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.