At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

When a spaceship from Earth develops severe mechanical problems the captain of the vessel, "Lee Norsythe" (Louie Lawless) has no choice but to crash land the emergency space pod onto a world that is inhabited by prehistoric dinosaurs. Five men and four women manage to survive. Unfortunately, none of them are quite prepared to cope with the dangers that await them. Now, while this plot sounds pretty good the problem with this particular film involves the acting—which was pretty bad. As a matter of fact, in some cases it seemed as if the actors were actually reading their lines from a cue card and didn't have the presence of mind to realize just how flat and monotone their voices were. I even had to check a time or two to see if perhaps this was a foreign film and whether their voices were being dubbed from another language into English. At least that way I would have felt justified in cutting this movie a bit of slack. But no such luck. Another issue with this movie was that it lacked passion. Yes, there were some cases of human emotion but not with any great feeling or depth. Again, it goes back to the acting. One good thing though is that the graphics weren't too bad and it helped the movie to a certain extent. Still, I don't consider this movie to be very good by any means and I have rated it accordingly.

The plot is B movie. Astronauts somehow crash land on a planet with a perfect Earth like atmosphere and carbon life forms, including dinosaurs.Aside from the plot, the film is anything but B movie. It is a bona fide drama, with only one "throw away" character. The "throw away" character brings this down from a rating of 8 to 7. He really didn't fit in with the other three dimensional characters.That's what makes this an interesting film. We have genuine "drama" here. There is a conflict that slowly brews over the decision making.What makes the film extra refreshing is that the writer is savvy enough to show characters in a state of panic. Yes, panic. If you think you would keep your head in unknown territory, with these kind of creatures, you have watched too many real B movies.The characters squabble a little, but not as much as modern people, but the people who wrote and directed this can't be blamed for not knowing that people of the future would be immature. This is well written drama.Again, it's the times of panic and split second decision making that make this look realistic on a human behavior standpoint. And that's what makes good Adventure films-credible characters in an incredible situation. This fits the bill.

"Planet of Dinosaurs" is a lovely little trash movie. Even if the stop animation looks 1955, it was made in 1978. The old-fashioned creatures have quite a variety in their looks and behavior, though, and certainly possess a naive charm. The screenplay isn't totally silly, since the astronauts who crash-landed on the planet have a decision to make: will they hide like barbarians in a cave, or will they maintain their dignity (almost a literal quote from the dialog here) and rebuild as much of a civilized world as possible? If the movie suffers from anything, it is not the FX or the dialog; it's rather the limited acting skills of most participants, and some poor action scenes, e.g. the first killing when a woman is caught in a lake, whereas the guy she followed swims twice across the same spot and nothing happens. Why doesn't the beast below try and catch him too? And let's not mention how clumsily the laser guns are handled - a bow and spear are more dangerous in the hands of these guys. A trash classic? Maybe not, but "bad" enough to watch it once or twice.

After the success of Star Wars, there was a boost in interest in Sci-Fi movies. This was one of those cheap attempts to cash in quickly.A group of survivors from a spaceship land on a planet inhabited by stop-motion dinosaurs, where half of them are systematically killed off (the people not the dinosaurs). Porn-movie level acting. Cheap special effects, even for the time, although it looks like a lot of effort was put into them.Costumes were pure 1970's, as were the hairstyles. Ahh, the 70's. I expected a disco to break out at any minute.Nothing to really recommend in this film.