I never understood why Jurassic Park was the only dinosaur-related franchise to outlive the dino hysteria of the 90s. Don’t get me wrong, Spielberg’s classic is clearly the best movie to come out of that trend, but that doesn’t change the fact that dinosaurs as a concept are in the public domain and should have been featured in countless other films.
Fortunately for fans of all things prehistoric, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’s upcoming 65 (March 10th) promises a return to the Jurassic-Park-less thrills of completely original dinosaur movies. And with that in mind, we’ve come up with this list highlighting six of the best non-JP dinosaur thrillers for all your prehistoric media needs!
As usual, this list is purely based on personal opinion, but since this is Bloody Disgusting, we’ll be limiting entries to monster movies and thrillers. That means no Super Mario Bros or Disney’s Dinosaur (despite those freaky iguanodon lips). We’ll also only be featuring movies that actually focus on the dinosaurs as a key part of the story, so no King Kong.
With that out of the way, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite dinosaur movies if you think we missed a good one.
Now, onto the list…
6. The Dinosaur Project (2012)
As you can see from the rest of this list, it’s pretty hard to depict a realistic dinosaur onscreen without a Spielbergian budget. That being said, clever filmmakers can always find ways to work around sub-par effects, which is precisely the case with Sid Bennett’s The Dinosaur Project.
A unique Found-Footage flick that uses the shaky-cam aesthetic to smooth out the rough edges of its visual effects, the film follows an expedition to the Congo as a group of explorers attempt to find the legendary Mokele-mbembe. Naturally, prehistoric terror ensues as the expedition comes across a series of carnivorous threats.
It doesn’t exactly re-invent the Found-Footage wheel, but The Dinosaur Project’s impressive CGI and overall earnestness make it way more charming than it has any right to be.
5. Carnosaur (1993)
Mockbusters may be a questionable business practice, but the best of them manage to only rip off general themes and ideas instead of entire plots. A good example of this is Adam Simon’s Carnosaur, which was commissioned by the legendary Roger Corman to compete with Jurassic Park. Telling a ridiculous story about genetically engineered chickens and reptilian murderers, the movie was a surprisingly creative cash grab that spawned a franchise of its own.
Sure, the effects are about as absurd as the juvenile script, but if you keep in mind that the entire thing was shot in 18 days on a budget of less than a million dollars, it’s a miracle that the flick is as fun as it is.
4. Velocipastor (2017)
As a rule, “so bad it’s good” movies don’t happen on purpose. Usually, this is something that occurs organically after the fact, with audiences lamenting a film’s lack of quality at the same time that they connect with the misguided passion behind the project. Velocipastor throws these conventions out the window, as it’s quite clear from the beginning of this schlocky horror comedy that director Brendan Steere had no intention of making a traditionally good movie.
And yet, the end result is even more fun than similarly trashy productions like Sharknado, with the film making up for its minuscule $36.000 budget with plenty of humor. Hell, they even got gothic artist Aurelio Voltaire to make an appearance, not to mention a lovable dinosaur costume that makes Carnosaur look like a Disney production!
3. The Lost World (1960)
While he’s mostly associated with Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was an incredibly prolific writer, creating several other characters who had their own popular adventures. One of the most memorable of these recurring figures is Professor Challenger, who was first introduced in the 1912 novel, The Lost World.
With the book becoming a hot property in Hollywood, Challenger would go on to be portrayed by numerous performers, from John Rhys-Davies to Bob Hoskins. However, my own personal favorite take on the character comes from the legendary Claude Rains (the original Invisible Man!) in Irwin Allen’s loose adaptation of the book.
Sure, the lizards with glued-on horns are a far cry from the artistry of Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion creatures in the original adaptation (and the script has its fair share of scientific blunders), but I’d argue that the film’s low-budget charms only make it more endearing. That being said, fans of the novel are better off watching the more faithful 1922 version.
2. Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)
Sometimes, a good prop is all you need to make a compelling movie. This was the case with Stewart Raffill’s Tammy and the T-Rex, an absurd project that only went into production because the director met a theater producer who owned an animatronic T-Rex. Filmed in a rush before the expensive dinosaur was set to be shipped to Texas, what resulted was a madly entertaining horror comedy that deserves a bigger following.
While the uncut (and vastly superior) version of the film was only released in 2019, I actually caught the original cut on TV late one night when I was a kid and fell in love with its cheesy delights. Unfortunately, it took me a really long time to meet someone else who had seen the flick, resulting in many years spent thinking that I had hallucinated the entire thing.
After watching the unrated cut, I’m glad I didn’t!
1. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991)
Few movie monsters have evolved as much as Godzilla over the years. From a demonic creature possessed by the souls of concentration camp victims to an irradiated iguana, old ‘Zilla’s never had a problem with re-inventing himself. Naturally, this means that, at one point, the radioactive lizard was depicted as an innocent “Godzillasaurus” who became mutated by nuclear bombs during the second world war.
This backstory presented in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah would be contested in later pictures, but fans loved the idea that the world’s most popular kaiju had his own superhero origin. Plus, the movie itself was one of the better Godzilla sequels, featuring plenty of monster movie action and some unexpected time-travel shenanigans.
And here’s a fun fact for you: Gojirasaurs have since been recognized as a real dinosaur, though the real ones don’t look much like the creatures featured in GvKG.