Dinosaurus! (1960)

I’ve argued before that much of movie monsterdom is based on the idea of finding some way to revive the dinosaurs, because people, and kids especially, will never not be fascinated with dinosaurs. As historically inaccurate as it is, I think the reason so many movies feature humans and dinosaurs coexisting is because many just wish that they could co-exist with them, and project it onto the distant past. With that in mind, I doubt many would disagree with me when I say that the ultimate dream of most children, maybe even more than befriending a robot, is befriending a dinosaur, which is like your typical animal friendship stories but massively scaled up. There have been plenty of pieces of entertainment that exploit that desire, and Dinosaurus! is technically one of them—although in practice, it’s really a movie about a kid befriending a neanderthal and then getting to briefly befriend a dinosaur as a fringe benefit. Still, there weren’t many movies about kids getting to spend any amount of time with a dinosaur in 1960, so maybe it could still stand out as something new and exciting.

The Ship of Monsters (1960)

There’s very few things as enjoyable as discovering another good vintage B-movie—the quaintness that can be found in the best low budget flicks from the fifties and sixties has a special feeling all its own, which is why I’m always on the lookout for ones I’ve never heard of. As a Mexican Sci-Fi comedy musical creature feature, because it is indeed all those things, The Ship of Monsters (Le nave de los monstruos) is another great find, a film that revels in the silliness of its genre and the limitations of its own budget in a way that’s difficult not to admire. I usually wait until the second paragraph to outline the plot, but I feel it’s necessary to get that out early in order to really get you on board: after atomic radiation kills off all the men on the planet Venus, two bikini-clad saviours are sent to scour the galaxy for male specimens of different species to help repopulate the planet with the best combination of genes, and after picking up several monsters and putting them on a ship (they are certainly open-minded) as well as a lone robot, they have to make an emergency landing on Earth for repairs, and then meet up with a singing cowboy. Are things like this not the reason we have cinema?