Tuesday, March 24, 2015

MOTW- Grumpy

Land of the Lost (1973) is Sid and Marty Krofft's shining jewel, easily the best of their shows.  I was pretty amped for it's debut after seeing the commercials for it during the summer, simply because, well, dinosaurs.  I doubt any kid had any idea the quality of writing that was going into the show, which combined with the cool stop-motion and likable characters produced a true classic of the sci-fi/lost world genre.  Much of the credit for that goes to first season story editor and writer David Gerrold, who pretty much created the show out of all the cliches handed to him by the Kroffts.  The show even managed to give the various dinosaur co-stars some personality.

Take Grumpy here for example.  He was the resident t rex on the Marshall's side of the Land, and he was always on the hunt for food, though more than once he would be distracted by the humans and lose a potential meal.  He was not very bright.

In one episode he and the resident allosaurus, Alice, got into a screaming match from both sides of the great chasm.  This later built to Grumpy crossing over the bridge and invading Alice's territory, which was near the lost city of the Sleestak.  We finally got the battle we had wanted!

Speaking of Sleestak, they were terrifying at age eight.  They are still pretty scary.

1 comment:

Danny Coffin said...

For me,this show ranks up there with ''JONNY QUEST''in the annals of all-time greats.Everything on ''LAND OF THE LOST'' just plain,flat-out worked(though,as you mentioned,with the legendary talent involved in creating the show this is no surprise...)Indeed,the original Sleestak were some of the most effective,otherworldly characters ever(something that their early 90's counterparts,who I'll simply refer to as SINO,were not.)