Legend of Dinosaurs

[kiryugoji04]

[briizilla]

[Destroyer D]

[Angilas83]

[kpa]

[Jim Ballard]

[ryuuseipro]

[August]

I'm sorry, but Toei produced hundreds of great movies, that have never been released in the US -- they just never specialized in Special Effects Films to create such an infrastructure (most of the special effects films used the same crews as for their television shows). On the other hand, Toei was quite proliffic in TV dramas as well, and were the most successful film studio to break into producing high-quality entertainment for telelvision (not to mention their hughly successful animation division). Also, Toei has produced some of the best Superhero teleseries ever made. Out of the Big Five (Toho, Daiei, Shochiku, Nikkatsu and Toei), Toei is still the strongest studio out there, with a continuing output of original studio productions for Cinemas, Video and Television.

While Toho excelled at prestige and populist films, for the sheer output of period dramas, chambara, yakuza and action films, Toei could not be beat. In fact, if they weren't successful, there wouldn't be a Toei Channel cable station today 24/7 Toei shows and movies). Toei also licenses their vast catalogue of television shows for use by other Cable Channels. While the other studios do not have their own Satellite Cable stations, as far as I know. In fact, Toei is picking up the pace with more special effects movies, with the recent remake of MAKAI TENSHO and impending releases of CUTIE HONEY and DEVILMAN... If these films are successful, expect more and bigger films to follow.

BTW, LEGEND OF THE DINOSAURS (Kyoryu Kaicho-no Densetsu) was released in 1977, following in the steps of Dino's KING KONG.

[el-brazo]

I don't think that LEGEND OF THE DINOSAURS is such a bad movie. However, I am wondering that nobody mentioned that it's quite violent at times. A dead horse without head, the torso of a woman whose lower part of the body was torn off (cut on my US-tape), a torn off head under water, a torn off leg and a slashed body in a cave ... that movie sure has some gory moments.

[kiryugoji04]

Well... I just watched it yesterday for the first time in awhile and... :puke:

In my mind it makes MEGALON look like GMK....

The story and the monster's origins (more like how and why they are returning rather then that they are) are waaaaaaay too contrived in my opinion. More so than any Godzilla film I've ever seen (and in those movies the plots were pretty good... esp. compared to this one... well, minus REVENGE). The dubbing... utter crap. And what's up with the soundtrack? I mean, they were playing easy-listening jazz music over the climax where Mt. Fuji is exploding in a manner that would make you think the world was ending and the lives of the two main characters are at stake!!! Then the movie ends not as the two escape, not even as the hero rescues the heroine from almost certain firey death... no. It ends as the hero's and heroine's hand finally meet so that he might pull her away from that firey death a mentioned. Does he actually do it? I don't know... not in the movie anyway. No, instead he just gets good and ready to...

Final thoughs... :puke:

[CyHunter]

Wow, never seen so many " :puke: " in one thread before. It must really suck.

[ryuuseipro]

[musukogoji]

[Xenorama]

Just waiting to be invited...
BUT, while my general feeling about the movie are well known, I bet I can say a nice thing or two about it- the English poster that I saw somewhere (JFFJ, maybe) does look really cool, and title is great. However, even then, in 79 or so, when I saw the pics of the critters I had my doubt as to how they would look moving.
There's a nice article in a Hammer Magazine about the movie. That would have been around the same time as the JFFJ issue.
And I'm all for people defending their favorite movies- the age one sees a movie can really make a difference in whether you like it or not. However, calling this a good movie would be a stretch for me. And we all know I like a lot of what's known as "bad" movies.
I really did want to like the movie, and if it had more of the prehistoric reptiles I might have.
There, how's that?

[Psycho Soldier]

[August]

[musukogoji]

[August]

[musukogoji]

[el-brazo]

@musukogoji:

> There’s this feeling, this vibe the movie gives off. If there’s one
> thing the makers did right, it’s the atmosphere. There’s this impending
> feeling of dread or gloom that hangs over the movie like a dense fog.
> And that’s something I really dug about the movie. Very few of the
> Japanese monster movies are actually scary. With all its faults [...]

I totally agree with this and I am very glad you wrote it, since my English is too limited to express such things! :clap:

I must add that the German version is shorter than my American tape, but the story as well as many (if not most) of the gory scenes have been left intact. It's in Toeiscope (all you said about the pan and scanning is true; many scenes make no sense, because important parts of the image are missing) and the German dub, while being far from perfect, is certainly not as silly and cheap as the American one. I really would like to see the Japanese version one day (which seems to be very difficult to get), but I think the German version is not so bad overall. The movie definitely has quite a number of weak points, but I think it does not deserve to be treated as if it was the worst monster movie ever made.

[musukogoji]

[Xenorama]

[el-brazo]

@musukogoji:

> And I completely forgot about the German version of the film!
> That version also contains new music (added by the German
> distributor) not in any other edition [...]

It does? I must confess I never noticed it. Seems like I should be more careful next time I watch it.

[planetxleader]

[Xenorama]