Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Challenge of the Super Friends: "Revenge of Gorilla City" (November 4, 1978)

In “Revenge of Gorilla City,” an episode of Challenge of the Super Friends (1977), Grod convinces his allies in the Legion of Doom that they must take over peace-loving Gorilla City. Long ago, he was banished from the peaceful metropolis.

Now, Brainiac has developed a mind amplification device that allows the Legion of Doom to enslave the city-dwellers.  Only the city’s King, Solivar, escapes this brain-washing, and manages to warn the Super Friends of the danger. Unfortunately, Superman is far away, in Galaxy 13, pulverizing asteroids.

Rescuing the city of intelligent simians is more difficult than it might seem, too, because Toy Man has created a Kryptonite toy airplane that can immobilize the Man of Steel.

“Holy Gorilla Warfare!” Robin exclaims in “Revenge of Gorilla City,” a story that blends a Planet of the Apes (1968)-style civilization with a superhero story. 

Grod -- the only criminal in the history of Gorilla City -- takes out his revenge on his people, and the episode’s big set-piece is a “royal hunt” of the Super Friends by the mesmerized apes and the Legion of Doom. So, think Taylor, Landon and Dodge under attack, but throw in the DC characters for good measure.

We learn much background about Grod and his civilization in this episode. Gorilla City is hidden under a dome of invisibility, near Bogota, and rests on huge deposits of gold. The Super Friends and the Legion of Doom know about its existence, and apparently Grod has been frothing at the mouth to return there and wreak his vengeance. King Solivar is a noble leader.

Here, everybody drives to the city in moon buggy-type vehicles, and the Legion of the Doom invention of the week is the brain wave amplifier by which Brainiac can establish mental control over the city's denizens.

This week, Wonder Woman is the hero who wears a helmet in space, but no space suit (last week it was Batman), and it’s confusing why she even bothers. Clearly, the writers of the episode understood that some protection is required in space, but didn’t want to give her a space suit, apparently.

Lastly, the Super Friends state a variation on the line that is repeated every week on Challenge of the Super Friends: “Not if we can help it!”

Next Week: “Swamp of the Living Dead.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Challenge of the Super Friends: "The Giants of Doom" (October 21, 1977)

Bizarro devises a plan to transform his fellow members of the Legion of Doom into giants using a strange ray device. Toy Man, Sinestro and Captain Cold grow to gigantic proportion and go on a crime spree, terrifying the world. Captain Cold even freezes the Parthenon.

The Super Friends are then trapped in a giant test tube and sent to their “frozen doom” on Saturn, leaving the Legion of Doom to revel in its new power over Earth.

But the Super Friends discover a way to turn the tables on their nemeses. 

“The Giants of Doom” may be the most nonsensical episode yet of Challenge of the Super Friends (1977).  Logic, science, and reason are nowhere to be found in this particular cartoon half-hour.

For example, Sinestro and Bizarro crack the moon open. They literally crack it in half. This action has no impact on Earth, apparently. No tide changes. Nothing.

Fortunately, Superman uses his heat vision to “weld” the two lunar chunks back together.

If that sequence isn’t strange enough, the astronauts on Moonbase #1 wear Starfleet delta shields, and Batman -- for this episode alone -- must wear an air/breathing mask over his costume mask while in outer space. Yes, he has been in space several times before “The Giants of Doom,” but never required a mask.  Also, Batman has no need for a pressure suit. Just the mask.

Meanwhile, Superman gets what may be one of the most unintentionally funny lines of the entire series. “From the looks of it, I’d say we’re somewhere in the gaseous interior of Saturn.” 

There, in that gaseous interior, the superheroes battle a gas monster. But how would Superman know, just from surveying the terrain that they are in the gaseous interior of Saturn? Has he been there before? Does it look different from the gaseous center of Uranus?

Another element that doesn’t make any sense: Superman traps Sinestro in a yellow force field, but the villain should be able to escape all energy that is yellow, right? (The way Green Lantern was able to penetrate a green energy force field in an earlier episode). Miraculously, the yellow force field traps Sinestro.

Finally, our “That’s what you think” exclamation of the week goes to Green Lantern, who makes the comment to Sinestro.

Next week, a much more intriguing episode: “Secret Origins of the Super Friends.”

Cult-TV Movie Review: It Happened at Lakewood Manor (1977)

A construction accident at the historic Lakewood Manor -- located in a county described as “the Las Vegas of tomorrow” -- gives way to something even more terrifying: an attack of teeming, angry ants.

