Director: Sandy Oliveri is so credited, though [God] alone knows why.

So many schlocky special effects films; so little time to waste.

But that's okay, because the good folks at [My Little Pony or Porn Star?|Good Times Video] hastily compiled clips from an assortment of old [monster] movies and released them back in [1992], just in time to cash in on the hype surrounding [Jurassic Park].

The video begins with a very brief overview, featuring clips from early dino-cinema: [Gertie the Dinosaur], [The Lost World], and [King Kong]. This is the only background the film provides, and one wonders if it wasn't just pirated from another documentary. From there, we head straight into an unedited stretch of mid-[1970s|70s] promo for [The Golden Voyage of Sinbad] by [Ray Harryhausen], a man who was doing faux-Saturday-Afternoon-Serial long before [George Lucas|Lucas] and [Steven Spielberg|Spielberg] made it trendy. His trademark model animation features prominently, as does the film's model starlet, animatedly posing for [cheesecake] shots when she isn't needed on the set. All of this has, of course, pretty much nothing to do with [dinosaurs], but pay attention, because it's the film's last attempt to explain anything. Following the "[Sinbad]" sequence, the video presents uncontextualized film trailers, run one after another in no particular order.

That's right. Nearly the entire 75 minutes of this video consists of trailers. Instead of sitting through minutes of mood-setting [foreplay], viewers can jump right to the Monster Movie [money shot]s: second-rate actors in rubber suits trashing model cities, lizards in glued-on fetish fins trashing each other, explorers in ripped clothing discovering eruptions, and earthquake-prone lost worlds shaking and bouncing. Propelling all of this are hyperbolic announcers, superlative titles, excited exclamation points, overbearing music, and overblown statements.

[Rodan] gets called "the science-fiction masterpiece of all time!" and the trailer nicely includes the scene where the giant [pteradactyl]oid menaces an [Asahi] brewery. [Journey to the Beginning of Time] is "acclaimed by Dr. Edwin H. Colbert of the [American Museum of Natural History] as 'Absolutely Authentic,'" right down to the [woolly mammoth] that coexists with a "brontasauris." The [dragon]-like [Godzilla] knock-off, [Reptilicus] gets called a "[mastodon]!" The Land Unknown, meanwhile, treats us to the sight of its heroine being felt up by an authentic intelligent prehistoric plant. [When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth] presents the well-documented practice of ritually sacrificing blonde women to giant [slurpasaur]s. The forgotten [Nessie] receives praise as "the world's most treasured story!"

Although footage from the [1960s] [One Million Years BC] appears twice, the [1940s] [One Million BC|original] is conspicuous by its absence. Instead, we see the trailers for several of the movies which have sampled that film's slurpasaurian stock footage.

Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies also features trailers from films lacking even the most tenuous connections to dinosaurs, such as [Jack the Giant Killer] and [Tarantula], but, hey, they're fun to watch.

What makes this hasty compilation work is the charm of these old films, the sheer cheesiness of the special effects and the utter incoherence of the marketing strategies back in the days before [Hollywood] accountants took fantasy seriously and computers made effects easy. Hell, the collective budget of these things probably wouldn't cover the opening credits for a Lucasfilm. If you find Fantastic Dinosaurs, give it a look, and marvel at [the Cheesey Dino-Geist of Saturday Afternoons Past]!

I first wrote a variation of this review for Bad Movie Night.