As Good As It Gets

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

A coed group of astronauts are sent on a mission to explore the new planet Nova. The quartet naturally runs afoul of a motley assortment of giant beasts who live on said planet. Director Bert I. Gordon keeps the entertainingly cornball story zipping along at a snappy pace and maintains an endearing earnest tone throughout. The compact script by Tom Gries offers a neat array of dangerous animals for our protagonists to fend off. William Bryant, Wanda Curtis, Douglas Henderson, and Patti Gallagher play their silly roles with admirable sincerity. The monster fights are quite lively and fairly gory. The copious use of stock footage and the two-cent (far from) special effects further enhance this clunker's considerable ramshackle charm. Gordon Avil's crisp black and white cinematography makes nifty use of fades and overlapping visuals. Louis Palange's robust score does the rousing trick. A fun diversion.

Bert Gordon may have hit the nadir of his career with King Dinosaur. This one is a stinker of massive proportions just like the creatures discovered on a new planet in the solar system.The first third of the film is documentary like with the solemn tones of Marvin Miller telling us how four select scientists, two men and two women got chosen to explore the new planet Nova. After that the players take over none of whom you will ever have heard of.A lot of nature films fill in as the explorers discover a planet that looks like a giant national park. But there's a lake and a mysterious looking island in the middle. So two of them paddle over in a rubber raft.The island is Jurassic Park with stock footage from One Million BC used as it is in a slew of cheap science fiction films. What to do, but blow the place up.And for that the expedition has packed an atomic bomb. With a timer too. Just set it for a half hour delay and then run and paddle for your life. The end the island blows up so future explorers will never see a glimpse of real prehistoric life. To think scientists did this and none of them is a nuclear physicist.It's one of the worst science fiction films ever done and definitely one of the worst productions to come out of Lippert Pictures which was on its last legs.If you watch it you'll find it frighteningly ghastly.

To all animal lovers out there here's a movie you will hate for the rest of your life. The story is about four astronauts who travel to a new planet called Nova that has just entered Earth's solar system. The crew begins studying the planet to see if it's suitable for a possible Earth colony. they soon encounter and battle giant insects, prehistoric mammals, dinosaurs, and - on an island - the titular character, King Dinosaur, a putative Tyrannosaurus Rex(iguana). Eventually, the scientists blow up the island with an atomic bomb, killing all of its inhabitants. This was Bert I. Gorgon's first film, both as writer and director. It's a pretty crappy movie, as even B-movies go. The "dinosaurs" are an alligator, an iguana, a gila monster, turtle and an armadillo. They're just plain old earth creatures filmed crawling over model landscapes as if they were huge. The movies title should have been called Planet of the Giant Animals.

Note: Anyone who is sensitive and dislikes the idea of watching reptiles rip each other apart should NOT watch this film. PETA members in particular are warned! This is a sad excuse for a film, but it is so bad that bad movie buffs might enjoy watching it just to laugh at how bad a bad movie can be. Did I mention it was bad?! The most obvious problem with the film is that the film makers took a ton of stock footage of practically EVERYTHING and strung them together in a "brilliant" attempt to pad the film and stretch it out to just over an hour while doing little actual filming. At the beginning of the movie, tons of stock footage of jet planes, V-2 rockets and military stuff fills the screen. Later, on the "other planet", we are treated to even more stock shots--most of which are nature clips that are sloppily integrated and rather irrelevant. It's made worse when the actors(?) all react rather poorly to these wonderful delights! Uggghh! I don't think I've seen another film (other than documentaries) that used so much stock footage.The film is about an expedition to a new planet that just appears out of the blue and drifts into an orbit near the Earth. How convenient, huh?! The four best and brightest(???????) that the USA had to offer would seem to indicate that people in the 1950s were all idiots, as again and again they do stupid things that anyone with a brain or training would not do. First, they explore so far from their ship that they get lost. Second, at night when one of them is supposed to be keeping watch, he and his hot babe go out in the darkness and he nearly gets torn to pieces by one of hundreds of animals that look EXACTLY like those on Earth. Third, every time anything bad happens, the blonde lady begins screaming or crying hysterically--even though she's supposed to be a respected scientist. Fourth, although they are to briefly survey the planet and return to Earth, they go way out of their way--many miles and into dangerous situations that they should have avoided. And, speaking of dangerous situations, the dinosaurs from the title are such scary monsters as iguanas and baby alligators that are filmed up close fighting. Oooh, scary stuff, huh?! To make things worse, the film makers actually toss the iguana onto the gator and just let them fight for real!! That poor iguana!! Even though in the film it supposedly wins this fight with the gator, you can clearly see the gator tearing into the iguana's flesh. There are also fur-covered elephants and giant armadillos (yikes).Although most of the planet seems awfully nice (except for the island filled with monstrous reptiles), the team's response to these discoveries is to nuke the island! Yes, I said nuke it!! I think the film makers chose to do this because, frankly, they had footage of a nuclear explosion (even though there was a hair stuck on the lens) and couldn't resist using it--even if it made no sense!! And the ending credits appear over top the mushroom cloud as the film then fades! Overall, a truly awful film--and one that even Ed Wood would have probably disliked! By the way, I could be wrong, but I think the 'pet' they discovered on the planet was a kinkajou.