At the old hotel, its elderly owner, Ethel Adams (Myrna Loy) contemplates selling the property to an unscrupulous real estate millionaire Anthony Fleming (Gerald Gordon), who is visiting with his mistress, Gloria (Suzanne Somers).

Meanwhile, Ethel’s daughter, Valerie (Lynda Day George) is encouraging her mother to sell too, because her husband -- construction foreman Mike Carr (Robert Foxworth) -- has been offered a career opportunity in San Francisco.

The ants, who are defending a subterranean colony, soon attack relentlessly. At first, local authorities think there may be a virus, or poisonous snakes involved in the crisis, but soon the ants mount an all-out assault on the premises.

It Happened at Lakewood Manor - also known as Ants -- is a not-very good disaster/horror movie of 1977 vintage. 

Actually, the TV-movie is noteworthy from an historical perspective, because it combines two important trends of the day. The first is, indeed, the disaster film format, which was enjoying popularity thanks to cinematic efforts such as Airport: 1975, The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and The Towering Inferno (1974). 

The second trend of the era was “revenge of nature” horror movies, such as Frogs (1972), Night of the Lepus (1972) and Kingdom of the Spiders (1977).  

It Happened at Lakewood Manor was not alone, either, dramatizing ants as a major threat. Phase IV (1974) and Empire of the Ants (1977) also featured this insect menace prominently.

However, It Happened at Lakewood Manor is not a particularly strong representative for either trend. In fact, for much of its running time, the movie is dull and uninteresting.

In terms of the disaster film format, this TV-movie offers us some familiar character-types. We get the officious naysayer -- who prolongs the crisis -- here played by the great Steve Franken. He actually played a similar role in another disaster film of the same vintage: 1978’s Avalanche.

We also have the Elder Stateswoman -- Hollywood royalty of yesteryear -- in a major role. Here, Myrna Loy is the representative of a kinder, gentler Hollywood era. Think, Olivia de Havilland in The Swarm (1979), or Jeanette Nolan in the aforementioned Avalanche. Loy’s character survives the crisis, airlifted away from the ants, and then seems confident she can sell the property, following the ant attack.

And, of course, there’s the nasty, avaricious business man who gets his comeuppance during the crisis. Richard Chamberlain played that role in The Towering Inferno. Gerald Gordon gets the honor here.  Both characters plummet to their deaths. And deservedly so.

As the brief survey reveals, the main characters here are pretty much off-the-shelf in nature, given petty “soap opera” concerns to handle before the real threat -- the ants! -- makes them get their priorities straight. It’s all just time-wasting nonsense until the crisis occurs.

In terms of the revenge of nature trope, the ants here turn hostile because, according to the film, of man.  

Because of us.

The dialogue states that “We’re the ones who forced them to live in a toxic world!” It also notes that ants are usually considered peaceful, at least until man “started putting poison in the air.”

This is just silly, at least in the way it is stated.

The movie also falls down -- even compared to the ludicrous The Swarm, however -- in depicting its central threat. More often than not, the ants look like smeared stains on the actors’ skin.

There is also a dreadful special effects shot late in the action in which a blob of something gray -- apparently the ant colony? -- is matted onto the live action scenery. It is a dreadful shot.

The most ludicrous of imagery is reserved for the film’s finale, however. Lynda Day George and Robert Foxworth sit frozen on a hotel room floor, breathing out of tubes (made from rolled wall-paper), as ants swarm all over them.

A scientist has told them not to breathe, and not to move, so the ants won’t feel threatened by their presence. The imperiled survivors do as they are told, but the visual suggests a weird drug trip rather than a terrifying encounter with nature. Once the fumigation processn begins, and smoke is seen billowing in the room, this connection is even further enhanced.

Also unintentionally funny is the sequence in which a helicopter in flight accidentally blows the deadly ants onto bystanders near the hotel. The onlookers all start shaking and patting themselves down until Bernie Casey shows up with a hose to blast off the ants.

Not all the ant sequences are terrible. Suzanne Somers’ death scene is somewhat effective, as we see the ants swarm over her feet and legs while she sleeps. The imagery is definitely creepy crawly, and succeeds in making the viewer feel uncomfortably itchy, if not genuinely menaced.

The movie also features multiple shots of ants circling a sink drain (in the hotel kitchen), and that’s probably a good as metaphor as any for the quality of It Happened at Lakewood Manor.  This is a thoroughly undistinguished, derivative TV movie of its era, without the energy or drive to muster real scares or thrills. It does succeed, however, as a time capsule of a time and place.

