mark.waltz Pretentious to the point of absurdity, this is one of the dumbest "smart" movies ever made. It all takes place on "the planet next door", a new arrival in our solar system that somehow parks itself between Earth and Mars. Four scientists (two men and two women) catch the express rocket to what is named Nova and find the planet to be exactly like Earth and inhabited by similar critters. Encounters with snakes and some friends mammals leads to an island filled with large Rubbermaid and alligators, and some of the silliest looking creatures outside of "It Conquered the World". There's also a giant fly that gets pelted with bullets simply for landing too close. A fight between one of the men and a normal sized rubber alligator is the comic highlight of the film. Calling a giant lizard a duplicate of a T-Rex has to be the dumbest scientist statement ever made. This one truly ranks among the worst of the worst and makes Ed Wood a genius in comparison.

bkoganbing Bert Gordon may have hit the nadir of his career with King Dinosaur. This one is a stinker of massive proportions just like the creatures discovered on a new planet in the solar system.The first third of the film is documentary like with the solemn tones of Marvin Miller telling us how four select scientists, two men and two women got chosen to explore the new planet Nova. After that the players take over none of whom you will ever have heard of.A lot of nature films fill in as the explorers discover a planet that looks like a giant national park. But there's a lake and a mysterious looking island in the middle. So two of them paddle over in a rubber raft.The island is Jurassic Park with stock footage from One Million BC used as it is in a slew of cheap science fiction films. What to do, but blow the place up.And for that the expedition has packed an atomic bomb. With a timer too. Just set it for a half hour delay and then run and paddle for your life. The end the island blows up so future explorers will never see a glimpse of real prehistoric life. To think scientists did this and none of them is a nuclear physicist.It's one of the worst science fiction films ever done and definitely one of the worst productions to come out of Lippert Pictures which was on its last legs.If you watch it you'll find it frighteningly ghastly.

MARIO GAUCI Gordon's debut film certainly gave no indication of his longevity within the fantasy genre: while it is not in the same awful league as, say, ROBOT MONSTER (1953) or Ed Wood's entire body of work, it is all the worse for being dishonest! One simply cannot play up the notion of a gigantic prehistoric creature, and then provide your audience with nothing more than a magnified lizard – to say nothing of having the gall to describe it as being akin to a Tyrannosaurus Rex! For what it is worth, the premise (scripted by Tom Gries!) of an Earth-like planet surfacing in our solar system which, when inspected, is found to still be in its infancy i.e. the age of dinosaurs and active volcanoes (though, thankfully, we do not get to see monosyllabic caveman roaming about) was not too shabby. However, like I noted before, if the budget does not extend to at least a competent level of special effects (after copious stock footage had already served for the space flight with, amusingly, an utter dearth of shots displaying the astronauts inside the vessel!), it would have been better to undertake a more manageable venture in the first place! As it stands, even if barely lasting an hour, the running-time is padded-out with a plethora of scenes revolving around the things I hate most in life: in fact, reptiles of all varieties put in an appearance here (with a particular astronaut being the brunt of most attacks, including a one-on-one with an alligator and – genuinely heart-stopping – being slithered all over by a giant dark-skinned snake)! The titular monster, then, shows his dominance over the rest by winning out in separate combats with another crocodile and an iguana. Perhaps the most outrageous element of all is the decision by the heroes to nuke the place (why would they even require a nuclear weapon during a scouting mission…for what right do humans have to destroy the life-form of another world, however hostile its reception?!) – but, of course, with no harm done to themselves – when they prove unable to overcome "King Dinosaur"!

CarlNaamanBrown I confess! I liked this move when I first saw it. (I was seven in 1955.)As I recall, an asteroid had passed near the earth and made some stir in the news before this movie appeared. I suspected that was the inspiration of the plot.(OK so THIS plot was NOT inspired in any way, shape or form. Waddaya gonna do, sue a seven year old kid?)To a seven year old, an iguana propped up on its hind legs did a passable impersonation of a tyrannosaurus.When I saw the movie again on MST3K, well, . . . . hey, I was seven and it was cool to me in the 1950s.(Updt 19 Aug 2014: I found a copy of the 1957 World Book Annual Supplement (events of 1956) at the local book fair (the family 1955 World Book set w. supplements up to the 1960s was abandoned in a move in 1996). There it was: news of the near-earth asteroid Geographos discovered in 1951 named in 1956, predicted to pass 4 million miles from Earth in 1969. But barely 5 by 2 kilometers.)