Phil Tippett's Prehistoric Beast 

That final lunge before the title has lived rent free in my head for over 35 years. Such a blast from the past to finally see it again.

I remember seeing this on TV in '85. I was only 5 but obsessed with dinosaurs. I ran to the television when my mom said it was on. I'm 40 now and tonight was the first time in 35 years I sat and watched this again. Instant chills.

I love how '80s this is. The dark, moody lighting, the soft synthesized soundtrack, the dated dinosaur effects... if I were a kid I would've loved this.

Fun fact: Phil Tippett was also the dinosaur supervisor for the 1993 film "Jurassic Park".

This, ladies and gentlemen, is art.

I love it. No Dialogue and no voice acting; it's just Dinosaurs being Dinosaurs. Edit 12/20/23: Thanks for the 1K likes!

Holy shit, I remember watching this on the Eyewitness VHS tape for dinosaurs when I was a little kid. THIS was my Jurassic Park growing up, my first major experience with seeing dinosaurs in motion. Thank you Mr. Tippet, for making my childhood.

Phil Tippett creates beauty and darkness at the same time. I remember seeing this as a kid in 87 I believe, and never forgot it. Was into Dinosaurs ever since. Godzilla helped that too~

The herbivore wails make it so much more haunting. *applause*

This turned from a happy centrosaurus walking around eating happely to a nightmare. 6:25 it has to be terrifying that out of nowhere a massive predator comes out from behinde the trees and was able to do so as quietly as possible.

See, this is what the Walking with Dinosaurs 2013 film SHOULD have been like. No voice actors, just animal trying to survive.

So marvellous and scary. An unknown masterpiece

A moment of silence those who know this from Really Wild Animals, but can’t find just the dinosaur scenes

Love the morning scene at 1:15 and the dinosaur intro at 1:58. The ambient music (in the early part) by Mark Adler is very calming. The ambient bird noises make it sound all the more natural. I also love the roars at 4:26. Update August 2023: I'm happy to see this film get more views, it is now the second most viewed video of Phil Tippett's channel! For perspective, when I originally posted this comment years ago, it had only ~300K views.

I remember playing this CD ROM when I was in 2nd grade. It was a reward from the teacher for good grades. Aw memories :')

That was some excellent animation! Glad to see that "Jurassic Park" veteran, Phil Tippett was the genius behind its realistic portrayal of the dinosaurs!

One of the BEST works by Phil! It's very realistic in how it presents an actual scenario that took place often during the Cretaceous (as well as the whole Mesozoic Era in general). That's the main reason why I love this, plus the stop-motion animation is SUPURB, the dinosaurs look and are animated to very realistic levels. :)

A perfect combination of lighting, pacing, and music that creates a startling portrait of the Age of Reptiles.

I would love to see a full length film using this as its intro scene, continuing on from where this left off. This little 10 minute animation has everything I wanted to see in a dinosaur film as a kid, with none of the usual studio-mandated baggage that spoiled previous attempts at making such a feature (like The Land Before Time and Dinosaur, both of which I still enjoyed, or the Walking With Dinosaurs movie with its vastly superior Cretaceous Cut). Even as a kid, I craved a dinosaur movie with no humans, no voice-overs, and no documentary-style narration. Bonus points if it was from the point of view of a carnivore (T-rex in particular), and was at LEAST as tense, atmospheric, and explicitly gory as this. No more of this talking herbivore migration stuff we always get when someone tries to make a dinosaur movie - make it about a T-rex hatching, growing up, and eventually becoming the most terrifying killer for miles around, even usurping his territory from the previous generation's king. THAT'S what kids want.

The stop motion photography, the lighting, the music- all perfect!

7:05 There is only one thing worse than a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex... A pissed off Tyrannosaurus Rex that no longer just wants to eat you, but to make you SUFFER for harming the King of the Lizards.

I love it! It feels so organic and real! Love your work Phil!

