Are there scenes missing from The Last Dinosaur (1977)?

[Desghidorah]

I used to watch this movie quite a bit when I was a kid, had a cross the street neighbor who was a close friend of my parents that owned it on VHS and let me borrow it. Can’t even exactly say why I watched it so many times when I had objectively better dinosaur movies to watch in the early 2000’s, maybe I just like the fact that T.rex roar sounded cool.

Anyways the version I saw was the trim down 96 minute version and I know for a fact that version is the trim down American TV edit. However, the supposed full cut was shown in Japan and is available on both some recent DVDs and certain Internet sources if you know where to look. Yet even in this version it almost seems like there’s a couple scenes missing.

For context when were first introduced to a large group of primitive cavemen harassing the explorers, it’s after a noticeable time skip and the Explorer team comments that they’ve met this exact same group of primitives before. In fact, all their dialogue in the following scenes implies they had multiple encounters with the aggressive tribe earlier. It’s not particularly jarring and the dialogue does mostly clarify what exactly happened (originally the primitives were scared of them but got emboldened over time). However, it really seems like this compiled with a few scenes prior in the movie where we saw the cavemen on their own observing the group at a distance unnoticed, makes it come off like there’s a scene missing.

And it’s not the only supposedly missing sequence that I’ve seen get brought up. There’s a Triceratops in the movie that fights the Tyrannosaurus, and in my VHS copy it just seems like it appears out of nowhere bursting out of a mountain. However, I’ve heard a couple people mentioned that there was a sequence that we saw it earlier. And I’m not referring to the misclassified Uintatherium that we saw a relatively early on, which for some reason the movie said was a ceratopsian.

Am I just reading into things too much in this silly 70s movie or is there actually something missing here?

[Terasawa]

The version available on DVD in Japan and the U.S. seems to be the uncut, finished film as originally released. So, no, in that regard, there are no scenes missing from the film. On the other hand, it's very likely various drafts or even a shooting script contained additional scenes (that's just the nature of filmmaking), but there's no indication they'd been shot. Even assuming they had been, there's still no indication that they've ever seen the light of day.

[Desghidorah]

The version available on DVD in Japan and the U.S. seems to be the uncut, finished film as originally released. So, no, in that regard, there are no scenes missing from the film. On the other hand, it's very likely various drafts or even a shooting script contained additional scenes (that's just the nature of filmmaking), but there's no indication they'd been shot. Even assuming they had been, there's still no indication that they've ever seen the light of day.

Aye, that's what I figured. My curiosity was spurred by hearsay about other scenes, so I wasn't entirely sure if the deleted portions were available in some capacity or perhaps included in some release.

[Terasawa]

I don't think so, unfortunately. And again, it's possible there are no notable "deleted portions" to show. The Japanese DVD has more than an hour's worth of special features, but deleted scenes aren't among them. Technically, there's probably unused SFX footage in the behind the scenes featurette, but it wouldn't be anything like you're asking for.



Similarly, trailers are sometimes a great source for unused footage (usually alternate takes), and there's a really long trailer on the Japanese disc, but I'm not familiar enough with this film to say whether that's the case here.