The Last Dinosaur

The Last Dinosaur (Saigo no Kyoru) is a 1977 Japanese/American tokusatsu co-production, co-directed by Alexander Grasshoff and Tsununobu Kotani, billed as Tom Kotani, and co-produced by Japan's Tsuburaya Productions, and Rankin/Bass Productions. The movie was filmed at Tsuburaya Studios in Tokyo. This B-movie was intended for a US theatrical release, but failed to find a distributor and ended up as a television movie airing on ABC on February 11, 1977 in an edited 95-minute run time. The film was eventually picked up for overseas markets by Cinema International Corporation, where it was released in the full 106-minute version as a double bill in the UK with the edited-down version of Sorcerer (considered a remake of "The Wages of Fear"). Toho also picked up distribution rights to The Last Dinosaur in Japan for a theatrical release utilizing the 106-minute uncut version in English language with subtitles, and later debuted on Japanese television dubbed in Japanese. The film stars Richard Boone and Joan Van Ark. William Overgard wrote the screenplay. The score was composed, as was most of the music for all Rankin/Bass specials and series, by Maury Laws, while the title song "He's the Last Dinosaur", with lyrics by Jules Bass, was sung by Nancy Wilson, and arranged and conducted by Bernard Hoffer.