Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

I don't know about you guys, but I am quite excited that the original Willis O'Brien stop motion dinosaur movie is being released on Blu-Ray next week, in a restoration boasting it's the most complete the film has been in 90 years (shades of Metropolis). I've never actually seen this movie all-the-way through, only in bits and pieces over the years. I remember first seeing footage from it in dinosaur documentaries I watched in elementary school, so me actually watching this thing is at least 20 years in the making by my personal clock (one day I will have watched every movie featured in Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies).

I hope that it will be doing well on Blu-Ray.

My copy arrived. Not sure when I'll have the opportunity to watch it as a silent film is a hard sell to the rest of the fam

^Send 'em out for ice cream!

My copy's en-route.

For me this arrived yesterday, and I went through the whole thing. Worth every penny. If I may use an overused phrase, this release is the definitive edition of this movie. If you have any interest whatsoever in this piece of movie history you need to get your hands on this Blu-ray and see it.

Quite a trip seeing so many of the things from Kong, from every further monster movie, in this movie in embryonic form. It's crazy.

As for the movie itself: the opening in London does a terrific job of setting up the characters, their motivations, their personalities, and the expedition, but once they get the island it's a bit wonkier storywise. There's not a strong through-line for the human characters as they're stuck on the plateau they way there was for the human characters on Skull Island in King Kong. It's really interesting to see the trail and error of the animation, where animation quality varies radically from scene to scene and (very memorably) a scene with some rather simplistic looking triceratops models is followed by a scene with a totally different, beautifully sculpted triceratops!