![]() ![]() Director Virgil Vogel ("The Mole People") keeps the action moving right along. The music by Joseph Gershenson is extremely effective. In some ways, this is the perfect 1950's sci-fi film, because it proudly presents a wealth of facts about the Antarctic before it begins its fanciful story. Stine loaded the film with wonderful scenes of the fog-shrouded prehistoric landscape, using marvelous matt shots and impressive sets, creating a Skull Island atmosphere. All the dinosaurs are skillfully integrated with live action shots. The Tyrannosaurus Rex is a man in a suit, the flippered dinosaur is fairly convincing puppet, and the rest are enlarged lizards. The special effects are by Universal's FX wizard Clifford Stine, and even though the dinosaurs are not animated, they aren't badly done. The story concerns four people whose helicopter lands in an unknown prehistoric valley, a freak temperate zone located thousands of feet below sea level in the Antarctic, kept warm by volcanically-heated water and a permanent cloud layer that traps the warm air. This rip-roaring sci-fi adventure scores high marks in several categories. Yes its been done before but there is something about the way its done here that lifts it up from the rest of the pack. ![]() If you love old black and white, monster or dinosaur films see this film. I've seen a widescreen trailer and the dinosaur scenes looked better un-pan and scanned. This film was shot widescreen however the release on videotape is pan and scan so much of the composition appears to have been lost. I'm hoping that the film will get a restored DVD release soon. No they aren't the best monsters in the world and nowhere near as good as what they do today, but what monster is, aside from King Kong? Frankly its the dinosaurs in both the relative quality of what was done and the variety of what we see that makes this movie for me. This is a reasonably well done movie with some reasonably well done dinosaurs that get points for NOT being lizards enlarged with trick photography. It then becomes a race to repair the helicopter before the dinosaurs eat the entire party. ![]() The plot is simple, a helicopter crashes into what had, until then, been a hidden tropical jungle in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Here we a bunch of reasonably okay dinosaurs running amok. It has to do more with the monsters more than anything else. ![]()
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