Old Godzilla movies have pretty cheesy looking effects. What would happen if they got downgraded a few notches? Answer: "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet." It makes Godzilla look positively high-tech. There's a reason you've never heard of this despite the popularity of other kaiju.

To start out with the title is a little misleading. I expected alien monsters or at least dinosaurs of some kind. There’s no indication that the creatures we meet come from anywhere but Earth. OK so maybe “planet” actually refers to Earth. But you can’t consider that unless you already know the movie doesn’t involve other planets. If the planet is Earth then that would suggest that we were dealing with some kind of dinosaur. Godzilla is closer to a true dino than these things are. These look like a bird and a dino got a little too friendly and had secret babies they needed to hide from their friends on a remote island.

And that is where the story starts out - with a team of explorers sent out into the uncharted areas of the world to find animals for a tourist attraction. They stumble across a primitive island tribe (think King Kong) who seems to be guarding some secret. The explorers find a baby monster, and when they take it back to the civilized world the monster-parents come looking for little Junior, tearing up everything in sight along the way. They seem to be unstoppable as they laugh derisively at the best weapons 1967 had to offer!

This really is a train wreck. It’s so dumb I don’t think I would even bother adding comic commentary to it. Nah, I take that back. I would. Maybe I would be more forgiving if the monsters looked better, although I think part of my discontent is because it feels like Godzilla should be showing up at any moment when of course he never does.

It’s an old Japanese movie so expect the stereotypical bad English dubbing. This kills any potential for real drama or suspense. I don’t think they used actors for voice overs back then, I think they were really robotic monkeys.