When I was a child I LOVED this documentary! I would check out the video cassette from the library constantly. I was so fascinated by Dinosaurs I still am to this very day. Dinosaurs are wonderful mysterious creatures that lived long ago. 🦕🦖

Wow! When I was a kid, in the 90s, my dad bought our first computer and one of the softwares included was Microsoft Dinosaurs 95. That software had some video excerpts and, yeah, one of them was a shorter version of this amazing short film. Very good memories!

This is fantastic! I felt like 6 year old me just watched this in 1985. Totally reminds me of my childhood in the 80s. My generation had such amazing experiences because of people like Phil Tippet🙌❤

Mr. Tippett has fantastic attention to detail as is proven at 6:20 of this video. I haven't seen too many movies/shows that had that kind of attention to detail.

It's like watching a Dinosaur slasher movie.

that flute/synthesiser music is amazing!

The world needs more of this.

I just noticed something this film does that I don’t think I’ve seen in other dinosaur docs or movies. We briefly get to see directly through the dinosaur’s eyes. At least, I can’t think of another example of a film that puts us in that perspective.

Id love to see an updated documentary in this style some day.

I remember this from, the Eyewitness: Dinosaurs, special. I believe that was the first time I saw any of this film. Man, it really left the impression on me. Glad to see the full film restored in digital form. Truly brilliant.

God...this Short Film it's so Awesome, this Stop Motion it's Art, Brutality and Beautiful Art.

I remember this as a child, it was part of a dinosaur videotape I was obsessed with as a boy.

this is how you do a dinosaur film no voice of some dude talking about the dinosaur just the sound of the wild life and the dinosaur itself

7:05 to the end, such a great sequence. the music really added to the intensity

Masterpiece! When I was in Kindergarten they had a clip of the fight scene. I was obsessed with Dinosaurs so I would watch it all the time even though I was terrified by it. From the isolating atmosphere, to the unsettling music, and of course the breath taking animation, this film will forever be engrained into my mind.

this small short film really makes me wonder and imagine what a dinosaur looked like and behaved when it was alive instead of just bones and fragments in a museum in an ancient forest, untouched by civilization..

Absolutely haunting.

I saw a pixalized version of this on Dino Dons website back in 1997 as a small 7 year old boy in school! I was so amazed! So nice to be seeing this again

New Subscriber-For-Life and Stop-Mo fan since 1957 and TWENTY MILLION MILES TO EARTH!

Say what you want, but Phil Tippett KNOWS how to paint and texture his stop motion puppets. dang that's craftsmanship

I had vague but precise memories of watching this short as a kid in the late 80's at my grandmother's color tv, and it completely blew my mind. After that I'd expect to re watch it every time I turned the tv on with no luck. This is so beautiful and nostalgic.

I remember seeing this in a special about dinosaurs hosted by Christopher Reeves. They moved in such a life-like manner, it was like someone went back in time to film these magnificent creatures.

I remember watching this in the Dinosaur documentary back in the mid '80s. Still amazing to see.

This is an amazing feat of ambitious stop-motion skills. I remember seeing this footage on a dinosaur documentary back in the early ‘90s, as well as Hadrosaur footage in another dinosaur-doc from the ‘80s with Christopher Reeve hosting. All of the footage reminds me of what Willis O’Brien was shooting for in both THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN and CREATION. Tippett is one of the great masters of the art of narrative stop-motion animation, and he is certainly not extinct!

There was so much beauty and horror in that eerie silence. There were no words needed to show off the disturbing power that was coming forth. Disney should have taken note of this with that Dinosaur film they made.

I now remember those dinosaurs from eyewitnesses dinosaur. The rex and cerotopsian . Phil tippet did a great job making this short film in his garage. What a creative man he is .

This is so amazing. I remember it being on a Dinosaur documentary hosted by Christopher Reeve but it was cut up and had a much more pulse pounding score. It is so great to see this in its original unedited glory. I would love to see your other dinosaur work with the hadrosaurs and raptors remastered with this level of care! Thank you again for posting this!!!

