This low-budget Lippert science fiction film does the best it can on a small scale, with special effects that are cheesy oh, probably even then looking rather fake compared to some of the bigger special effects ethics of the time. It involves a search for a rocket that takes Captain Cesar Romero and his crew on a journey where their plane crashes in a lost world, forcing them to climb up a huge mountain (to see what they could see, as the old song about the bear goes), encountering some dangerous large beasts including a gecko who presumably only wanted to sell them car insurance.
I can just hear the wisecracks coming out of the cheesiness of the film, and fortunately, it's more than just a lizard made to look much larger than it was, showing also a brontosaurus, some stegosaurus and a pterodactyl. Why they need to open fire on the brontosaurus who is just grazing makes no sense, although the beast does eventually charge them. Interesting that in "Jurassic Park", the brontosaurus was considered just a gentle giant, like a big cow, but here, it's very dangerous to smaller creatures. Sid Melton ("Golden Girls") gets a close view of the stegosaurus, while the pterodactyl really has no impact on the travels of these men. They include John Hoyt, Hugh Beaumont, Chick Candler and Whit Bissell. Hillary Brooke and Aquanetta appear briefly but serve no purpose in the plot other than to have some women in the cast.
It's pretty entertaining in spite of the low budget oh, and while there certainly is a lot of rock climbing, I like the design of the mountain which includes a covered ledge that they ride out a storm on. The destruction of the mountain in the climax is the best bit of special effects in the film, showing an earthquake moving along the land and giving one of the characters the opportunity to spout the moral as the last line. Still no idea how they successfully got out of this place. I didn't find the film as bad as I had heard it to be, and I'm glad that I stuck with the prince as released rather than watch the Mystery Science Theater episode that ridiculed it.
I can just hear the wisecracks coming out of the cheesiness of the film, and fortunately, it's more than just a lizard made to look much larger than it was, showing also a brontosaurus, some stegosaurus and a pterodactyl. Why they need to open fire on the brontosaurus who is just grazing makes no sense, although the beast does eventually charge them. Interesting that in "Jurassic Park", the brontosaurus was considered just a gentle giant, like a big cow, but here, it's very dangerous to smaller creatures. Sid Melton ("Golden Girls") gets a close view of the stegosaurus, while the pterodactyl really has no impact on the travels of these men. They include John Hoyt, Hugh Beaumont, Chick Candler and Whit Bissell. Hillary Brooke and Aquanetta appear briefly but serve no purpose in the plot other than to have some women in the cast.
It's pretty entertaining in spite of the low budget oh, and while there certainly is a lot of rock climbing, I like the design of the mountain which includes a covered ledge that they ride out a storm on. The destruction of the mountain in the climax is the best bit of special effects in the film, showing an earthquake moving along the land and giving one of the characters the opportunity to spout the moral as the last line. Still no idea how they successfully got out of this place. I didn't find the film as bad as I had heard it to be, and I'm glad that I stuck with the prince as released rather than watch the Mystery Science Theater episode that ridiculed it.