Finally, one character in the tele-film notes that everyone has a soft spot, “you just have to find it.” 

This TV movie is nothing but soft spots.

The Films of 1977: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The second-highest grossing film of 1977 (right behind George Lucas’s Star Wars) was Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of The Third Kind, a science fiction film concerning mankind’s first official contact with alien life-forms. I've been thinking about the film a lot since I saw Arrival (2016), which also concerned this topic. 

Close Encounter’s narrative also involves the mystery behind alien abductions and the truth regarding a government conspiracy to keep the existence of UFOs a secret.

Throughout the film Spielberg cross-cuts between two major plot-lines: a scientist’s (Francois Truffaut’s) efforts to develop a language so as to communicate with the visiting aliens, and one blue-collar worker’s (Richard Dreyfuss) personal journey to better understand their uncomfortable -- but growing -- presence in his daily life…and inside his very head.

Importantly, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) was described by Science Digest as a film that is “tantamount to faith.”

The same publication noted too that Close Encounters’ sense of faith, so “wondrous and thoroughly spiritual – is registered in nearly every frame, reaching a climax in its messianic ending.”(Joy Boyom, Feb 1978, p.17).

Similarly, Gregory Richards’ monograph, Science Fiction Movies (Gallery Books, 1984, p.61) contextualizes Spielberg’s disco-decade UFO epic “as more of a religious film than a science fiction one.”

So the primary question that viewers must reckon with regarding this cult classic is: why have so many reviewers contextualized the Spielberg film as one of an overtly religious nature? Does an understanding of the religious allegory open up new avenues for understanding this work of art?

Or contrarily, does the religious explanation of Close Encounters only serve to cloud the secular, humanist message beating at the movie’s heart?

Close Encounters as Religious Allegory

In part, the categorization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a film about spirituality and faith arises because Steven Spielberg’s movie so abundantly features what David A Cook, author of Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970 – 1979, calls “an aura of religious mystery.” (University of California Press, 2000, p.47).

Roy Neary -- much like the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus according to Paul Flesher and Robert Torry in Film and Religion: An Introduction -- experiences a kind of spiritual dawning or awakening.

In particular, Neary sees a UFO and hears the call of the aliens (transmitted via a telepathically implanted, subconscious “message” or “vision.”)

At first he does not understand the alien message. What is the meaning of the strange thoughts in his head? Why does he feel compelled to undertake a pilgrimage -- a journey to a location of great importance to one’s faith -- to some mountain he has witnessed seen only in his mind?

Eventually, however, Neary surrenders to the vision, to his faith. He forsakes all his worldly belongings and connections -- including his family -- in a devoted (and perhaps mad…) attempt to understand why he has been “chosen” to hear this call from a (literally) Higher Power.

Clearly, Neary seeks communion with the message’s sender…with a stand-in for God. His quest in Close Encounters thus reflects Scripture and Romans in particular. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Here, Neary has heard and honored that word, but it is the words of the aliens.

Neary’s hardship and trials are eventually vindicated. At last, he meets the aliens at the mountain of his vision (ironically at a place called Devil’s Tower), and then watches as a version of the second coming of Christ is re-enacted before his eyes.

According to Flesher and Torry (Abindgon Press, 2007, p.200), the returned abductees whom the aliens release from their landed mother ship symbolically represent the dead rising, or the resurrection of the dead as foretold in Scripture. And furthermore, the ascent of the alien craft to outer space with one of the faithful (Neary) ensconced aboard it similarly represents the Christian rapture, the trip to Heaven, essentially.

Even the physical appearance of the aliens in Close Encounter might be readily interpreted as strongly reflecting Christian apotheosis.

In form, the extra-terrestrial bodies “have no clear blemishes or gender, suggesting that superior beings transcend the normal categories of physical existence and approach the ethereal qualities associated with spirits and angels,” notes scholar Eric Michael Mazur, (Encyclopedia of Religion and Faith (ABLC-CLIO, LLC 2011, page 388).

In his final ascent to the stars, to Heaven, Roy Neary is wholly affirmed in his unyielding faith and belief in the vision he received, over his wife’s cynicism and stubborn skepticism, and over the U.S. Government’s attempt to “control” the meeting of man and alien.

