It’s Barney! Let’s get out of here before he makes us sing with him!
1957
Kicking off another Giant Monster week with this one that was on Svengoolie last night.
So apparently down in Antartica a small area with warm weather had been previously discovered with little feasible scientific explanation-which is direction this movie goes in. Another expedition will be launched to see what”s up down there or something. An ice breaking ship goes south via stock footage. The cast stand around on the ship with the female lead saying something like-“Do you have to be so technical?” to the male lead to which he responds something like “Some times I can be quite romantic.” Yeah, the ship wasn’t the only thing going south fast. Geez. Anyways the ship gets close enough for three dudes and the mandatory woman to leave in a helicopter to try and find the hot spot. Their toy real helicoptor sees something pterodactyl shaped but don’t know what it is because they are not too bright because of heavy fog. They land somewhere in front of a big painting, oh perhaps you aren’t supposed to know and it’s really supposed to be a true jungle. Two things we do find out quickly are 1-the helicopter won’t start and 2-there be dinosaurs here! Crappy looking dinosaur costumed dinosaurs and close-ups of real lizards posing as dinosaurs, but still dinosaurs! So these people flee from the dinos, bumble in the fog, fall in the water and talk about how they’ll replace a helicopter part to get out of the budget restricted movie set. Blah, blah and blah they eventually run into a crazy guy who has been there for years as a the lone survivor from a previous expedition. This dude wants the only woman in the group for himself in exchange for a part that will allow the others to fix the whirly bird and exit this place. The male lead says no way, loon. So they are at a standoff while more penny pinching dinos show up. Eventually they get the flying machine fixed and begin to exit, but they go back down to save the crazy guy and they all make it back to civilization or rather stock footage boats. Hooray and roll the credits.
I have my boat, a woman and my beard. What else could I possible want
The negatives-The film has some long slow parts that will have you nodding off. The dinosaurs are very cheap even by 1957 standards. The acting is mostly stiff with the dialog not helping much.
The positives-Henry Brandon (most known as Barnaby in March of the wooden soldiers with Laurel and Hardy) plays the crazy guy and he’s the one acting bright spot in this film. The addition of his character also helps get some more mileage out of the plot. The painted backdrops are very fake of course but I kind of like the look of them overall. There was a apparently problems with one of the dinosaurs in this film and it cost more than expected which kept the film from being in color. Truthfully I like it black and white and think it would looked far worse in color given the limited budget.
Not a great film, but it has dinosaurs and thanks to Henry Brandon it did get better as it went along.
What a great shadow puppet show!
Look it’s a piece of junk dinosaur-yeah a junkosaur!
Lasers, monsters and barbarians oh, my! 
All I could think of when I saw that T-Rex was the Gorn from Star Trek.