A little thread on "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend" ('85).

(It was nice of Burian to loan Disney his brachiosaurus for this poster.)

I was 9 when this film came out. I liked it because it had dinosaurs in it. I couldn't understand why Siskel & Ebert gave it 2 thumbs down. "Those guys always say good movies are bad," my friend said then. I wonder what she would say now with adult eyes. (I wonder what I would.)

Anyway, I'd like to talk about the dinosaur effects themselves, not so much the plot and stuff. The dinosaurs were built by Isidoro Raponi & R. Tantin. These were life-sized & miniature puppets & suits, the largest measuring 70 feet long.

They were built in the USA over a year's time. Raponi and company worked blind without a completed script, not knowing what even the puppets would be expected to do. Numerous prototypes were scrapped.

According to Raponi, the brontosaurs were made of a plastic/fiberglass skeleton covered with urethane foam muscles & latex skin. There was no monitor on set for the puppeteers, so some scenes took 20 takes to get the interaction between puppet and actor right.

For some scenes, dinosaur suits were used. 3 different people wore them, Paula Crist, Richard Aguirre, & Terri Girvin. All were the same height, 4'6" so they could share the suit. The adult dinosaur suits were proportionally scaled to their frame & filmed on miniature sets.

The suits had extensions in the front legs so the actor could keep a straight back and not have all their blood rush to their head. Still, it was hot in the suits. One performer fainted.

Filming with miniatures was done in California, not the Ivory Coast where principal photography took place. It was wet in Africa, which was not great for the puppets (the river water dissolved the latex) & the sets were often invaded by poisonous snakes.

Certain choices were made by Raponi & co in designing the brontosaurs. They put the nostrils at the tip of the snout so it could sniff about. (At the time, it was believed bronto nostrils were on top of the head) The reptilian slit pupils were chosen to make it seem less like ET.

Raponi has said the crew was not trying to recreate a specific sauropod species, just something that was dinosaur-ish enough to be recognized as one and yet perform/emote believably. When I was 9, it was real enough for me.

Not all the film was believable for everyone. My uncle, a paleornithologist, reportedly laughed aloud when he saw American turkey vultures scavenging in an African scene. I wonder if the person who noted that particular "goof" on IMDB is him.