In some sense, Close Encounters is all about taking a leap of faith, and that very idea finds resonance in one of Spielberg’s compositions. Confronted with the government lie about a deadly and toxic nerve gas spill in Wyoming (near Devil’s Tower), Neary chooses to “believe” his own narrative instead. He rips off his protective gas mask and breaths the purportedly contaminated air. But he is proven right…he survives, and his faith is replenished.

Given the alien angels, the metaphor for the Second Coming and even this leap of faith, the overall effect, therefore, of this cinematic journey is indeed, well, rapturous.

Strangely, however, there is a dark aspect to this story of religious awakening that one must also weigh.

While it is true that Roy Neary transitions from an unhappy and spiritually bereft life to one of faith and purpose, the cost of such knowledge of God (or God surrogate, in this case) is his very family. In the act of proving his faith and his worthiness of being “born again” in the stars, Roy abandons his family on Earth. This abandonment is literal, not metaphorical.

The non-believers -- including his children -- get “left behind” to toil in the world without his guidance or even presence. And again, the message could be interpreted as strongly religious.

If you don’t “believe,” you don’t get saved.

Close Encounters as a Humanist Film

An alternate reading of Close Encounters suggests this cinematic work of art from Spielberg is actually a humanist film, the secular tale of a man who chooses to no longer be enslaved to society’s destructive constructs (including government, career, and family), and to follow his own individual path instead.

The story, again, is of Neary breaking free of constraints, but the breaking free in this reading is from a society that lies, cover-ups, and demands his perpetual unhappiness for its continuance.

The fact that Spielberg plays the song “When You Wish Upon a Star” at the conclusion of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the primary support for this reading. 

One lyric in that composition suggests a direct rebuke of faith, or religious identification. When you wish upon a star it “makes no difference who you are,” the song goes. In other words, you need not be affiliated with any particular group or belief system if you hope to achieve your dreams. You need not believe in God or a higher power. Instead, if you must merely “wish” and voice your “dreams,” you will be rewarded for following the best angels of your -- human -- nature.

In terms of history, Close Encounters of the Third Kind followed closely on many frissons in American politics, and this context, likewise, suggests a more humanist reading. 

President Richard Nixon had been toppled in the Watergate Scandal in 1974, for example. His resignation and culpability in illegal activity suggested that “faith” or “belief” in the pillar of leadership was not such a good idea.

Similarly, the Vietnam War had ended in ignominy for the U.S. in 1975. The cause that so many Americans fought for (and died for…) was lost, and this very idea seems reflected in Close Encounters’ final scene.

There, a line of carefully vetted and approved government officials (surrogates for soldiers in Vietnam?) are overlooked by the aliens in favor of the “Everyman,” Roy Neary.

By contrast to these seemingly emotionless, expressionless, thoughtless drones, he is a man who chose explicitly not to believe the fairy tales his government was peddling. He has thus established his independence and his resourcefulness outside of Earthly and national considerations.

In this reading, the “leap of faith” of taking off the gas mask is actually the dawning awareness that -- because of Watergate and Vietnam -- the U.S. Government could no longer be trusted, or be considered an agent for honesty.

But again, in this reading of Close Encounters, one must reckon with Neary’s pure selfishness, his very questionable decision to leave his children and wife behind for his own individual “self-fulfillment.” And again, one must note that very idea of “sweet fulfillment” is explicitly voiced in the lyrics to the song “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

Yet I would suggest that Neary’s act of leaving his family (and his government, and his job…) behind in 1977 would not have been looked at by many audience members as purely a bad thing.

One must recall that the 1970s was determinedly the decade of the “self,” a fact reflected in the hedonism of disco music, and the blazing ascent in popularity of the “self-help” book genre. Popular buzz-words of the day included “self-realization” and -- sound familiar? -- “self-fulfillment.”

Yet as the movement of “self” grew in the late 1970s, many people were concerned that the new ethos was merely one of “self-involvement. The consumption-oriented life-style of immediate gratification soon gave rise to President Carter’s notorious 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech, which warned against judging success on material wealth rather than intrinsic human qualities of character and morality.

Meanwhile, the nation kept building more shopping malls, and imagined worlds futuristic (Logan’s Run) and apocalyptic (Dawn of the Dead) set at these new shrines to materialism.  he 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake deals explicitly with this notion too, of the idea of people “moving in and out of relationships too fast” because they wanted to be happy and fulfilled, all the time.

