Stop Motion Monster Cheapie

 

THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER-1977-At Crater Lake in Northern California, archaeologist Dan Turner (Richard Garrison) and his girlfriend Sue (Kacey Cobb) show a professor some cave drawings they discovered. There's a cave-in but they escape just as a meteor falls into the lake. The trio along with Sheriff Steve Hanson (co-screenwriter Richard Carella) go to investigate. They find the meteor but it's too hot. 

Later a giant (stop motion) dinosaur emerges from the lake and kills a hiker and eats a rancher's cattle. Someone calls to report seeing a monster but the sheriff doesn't believe it. When two hillbillies have a fight in the lake they discover the severed head of a guy they rented a boat to. A side story involving a robber who kills two people just seems to be filler. Somehow Steve kills the monster using a bulldozer. The monster and the stop motion (by Dave Allen) isn't bad but the acting is terrible and the music seems out of place. Co-screenwriter/director William R. Stromberg never made another movie.

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Japan Dino

LEGENDS OF DINOSAURS AND MONSTER BIRDS-1977-In a lengthy pre-credits intro a woman hiking in “The Sea of Trees” forest stumbles upon an underground cave and sees a giant egg hatching. She's helped by some lumberjacks when they find her running and yelling incoherently. Later a geologist named Arizawa (Tsunehiko Watase) cancels his trip to Mexico to investigate the incident when he hears about it on TV. While exploring there he meets his late father's old friend Sho (Shotaro Hayashi). Some people disappear and livestock becomes deadstock. At a festival, a guy in a cowboy hat sings. The stage falls apart and everybody sees a monster in the water but it's a prank Then 2 of the pranksters are killed by a real monster but nobody believes the 3rd guy’s story until some tourist backs him up. “It's super big news!”. Arizawa’s ex-lover Ahiko (Nobiko Sawa) and her friend Junko are scuba diving in the area until Junko is bitten in half by the monster. Later while they are trapped in a cave, a prehistoric flying bird shows up and the mayor and the army blow everyone up shooting at the creature.

Arizawa and Ahiko escape to the forest but the long necked dinosaur is there to terrorize them. Then the flying creature shows up. They fight and a volcano erupts on the mountain. I think the couple survive...? Ahiko’s pathetic screaming in the finale really annoying. Pretty cheap Japanese production directed by Junji Kurata. It was a big hit in Russia.

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Giant Sized Dinosaur

THE GIANT BEHEMOTH-1959-Some time after a fisherman named Tom is burned to death (his last word is “behemoth”), American scientist Doc Carr (Gene Evans) lectures some stuffy English eggheads about radiation and Bikini island. When “thousands” of dead fish are washed up on the English coast Carr and Prof. Bickford (Andre Morell) investigated the goings on in Cornwall. Naturally there's a giant radiation created dinosaur prowling around. Besides being very big it can also shoot a radioactive ray that burns its victims to cinders. It makes its way to the Thames and sinks a ferry, then rampages through London. After killing the beast, Carr and Bickford get some bad news in the final scene. Jack MacGowran is also featured a paleontologist who helps out.

THE GIANT BEHEMOTH is a fun movie but Willis O'Brien's stop motion animation isn't as good as most of his US output, probably due to budget restraints and the fact that the movie was filmed in England while the special effects were done (with his assistant Pete Peterson) in Los Angeles. 

Director Eugene Lourie (THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS) co-wrote the screenplay with blacklisted writer Daniel James who'd go on to pen the screenplay for GORGO (which Lourie would direct) in 1961.

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Man In a Dino-Suit

THE LAND UNKNOWN-1957-A Naval science team goes to the South Pole. The group consists of Commander Hal Roberts (Jock Mahoney; TV's Yancey Derringer), Lt. Jack Carmen (William Reynolds), Capt. Burham (Douglas Kennedy) and Maggie Patterson (Shawn Smith aka Shirley Patterson), a woman reporter. The group has helicopter trouble when a pterodactyl hits them. They are forced to land in a hidden sub-tropical area dating to the Mesozoic era. They meet stock footage of two giant lizards fighting. Then they are chased by a T. Rex (guy in a costume) but a strange noise calls off it's attack. When giant plants menace the group Maggie is kidnapped by Hunter (Henry Brandon) who's been living there for years and thinks he owns the place (he's a survivor from a previous expedition). He blows a giant sea shell that scares off the dynos. Hunter wants the men to leave but let him keep Maggie who briefly escapes but runs into a giant sea reptile and faints. Later Hunter gives them a map to find his old helicopter. The guys rescue Maggie and even take Hunter back to civilization.

It seems at one time Universal was planning on THE LAND UNKNOWN to be a big budgeted film to be shot in color with an all star cast and Jack Arnold directing. For some reason the studio cut the budget, the color and the cast turning it into a B movie. Arnold left the project and contract director Virgil Vogel was his replacement. He'd made the equally cheap looking THE MOLE PEOPLE the year before. Screenwriter Lazlo Gorog penned Bert I. Gordon's EARTH VS. THE SPIDER a year later.

LAND really suffers from terrible SFX, too much stock footage and phony scenery but still manages to be more entertaining than boring. In movies since the early '40's actress Shawn Smith also acted under the name of Shirley Patterson. One of her last film roles would be in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE.

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