When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth

Here is yet another kit that I picked up at the 2018 JerseyFest from Alternate Images. It is based on the 1970 Hammer film “When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth”, something of a rip off of Hammer's other dinosaur film “One Million Years BC” (1966). Both stories are fairly similar in plot and setting (humans coexisting with dinosaurs along with main characters being outcasts from their tribe) with stop motion animation playing a significant factor in the enjoyment factor of both films.

This time out, Jim Danforth and David Allen were the chief animators and they both did such a fine job, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Visual Effects but lost out to Disney's mediocre “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”. The animation was very convincing and rivaled some of Ray Harryhausen's best work in my view. There are several dinosaur scenes in the film, most animated with some stock footage of lizards with pasted on fins from Irwin Allen's terrible “The Lost World” (1960). Of note is the night time giant crab attack near the conclusion of the film that I found to be particularly chilling.

Alas, the film's acting and plot were nothing to write home about despite the charms of the lovely and former Playmate Of the Year (1967), Victoria Vetri (aka Angela Dorian). There is a Blu-Ray version of this film out there that has moderate amounts of frontal nudity so parents may want to pre-screen the disc before running it for the kids.

Anyway, the sculpt is another fine piece of work by Joe Laudati. The kit has nine pieces of a nicely cast resin with a few seam lines here and there but nothing too objectionable. On closer examination, though, I could see that the Megalosaurus (the fictional four legged predator 'star' of the film) had a couple dozen pinholes along the upper right side of the cast. Using a tip that I had heard somewhere, I filled each hole with Elmer's Carpenter glue, by using a toothpick as an applicator. This fix worked out very well since the glue doesn't shrink and is low enough in viscosity to fill the holes and level out so I rarely had to go back and make any other repairs or adjustments.

The cave girl was a stand alone single piece that mates up with the main base which made painting her a very easy affair. I tried to copy the movies' color palette for the dinosaur by using light blues for the upper surfaces and yellowish tans on the underside. The base is a barren & rocky setting with a few eggs (one is hatched) as seen in the film. How these massive things came out of the Megalosaurus' hind end is anybody's guess.

As I said, this is a kit by Alternate Images but I have no idea if it is still available or even what year it was released. I visited their site but could find no mention of it so it may be out of production. 11/7/18