A Navy pilot (to fly the helicopter), a Commander (to star in the movie), and a Machinist Mate (to strand them good by busting a part with a hammer and running down the radio battery too soon) fly over Antarctic but get lost in a hole in the ground. <br /><br />Typical of what you usually see in rubber-suit dinosaur movies: stiff, slow-moving, sluggish, unrealistic and hardly lifelike... and that's just Jock Mahoney's acting! (The T-Rex is slightly better.)<br /><br />Janet Leigh lookalike Shirley Patterson (using an alias of Shawn Smith) goes along for the ride to provide 1950s-style eye candy, and scream and faint at inopportune times. To provide suspense, she mentions that just about the time their window of opportunity for being rescued will end, her clothes are going to wear out (although that would presumably open different windows of opportunity.)<br /><br />Henry Brandon as the bat-crazy castaway Dr. Hunter comes the closest to being an interesting character, ranting about his months alone in the dark with the lizards, smashing dinosaur eggs with his Fred Flintstone club, and occasionally kidnapping Maggie ("I own everything in this valley... including YOU!") A little time alone with her seems to change his mind, though, and he risks his life to give her back to the Navy when it seems they might be trying to fly away without her. (The director apparently lost interest in Carter at the end, though; when the helo runs out of gas and crashes beside the ship, only very careful viewing lets you see him make it into the lifeboat, and he's not seen for the remainder of the movie.)<br /><br />High points: --- [1] In a lesser movie, once Maggie finds her cute little furry doll-eyed pet "Shakepeare", not only would he appear in every remaining scene, he'd probably end up saving everyone; in this movie he's immediately eaten. --- [2] It was a nice touch to make the T-Rex's eyes blink (although that apparently left only about $10 for the rest of the costume.) --- [3] I bet the the monitor-lizard wrestling death-match really ticks off the PeTA types.<br /><br />Low points: --- [1] The flaming Q-Tip in the mouth treatment for the Reptilicus clone in the lake is pretty badly done (Reptilicus gets tired of it the second time, too.) --- [2] They're rescued just one day before Maggie's clothes are scheduled to fall apart.