Dinosaurus is a 1960 Universal International film. I'd seen it, back in 2008, and hadn't watched it since. I missed buying a DVD, the Image DVD is out of print and now it's pretty pricey, there's one on Amazon for $54. A quick Google search netted a European copy, on eBay for 7 bucks, and another site had a copy for double but they were out of stock. It written by Dan E Weisburd and Jean Yeaworth, directed by Irvin Yeaworth and producer Jack H Harris provided the story idea. It's in the low-budget range for Universal, $450K, but that's still much better than your average AIP budget.
The story is about some dinos that are brought back to life after being found frozen in the sea by a Caribbean island. When the dinosaurs, a T-Rex and a Brontosaurus, were dragged up onto the island they brought up a frozen caveman too. He thaws out to play the comic relief. The T-Rex thaws out to play the monster but the Bronto is a nice guy. The stop motion is fairly good but no Harryhausen. The guy making the dinos, Marcel Delgado was promised 5-6 weeks to create them but 2 weeks in he was told they would need them now. They look remarkably good, considering.
There's some issues with the rear projection shots, sometimes they look so obvious, but it's not something to worry too much about. It's pretty lighthearted, even the T-Rex attacks cut away before things get too dicey. The caveman, a kid and the Bronto provide some laughs.
There's a bit of danger as the T-Rex tromps around and the human's figure out how to fight the critter. It was fun enough, I got a few giggles out if it, and there's a bit of excitement during the battle between the shovel and the T-Rex. Not the best dino movie around but certainly watchable.
Footage from the movie was used in other productions: During special-effects work on this picture, the crew used their Brontosaurus model and miniature jungle set to film a shot for an episode of TV's The Twilight Zone (1959), called "The Odyssey of Flight 33". A shot of the Tyrannosaurus was borrowed as well for "The Secret of Gilligan's Island," a 3rd season episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan dreams the castaways are all cavepeople living on the island back in the stone age. -from the Wikipedia.
Giant Phantom Monster Agon is a four part Japanese TV series that aired January 2-8 1968 on Nippon Television. I found a copy on YouTube that's certainly watchable. The mini-series was filmed in 1964 but Toho Studios thought that the monster was too close to Godzilla and they held up the broadcast. After finding out that Shinichi Sekizawa and Fuminori Ohashi were involved, they lifted the ban. Shinichi wrote some of Toho's kaiju films and Fuminori was the apprentice of Eiji Tsuburaya, Toho's head of special effects. Toho somehow was convinced that the two men didn't intend to copy Godzilla.
It was filmed in B&W with a sepiatone tint. The website in the title above shows some samples of the tint but the version on YouTube is B&W. It's a bit shorter, 90:56 minutes, than the 96 minutes that the Wikipedia lists the film being. There's a 94 minute DVD on Amazon for 15 bucks. Not sure I need that for that price.
The story is typical big monster comes out of the sea and people run away stuff, but it does poke along. There's some good monster action and plenty of talking among the humans. Like some of the Godzilla movies, there's a kid that gets in trouble.
Never one to throw anything out the studio that made the TV series took the Agon monster suit, changed it a bit and used it for a dinosaur in an episode of The Space Giants. It was changed again and appeared a second time, this time the monster had a name, Giant Fire Monster Aron. After that that the suit was probably tossed out.
It's certainly not great but I watched it to the end. The monster is OK and the destruction is fairly descent for a TV production.
I'd recommend it to the Kaiju fan who might be interested in this sort of thing.