And sometimes the results could be pretty goofy.

It wasnt until the early 1800s that people started recognizing dinosaur bones for what they were.

(So… youre saying there were these real live giant lizards stomping all over the planet awhile back?

Like maybe before Noah or something?

Ill be damned.)

The general consensus was that such an encounter would not end well.

In 1911, he premiered the worlds first animated cartoon, which perhaps not surprisingly was based onLittle Nemo.

With the 1914 premiere ofGertie the Dinosaurin Chicago, McCay won the bet.

As was the case withLittle Nemo, not much happens inGertie.

But it was enough.

Gertie was more like a golden retriever than a dragon.

Its a scene that would be repeated though with less playful results, in both 1933sKing Kongand 1954sGojira.

In Fritz LangsSiegfried, the legendary Nordic hero Siegfried himself does battle with a rather clumsy dragon, Fafner.

Douglas Fairbanks fights his own dragon inThe Thief of Baghdad.

Willis OBrien, who like Winsor McCay had been a newspaper cartoonist, decided to take McCaysGertieone step further.

Instead of animating two-dimensional drawings, using the same process he began experimenting with three-dimensional models.

The results at the time were astonishingnobody had seen anything like it before.

McCay may have brought a dinosaur to life, but OBrien made them breathe.

Not surprisingly the Brontosaurus breaks free and goes on a mild rampage before swimming back home.

ThusThe Lost Worldbecame the first giant monster on the loose in a major city movie.

OBrien then set to work onCreation, an ambitious, full-length animated dinosaur epic.

He also hired OBrien to design and animate his leading man.

The similarities between 1933sKing KongandThe Lost Worldare hardly coincidental.

The partys first impulse is to kill these beasts.

Where had they seen these creatures before that they would react that way?

Were Stegosaurus commonplace in the States in the 1930s?

Those dinosaurs, though, boy, they remained an unredeemable menace to us all.

The film became an enormous success.

A monumental success, even.

So much so that a sequel (Son of Kong) was whipped together and released that same year.

Like OBrien, Harryhausen began building dinosaur models and making short stop-motion films.

The two had met in school and became lifelong friends.

The film was yet another big hit.

It was far more than a simple monster movie.

Director Ishiro Honda crafted a dark and somber allegory about the horrors of nuclear war.

It was nothing to laugh at.

And boy, by some accounts, was Ray Harryhausen pissed.

The only fly in the ointment is that dinosaur over on the island in the middle of the lake.

It cost a lot of money, it took a lot of time, and he had neither.

Gila monsters were just little dinosaurs anyway, right?

And they move more realistically than those models Harryhausen used.

With no money on hand, it was a cheap and effective tool.

Effective enough, anyway.

Dinosaur aside, the film had other issues.

Never have I seen four less scientific scientists in a science fiction film.

They arrive on an alien planet full of wildlife and vegetation, and what do they do?

Do they test samples or explore?

No, they adopt a chimp and have a picnic.

They treat the whole thing like a camping trip.

They blow it up with an atom bomb they happened to be carrying with them.

But its best not to dwell on things like that when youre trying to enjoy a damn movie.

With Gordon, the technique would become a career trademark, prompting Forry Ackermann to dub him Mr. B.I.G.

King Dinosaurmay not have been a very good film, but it was made at the right time.

The people at AIP did, and signed Gordon up.

Well, then along came CGI andJurassic Park,and Steven Spielberg, and that was pretty much that.