But in a way, this is what Close Encounters concerns as well. Roy Neary helps himself, finally, to achieve his “dream,” even if his family can’t share in that dream. He gets what he wants -- to go with the benevolent aliens to the stars -- and in the late 1970s, this result is what qualified as a happy ending

In his text How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity (Three Rivers Press, 1997, page 291) author Bruce Bawer wrote of Close Encounters of the Third Kind that “salvation, meaning, and transcendence come down from the Heavens in a spaceship.”  The question to ponder today involves the brand of salvation and transcendence. 

Is it a spiritual reckoning, or a secular one that the alien spaceship brings with it?

It is a testament to Spielberg’s skill, perhaps, as a filmmaker and storyteller, that Close Encounters can be interpreted through two such opposite lenses or world-views.

Cult-TV Movie Review: Snowbeast (April 28, 1977)

As the 50^th annual winter carnival nears at the Rill Ski Lodge, a skier named Heidi reports that her friend Jennifer has been attacked by a monster out by the North Slope.

Rill (Sylvia Sidney), the first Winter Carnival Queen and owner of the lodge wants the disappearance kept quiet until after the seasonal festivities, lest there be a severe economic impact. Her grandson, Tony (Robert Logan), manages the lodge and refuses to keep the disappearance a secret, especially after discovering Heidi’s bloody ski jacket.

Sheriff Paraday (Clint Walker) gets involved when Jennifer’s body is discovered at the old Fairchild place. The corpse’s face has been torn off.

As Tony deals with these concerns, an old friend, Olympic Gold Medalist Gar Seberg (Bo Svenson) shows up at the lodge with his wife, a TV journalist, Ellen (Yvette Mimieux). Their marriage is in trouble because Gar feels he is a “has been,” and needs a job. 

Tony hires Gar to help hunt down the monster they fear is responsible for the attacks.  Gar thinks it may be a Big Foot, and that most Big Foot creatures are reportedly peaceful. When he sees Jennifer’s corpse, however, he changes his tune.

The creature continues to encroach on the Lodge, attacking during the crowning of the Winter Carnival Queen.

Later, it hunts Ellen on the slopes, and Gar skis to her rescue.

Finally, Tony, Gar, Paraday and Ellen hunt the beast in the wild on snowmobiles, and have one final confrontation with it.

This amusing and occasionally intense tele-film from the spring of 1977 (right before the release of Star Wars) is brimming with menacing first person subjective shots, otherwise known as P.O.V. shots, and at each commercial break, the film fades to bloody red for macabre effect following a freeze frame.

These transitional shots are disturbing and effective in a way. One freeze frame reveals a Red Cross rescue worker’s head grabbed by the burly claws of the snow-beast. Another freeze-frame before fade-to-red is an extreme close-up of Clint Walker’s terror as the snow-beast moves in for the kill.

Noticeably -- and totally in keeping with the aesthetic of these cheap jack TV movies of the 1970s, -- there are no real special effects to speak of in Snowbeast.  The monster suit is mostly (and wisely) kept hidden, except for the one time it presses its grisly face against the window of the Rill Lodge.

Every now and then, a furry arm and gnarled paw breaks into the frame to enliven the proceedings too, but mostly the monster is notable for NOT attacking. 

Instead, the snowbeast does a lot of stalking from behind tree branches, and so the P.O.V. subjective shot gets a huge work out. 

The visual approach is a double-edged sword in some ways. Snowbeast is filled with beautiful exterior tracking shots of skiers in the wild, but the P.O.V. stalk shot recurs so frequently that it creates ennui rather than terror.  I would be hard-pressed to remember a horror movie -- slasher or otherwise -- that so flagrantly over-uses this visual technique.

The great Joseph Stefano is the author of Snowbeast’s screenplay, but it likely wouldn’t rank as one of his greatest achievements. I do appreciate that his teleplay repeatedly makes the point that most Big Foot creatures are reputedly peaceful. 

That’s a good thing to remember, and is consistent with the literature on the creature. Yet in contrast, this beast is entirely malevolent. It decapitates victims on a whim, and stores the corpses in a barn for the long cold winter.  If it is a bigfoot, it's an angry one.

Directed by Herb Wallerstein and written by Joe Stefano and Roger Patterson, Snowbeast plays like a cheap-jack version of Jaws (1975). Basically, the movie is a reiteration of “The Beaches Stay Open” paradigm that the Spielberg film made famous.

Consider: the film is set in an area of scenic beauty and tourism (not a beach, but mountain ski slopes). Consider too, that the local economy is based on seasonal tourism (summer/winter), and dependent on participation in athletic, outdoor activities.  In Jaws we see swimmers and regatta races. Here, we are told about all the festivities: dog-sled racing, snowmobiling, alpine skiing, and the like. 

