Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend ** (1985, William Katt, Sean Young, Patrick McGoohan, Julian Fellowes) – Classic Movie Review 10,656

‘The greatest adventure ever born!’

Director B W L Norton’s 1985 family sci-fi adventure Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend found Walt Disney studios in trouble with a fumbled Eighties King Kong-style adventure with a baby dinosaur instead of the huge ape.

Patrick McGoohan plays Dr Eric Kiviat, who seeks a family of living brontosauri in dense African jungles, but zoologist/ paleontologist Susan Matthews-Loomis (Sean Young) and her unemployed journalist husband George Loomis (William Katt) beat him to it, stumbling on a hatching brontosaurus. They then embark on a dangerous quest to reunite the baby dinosaur with its family.

McGoohan hams it up, while the rest of the cast seem uncommonly subdued. Family audiences may like the olde-worlde air and the cute little dinosaur, but they may be put off by the gory tone since Disney was looking for an adult audience and made it under its Touchstone logo.

Bill Norton also directed More American Graffiti.

Also in the cast are Julian Fellowes as Nigel Jenkins, Kyala Mativo, Hugh Quarshie, Olu Jacobs, Eddie Tagoe, Edward Hardwicke and Julian Curry.

It is written by Clifford Green and Ellen Green.

Julian Fellowes won an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Gosford Park (2001) and a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special for Downton Abbey (2010).

Kiviat is loosely based on biologist, engineer, teacher and biochemist Dr Roy Mackal of the University of Chicago, and the story is loosely based on his voyages to Africa in search of the legendary living dinosaurs of the Congo, Mokele-Mbembe.

It is shot on the Côte D’Ivoire and at Walt Disney Studios, 500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, California.

Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend is directed by B W L Norton [Bill Norton], runs 95 minutes, is made by Silver Screen Partners II, Touchstone Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, is released by Touchstone Pictures (1985) (US), is written by Clifford Green and Ellen Green, is shot by John Alcott (Technicolor), produced by Jonathan Taplin, and scored by Jerry Goldsmith, with special effects by Philip Meador and Peter Anderson.

The film has a logo for Touchstone Pictures at the end but its copyright credits Walt Disney Productions.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,656

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