When I was a teenager and young adult, my main hobby was making amateur 16mm movies. I made 41 of them, nine of them featuring dinosaurs and other prehistoric critters, the last (and best) being Son of Tor (1964). Son of Tor (the name “Tor” was mostly inspired by that of artist/writer Joe Kubert’s caveman comic-book hero) was my amateur version of The Son of Kong. And as that latter film was a sequel to the original King Kong, my version was a follow-up to Tor, King of Beasts, my amateur “remake” of King Kong.
I did all the special effects and made all the props and miniature sets for Son of Tor. I made the Son of Tor models out of clay, sculpted over “armatures” consisting of pipe cleaners. Then, via some rather crude stop-motion animation, moving and photographing the models one frame at a time, I brought them to “life” on screen. (To see some “behind-the-scenes” photos from Son of Tor, CLICK HERE.) I also included some live reptiles “pretending” to be prehistoric animals.
Perhaps these models might be regarded as collectibles — and might be in my collection today, had they not suffered so much melting under those hot floodlamps.
I made quite a few amateur dinosaur movies over the years — some using stop-motion, earlier ones using everything from stationary figures to hand puppets to live reptiles to toys pulled on threads. But Son of Tor was the best of the lot.
All of my amateur dinosaur — and many other genres — movies can be seen on the I Was a Teenage Movie Maker DVD, available on Amazon.