And in Snowbeast, the owner of the Rill Lodge steps in for the mayor of Amity in Jaws, attempting to enforce a conspiracy of silence.

Both productions also focus on P.O.V. shots, and feature intermittent attacks on those who wander out  into a dangerous domain (into the ocean, or on the slopes) alone. 

Finally, in the latter half of each story, a troika of men head out into the “monster’s” home turf (sea or snow) to challenge and kill it. 

Jaws gave us Brody-Hooper-Quint. Snowbeast gives us Rill-Seberg-Paraday, and also includes Seberg’s wife, Ellen, in the mix.

Snowbeast’s subplot about the Seberg marriage, ironically, feels more like a subplot from Peter Benchley’s novel, Jaws, than it does the Spielberg movie. Basically, Ellen admits to having (sexual) fantasies about Tony Rill because she can no longer respect her husband. At the end of the film, Seberg thrusts his ski pole into the snowbeast, killing the monster and earning his wife’s respect again.

The Jaws riffs are obvious, frequent, and easy to note, and yet Snowbeast never fails to entertain, and truth be told, remains a bit frightening, or at the very least, unnerving in spots.  The film has never been the beneficiary of good reviews, and I can understand that, given the repetitious P.O.V. visuals. 

Criticism of visual distinction aside, Snowbeast is just the kind of unassuming, enjoyable monster movie I love to watch on a cold winter night, while huddled under a blanket, drinking hot chocolate. I can practically feel the chill already...

  

Cult-TV Movie Trailer: Snowbeast (1977)

Cult-TV Movie Review: The Last Dinosaur (1977)

Can a badly dated TV movie about rampaging dinosaurs actually be more than just a badly-dated TV movie about rampaging dinosaurs? That is the paramount question one must confront during an attentive viewing of the 1977 Rankin/Bass television movie, The Last Dinosaur.

Because, as dopey and inconsequential as The Last Dinosaur may appear at first glance, with the seventies era man-in-suit monsters and wacky lost-worlds of fantasy premise (tropical paradise discovered in the polar ice caps!), this Japanese/American co-production also (rather surprisingly...) fulfills one criterion I apply to the finest genre movies. It states something important about the cultural context in which it was crafted; it reveals to us something important about the times; in this case the turbulent 1970s.

Specifically, the titular last dinosaur here is not merely a rogue tyrannosaurus dominating a land that time forgot; but rather the film's protagonist, a raging male chauvinist, an alpha male of excessive virility and masculinity, the appropriately if humorously named Maston Thrust (Richard Boone).

As the film's boozy theme song notes, "there's nothing new" (for this manly throwback) in an emasculating modern world; one that no longer recognizes his (macho) form of supremacy and domination. So Thrust is literally a "dinosaur" of the late twentieth century, and thus the movie concerns the twilight of unquestioned white male supremacy in the age of ascendant women's lib; and the age immediately preceding stifling political correctness.

But before I excavate too deeply into The Last Dinosaur's deeper meaning, I want to recount the plot for those who haven't seen the film (which aired on American TV on February 11, 1977), or who haven't seen it in a while.

As the film opens, big game hunter, Maston Thrust is feeling noticeably past his prime, seeking his last hurrah. During the film's opening credits, Thrust's latest one night stand (whom he soon ditches...) leafs through his impressive photo album of memories, and we see Thrust's biography in photographs, in images. It is a life of exceptional accomplishment: enlistment in the U.S. Army, battling the Nazis in World War II, setting up a robust and successful global oil exploration company (Thrust Industries), leading safari expeditions to Africa -- even battling with namby-pamby animal rights activists.

Thrust, the great white hunter, soon pinpoints his white whale -- his much-sought after last hurrah -- in the surprising form of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

You see, one of Thrust's drilling expeditions -- while ensconced aboard a phallic-shaped laser drill/vehicle called a "polar borer" -- has discovered a prehistoric refuge in the polar caps. The only survivor of that mission is prissy, effete "seventies"-style man Chuck Wave (Steve Keats), who saw his four companions eaten by the T-Rex. It was, Wave claims "an enormous animal." Twenty-feet high, forty-feet long, and weighing eight tons, the Tyrannosaurus is, according to Thrust, "the greatest carnivore that ever lived" and the "king of dinosaurs." The dinosaur represents a challenge Thrust can't ignore. 

