I submit that even the worst of the Godzilla movies has effects far superior to Unknown Island. And even the worst Gamera effects are pure Industrial Light and Magic compared to The Prehistoric Sound
If you want to see a really ugly CGI-rendered dinosaur, check out the Korean monster movie “Yonggary” (released internationally as “Reptillian”), in which the CGI effects (the title monster, helicopters, etc.) look like they were rendered by a Playstation One… the acting is also fugly.
The Lost World’s (the TV series) special effects are pretty horrible. Not as horrible as I think some of these older ones might be, tho.
I guess I’m the only one who’s seen The Ghost of Slumber Mountain, huh?
Had low-frame rate stop-motion animation, and recycled a lot of footage, but it still was stop-motion. I’ll take LOTL over lizards with fins any day of the year. Oh, and of course the Sleestaks were men in rubber suits, but they were supposed to be semi-humanoid.
Tagline: The crowning triumph of the motion picture.
I guess the bar was set pretty low back in 1918, eh? (I haven’t seen it, for the record.)
I’ve seen it – why do you include it here? It’s got great stop-motion dinosaurs by Willis O’Brien (who later did The Lost World – the good 1925 version – King Kong, Son of Kong, and Mighty Joe Young. A hell of a lot better than the Men in Monster suits and tricked-up lizards listed above.
Do you mean the 1950s filom The Beast of Hollow Mountain? Even in that case, the dinosaur is better. It features a T. Rex in the Old West,fighting cowboys. Made about decade before Ray Harryausen finally brought Wilis O’Brien’s dream of The Valley of Gwangi to the screen. Beast was made on the cheap, but it was a stop-motoion animated dinosaur, and a surprisingly good effort.
If you want a bad FX dinosaur, check out the Danish import Reptilicus – they used a painfully obvious puppet.
I present…Future War.
A 1997 film that appears to use children’s plastic dinosaur models for special effects. It was given the MST3K treatment and deserved it.
Yes, the work is by Willis O’Brien, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “great.” I mention it because it struck me as a very early first draft, wherein he was still experimenting and working out his methods; watching it, I had the definite impression of reading something Stephen King or Robert Ludlum or some other major genre writer had produced in junior high school, something amateurish and unpolished and not ready for prime time that by itself would never have gotten the exposure except that the author had become famous later.
But yeah, aside from that, you’re right, the care and personal craftsmanship in stop-action, however rough, is almost invariably superior to the prosthetic alternatives. I’ll take minor O’Brien or Harryhausen over an accessorized iguana any day. So I withdraw the nomination.
And yes, I’ve seen Reptilicus. Whoo boy, what a stinker. Makes Carnosaur 2 look like Jurassic Park.