Valley of the Lost Dollar Store Cinema!

Billionaire oil tycoon and big-game hunter Richard Boone announces the discovery of a lost world hidden inside the warm pocket of a dormant volcano at the north pole and upon arriving, Boone and his team find that the hidden world is populated with both prehistoric humans and dinosaurs. Although the humans give the explorers a fair bit of trouble, the real danger is the guy in the rubber tyrannosaurus rex suit intent on making lunch out of the Great White Hunter and his crew. I remember watching this made-for-TV movie as a youth with awe and excitement, but as an older, jaded viewer, I can't help but wonder who the audience of this movie was intended to be. The storyline tried to be as "grown up" as possible but the special effects were something akin to an episode of Stingray or Thunderbirds. In an attempt at irony, the movie's title refers more to Boone's character, Maston Thrust, than the guy in the rubber suit because the guy in the rubber suit isn't actually the last dinosaur. Triceratops and pterodactyl run amok in the lush, tropical caldera at the frozen top of the earth. Thrust is meant to be portrayed as a womanizing, hunting type of man's man, but he looks and acts more like an overworked garbage man on his lunch break.

I'm fairly certain Richard Boone was probably drunk through most of the shooting of this movie, doubtlessly due to the sorry state of his career at the time, playing a two-dimensional character in a movie one could hperbolically refer to as Jaws with a dinosaur. The guy was Paladin, for cryin' out loud!

Rankin & Bass, those animation geniuses who brought us all those classic Christmas specials and the made-for-TV animated adaptation of The Hobbit, were the producers of The Last Dinosaur, which explains Boone's involvement in the movie. Boone's unmistakable voice brought The Hobbit's legendary dragon Smaug to life. Along with some equally bad acting on the part of Joan Van Ark, a gutsy photojournalist Boone refers to as "Crazy Lady," are some pretty amusing slow-motion shots that, although meant for impact, fall short of being Sam Peckenpah-esque.

Since acquiring this jewel on DVD, complete with hard-coded Japanese subtitles, I've probably watched it about a dozen times. The Last Dinosaur, as bad as it is, takes me back to my childhood every time and I can't help but wonder why no one ever remade it. With today's CGI effects, it could perhaps even rival Jurassic Park. Aw, who am I kiddin'. It's terrible. Even my kids won't watch it!

Nightmare at Dollar Store Cinema!

Harold Gern (Antony Carbone), a successful businessman of questionable merit from New York is spending a holiday in Puerto Rico with his trophy wife Evelyn (Betsy Jones Moreland). They are joined by Gern's lawyer pal Martin Joyce (Robert Towne, who was also the film's writer). Gern invites Martin along on a scuba diving trip with him and his wife. When they resurface the trio discovers they are unable to breathe without using their oxygen tanks. They climb back into their boat and find Manuel, their servant, dead on board from asphyxiation (This is the poor bastard's only scene in the film, I might add). Unable to start the engine, they row ashore. With 40 minutes worth of oxygen left they enter the jungle, where, due to the plants giving off oxygen, they can soon breathe normally again (and light up cigarettes to calm down their nerves). It gradually dawns on them that they might be the only survivors in the area, maybe even the world. Very soon the trio can no longer cope with the developing love triangle and you can pretty much guess how it ends. Or can you?

What separates this 1960 Roger Corman gem apart from almost any "end of the world" film I've ever seen is the dialogue. It's razor sharp, although some of it poorly delivered. Martin delivers probably the best lines when he's paired off with Evelyn, but I suppose if I were writing a movie for myself, that's how I'd do it too. Moreland's performance is probably the best of the three and she ain't hard to look at either. One other notable difference between this film and others of its ilk is the fact that the trio continue to dress in that snappy, sharp as a tack 1960s style, right down to ties and necklaces.

Like I said, this movie doesn't end like you think it will, but don't look for mutants or gangs of vampire bikers in this one. This one's a philosophical drama, or at least it tries to be. If you've got 75 minutes to kill, make yourself a martini, put on some Brubeck and enjoy The Last Woman on Earth.

It Came from the Dollar Store Cinema!

I have to bend the rules a bit in order to post this one but as Batman once told Superman when the Man of Steel questioned the Dark Knight's methods of crime fighting, "My ends justify my means." For my birthday, someone gave me a burned copy of the 1972 made-for-TV classic b-movie "Gargoyles" after hearing me go on and on about how it's one of my favorite movies of all time. In spite of my love for the flick, with a price tag of upwards of $40, I was willing to wait for the price to go down a bit before buying it. This is Dollar Store Cinema after all and "cheapness" is what it's all about (Thank you Frank Zappa). While I don't completely condone the burning of DVDs for profit, I also can't totally condemn it. After all, dollar stores are ripe with DVDs produced by shadowy companies out to make a buck whom I'm sure don't always own the copyrights to the movies they crap out onto disks. If they did, they'd probably be able to charge more than a buck for 'em. But, I digress.

Anthropologist/paleontologist (Cornel Wilde) and his daughter (Jennifer Salt), while travelling through the southwestern US, stumble upon a colony of living, breathing gargoyles who in the end only want to be left alone. It seems the addle-minded Uncle Willie (Woody Chambliss), curator of a roadside "museum," unearthed the skeletal remains of a gargoyle that the gargoyle colony desperately want back. When the gargoyles attempt to retrieve the skeleton, poor Uncle Willie meets a terrible end and Wilde and Salt barely escape with their lives, taking with them the skull of the gargoyle for further study. Once they do however, they, as well as the little desert town, are besieged by a colony of gargoyles lead by Mr. Bernie "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka" Casey, whose garish makeup does little in the way of hiding his identity.

With a creepy soundtrack, lots of slow-motion scenes and some pretty cool makeup by Stan Winston, Gargoyles scared the crap out of this impressionable then five-year-old. Watching this movie as an adult, however, is a totally different experience. Cliches and weird characters abound, including Uncle Willie, a young Scott Glenn as the leader of a gang of "dirt riders" as Salt calls them and an over-sexed alcoholic motel owner masterfully played by the late Grayson Hall. If you enjoy b-movies, this one has it all!