Accordingly, Maston assembles an expedition to return to the prehistoric land and "study" the beast. Said expedition includes Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr. Kawamoto (Tetsu Nakamura), a Masai tracker named Bunta (Luther Rackley) and Wave himself. A female photographer, Francisca "Frankie" Banks (Joan Van Ark) is also assigned to join Thrust on the voyage, but he blocks her participation with blatant and forceful chauvinism. "There's no woman going on this trip!" he barks. "I've never taken a woman on safari before!"

But Frankie is wily, and knows how to ingratiate herself with Thrust. At a party celebrating the group's departure (at a Japanese restaurant), this professional gal dresses up as a Japanese servant girl, and then seductively disrobes for Maston under a pagoda. Thrust is tantalized by the attention of the young, attractive woman, and then Frankie takes him back to her boudoir for more convincing. There, while they are in bed together smooching, Frankie surprises Mast by showing a slide show of her photographs. He was expecting to get laid, (and the movie chickens out and doesn't show us if they have sex or not; but the implication is that they did.)

Anyway, the expedition (with Frankie along, naturally...) travels to the prehistoric world, and things quickly go awry. The T-Rex soon crushes poor Dr. Kawamoto underfoot and wrecks the polar borer, rolling it into a vast dinosaur bone yard.

The expedition is trapped for a long time in this perilous world. As the months go by, the marooned 20th century folk devolve after a fashion. They learn to hunt, to skin animals, and to survive without modern conveniences. They must fight for the available food with a local caveman tribe.

A cave woman, nicknamed Hazel (don't ask...) joins the ad-hoc family, as Thrust becomes increasingly obsessed, Ahab-style, with hunting and killing the murderous T-Rex. Thrust constructs a cross-bow and -- eventually -- a giant catapult so as to combat his own personal Moby Dick.

Frankie, now reduced to role of cave mother --- cooking in the cave for the hunters (the men: Wave, Bunta and Maston) -- also finds herself increasingly attracted to Wave, who -- at the very least -- seems to respect her mind. This change of fortune upsets macho Thrust, who wants Frankie to remain the Eve to his Adam in this strange, lost-in-time world.

"Here's where life is. Pure and simple," Thrust tells her. "What's back there for you? Confusion?" 

If you're paying attention at this point, you realize what this dialogue really means: back in the twentieth century world (where she is an accomplished and prize-winning photo-journalist), Thrust believes Frankie can't be the "real" woman that she is here, in this prehistoric world (where she fills her biological imperative of serving man, apparently). 

Frankie ultimately rejects this argument.

In the end, the T-Rex survives the catapult, and Wave repairs the polar borer. Wave and Frankie return home, leaving Maston Thrust -- the throwback -- in his real natural environment: the prehistoric world.

It is there, finally, in The Last Dinosaur's closing sequence that Thrust meets Hazel's (the cave woman's) come-hither eyes. The camera pertinently cuts to two extended "freeze frames" (a la Jules & Jim): one for each character. This technique establishes the connection between the character.

What this "extended moment" represents, essentially, in terms of film grammar, is that Maston has indeed found his suitable mate; one who will always acknowledge his male superiority and not travel outside the bounds of the traditional male/female roles he clearly prefers.

Not coincidentally, it was Hazel who -- sometime earlier in the film -- went to Maston's bed (in a cave) and returned to him his rifle site...a device by which he could "see" better. What she was doing with that site, actually, was giving Thrust the means to see her; perhaps. An option other than the "modern" woman, Frankie who has not been so steadfast.

So what are we to make of all this? 

Well, for just a moment, consider the mid-1970s, the era this film emerged from. This was the epoch of the ERA (which was up for a vote in the House of Representatives in 1971; and in the Senate by 1972). This was the epoch of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision (1973), and the battle for a woman to have a say in reproductive rights (a battle joined in earnest with the wide distribution of the birth control pill in 1960).

This was the age of feminism on blazing intellectual and political "second wave" ascent. Prominent feminists in the culture included Gloria Steinem (a founder of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971), Shulamith Firestone (author of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution [1970]), Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch [1970]), and Kate Milett (Sexual Politics [1970]).

The old fashioned dominant white male -- the Don Draper of AMC's Mad Men, for instance -- had to reckon with a tectonic shift in culture and, for the first time, charges of sexism. Accordingly, The Last Dinosaur is about the last gasp of honest, unadulterated American machismo (and chauvinism) as a pointedly anti-feminist response.

