs.  It’s a bad movie, to be sure, but to understand why it failed and why it’s compelling is worth an in-depth look.

Movie Review: King Dinosaur (1955)

It’s Friday! Movie night! I’ve decided to alternate a good movie with a bad movie in terms of reviews, and this one might be familiar to the viewers of a certain television show. You see, my favorite program is Mystery Science Theater 3000, a well-written comedy series dedicated to making humor with terrible movies. A memorable episode in Season 2 was based around this week’s film: Robert L Lippert’s first science fiction disaster, King Dinosaur. Joel and his robot friends had a great deal of difficulty with this one, and it’s easy to see why.