At film's conclusion, Frankie says compassionately of the T-Rex, "It's the last one." Thrust's response is illuminating. He says: "So am I." 

He positions himself as the last of his species then, the last "macho man." Thrust is an unapologetic hunter (and therefore enemy of animal rights activists), and an unapologetic womanizer (as seen by his treatment of his one-night-stand; whom he literally tells to suck on a bullet...) and so the film establishes that he cannot survive as "the last one" in a modern, equal-rights culture. 

Therefore, The Last Dinosaur strands Thrust in a world more to his liking -- literally a prehistoric world. It is there, with a pointedly un-liberated cave-woman as his mate, that he will spend the rest of his days.

Frankie, by contrast, is a liberated contemporary woman of the disco decade. She experiences a taste of life as a prehistoric domestic woman (a metaphor for marriage?) and doesn't much care for it. She adheres to modern values ("After all we've been through, I'd like to think that we're still civilized enough to be compassionate."), and more importantly -- in her seduction of Thrust for her own means and ends, proves herself a heroine in the true spirit of Germaine Greer. 

Where Greer worried that "women have somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality," Frankie freely expresses (and revels) in her sexuality with both Wave and Maston Thrust. She is attracted to both men, but ultimately whom she chooses as a mate (Wave) is her choice, not that of either man. She hightails it back to the 20th century, leaving Thrust, the last of his breed, behind.

I write often here about the ways a film's form (the choice of shots, the selection of soundtrack, etc.) can and should reflect a form's thematic content. Look -- for just a moment -- beneath the rubbery monsters in The Last Dinosaur, and you'll see what I did: that the film's themes are reflected by the film's shape. 

In particular, The Last Dinosaur finds methods to associate Thrust with machismo (and then tie that machismo to a fading, dying age). From the selection of his name (we all know what thrusting regards, don't we?), we understand something about Maston. His conveyance -- the polar "borer" -- is another phallic reference (one literally knocked around by Thrust's competitor in "size" for dominance, the T-Rex). And the film's oddly-captivating theme song explicitly equates Thrust with "the last dinosaur." In fact, the entire film is scored (by Maury Laws) in counter-intuitive but highly-effective fashion: as a kind of folksy, tragic (and yet highly sentimental) requiem for a man who has outlived his time, and his usefulness. The only place for Thrust and his views is...the past.

I've already commented on the deployment here of freeze frames, and how they are utilized to explicitly (and visually) establish the burgeoning connection between Thrust and Hazel, yet there are other visual flourishes as well. For instance, when the group is defeated by the dinosaur and their polar borer taken away (a castration for Thrust?), the film cuts to an impressive (and slow...) pull-back that lets the reality of their entrapment (and alienation from their environment) settle in.

Slow-motion photography is utilized during the climax, to squeeze out the suspense. And even though the titular dinosaur is clearly but a man in a rubbery suit, the film doesn't make the same mistake as many monster movies do. It remembers to often shoot the beast from an extreme low angle (rather than eye level...) to forge a sense of power and menace. I've ribbed the antiquated special effects here quite a bit, but I must state this too: some of the composites between live actors and (admittedly-fake looking dinosaur) are absolutely exceptional. The composites hold up gloriously, even if the monster costumes don't. 

I could have written this review entirely about The Last Dinosaur's consistent literary allusions to Melville's Moby Dick had I wanted to, but I felt that the battle of the sexes angle was much more trenchant to an understanding of the film's heart. 

The Last Dinosaur, for all the hammy performances, creaky zooms, cheesy effects, and portentous dialogue, serves as a relatively unique social commentary about the end of a roiling era; about the twilight of the macho white man's cultural dominance. As this film points out, he was rapidly becoming an endangered species who -- in the 1970s (and before Reagan, anyway...) -- was finding himself more and more out-of-step with modern Western culture (where sensitive Alan Alda would soon be held up as a paragon of type). 

But make no mistake, the film doesn't glorify Maston Thrust. He's not a role model. The film exiles him to pre-history because he can't change; because he can't grow. Still, as Thrust himself seems to realize, he'd rather rule in Hell than serve (or be caged...) in 20th century heaven.

So hell yeah, The Last Dinosaur is an old fashioned, retro monster movie, but in playing on more than one thematic level (and with a modicum of good film style) it certainly fits my definition of B movie (low budget) classic. This is an effort that -- though undeniably dated and passe -- nonetheless has some red meat on those dinosaur bones.