I was born a dinosaur lover. I have just about every dinosaur move there is. Willis O'Brian and Ray Harryhausen were the best, but CGI made them come to life like nothing before. Thank you Phil Tippett for being right up there with the two best.

brilliant - never stop your genius Mr Tippett

I want more like this. Animators, a director and paleontologists coming together to create the most accurate vision possible

Honestly, the SOUNDS were what really got me, especially at the beginning

What I love is it's an actual story. After a minute, you forget you're watching a stop motion special effects reel and you're deep into a story of a day in the life of dinosaurs.

Believe it or not, this actually served as the inspiration for Disneys dinosaur

This was one of my earliest introductions to dinosaurs!

this brings back so many childhood memories of watching many a dinosaur documentary. now I can personally say thank you for making something so awesome that impacted my childhood so greatly!

Over 20years ago, when I was a kid, I saw this film via VHS tape from US. I was really impressed and moved. I wonder i made a mistake, I made a response my short movie for tribute this beautiful movie. Thank you very much, Phil.

Mr Tippett, you are a fucking Genius, I admire you

This brings back so many awesome childhood memories.

This is so fucking underrated

THIS! I remember going to my local library as a kid in the early 90's and they had the CD-rom with this on it, as someone in the earlier comments mentioned it was called 'The Hunt'. Which I didn't remember until I read said comment. I just remember the FEELING it gave me. So hard to describe but with the music (and the fly-like sounds while around the corpse) and the way the corpse looked with the viscera and bright red blood just..I dunno...haunted me or something. It left me with an infatuation with similar visuals. Like when I saw a deer ribcage with some of the meat still on it at my local landfill, gave me the same haunting feeling albeit not as strong. Gosh I missed this! Still gives me the same feeling to this day, a feeling so much deeper than fear, sadness or joy. Thank you Phil, you instilled my love of dinosaurs and sparked a lifelong morbid curiosity.

This is everything Disney's Dinosaur should have been

Between Wikipedia and RU-vid I stumbled across this video that I last saw maybe 20 years ago and have been wondering about ever since. It was included at the beginning of a longer film about dinosaurs that I rented several times from a store that closed sometime in the early-mid 90's. This is amazing! What once was lost to me is now found. It was a source of great fascination to me as a young dinosaur geek, and it's great to see it again after all these years.

The prehistoric beast really was a "prehistoric beast" of it's own right. If this is really the beginning of stop motion as being popular, its responsible so much evolution

I remember watching this a lot as a kid. I still can’t believe this is all stop motion. Amazing.

I would be proud to pay good money to get this amazing film on Blu Ray. Please, oh please...

An old classic! Watching this was one of the very few times I was frightened by dinosaurs but also one of the reasons I still love dinosaurs to this day!

I have been looking for this short film for over 20 years after I saw it in preschool. Thanks James from Cinemassacre!

Oh my gosh. I used to watch this when I was a kid, after school on a VHS. Like ten years ago, at least. Sometimes I've thought about 'that old stop motion dinosaur movie' and wondered if I'd ever be able to watch it again. I'm just freaking out knowing it's on RU-vid! I love it just as much as I did back then. So awesome.

the fact the rex is quiet when walking is scary and I love it

I remember watching a shortened version of this as a kid, when I played Microsoft's Dinosaurs CD endlessly. Used to give me a scare, truly nostalgic!

I remember seeing this as a kid. Thanks for this memory jewel.

Oh my god I remember seeing this from the eyewitness dinosaur video

Brings me RIGHT BACK.

Did anyone else notice the t Rex limping in that last scene? Great detail.

This has to rival King Kong and several Harryhausen classics for the mantle of best stop-motion dinosaur film ever. Just breathtaking. Phil Tippett, you, sir, are a genius.

The centrosaurus is incredible, mang.

I've watched this like 5 times in the last 2 days. I just can't get over how good it is

If you really think about it, this is pretty much a slasher movie but with stop-motion dinosaurs.

Good lord, I remember seeing this when I was a kid and it gave me nightmares. This just reawakened a core memory for me. So trippy.

God-bless Mr. Tippett, for keeping this film art form alive. The dedication and artistry it takes to create these works--one shot at a time--is still deserving of respect. Vermithrax Perjorative is still one of my all-time favorite movie monsters.

damn this doesnt shy away from being dark

One was never safe durring the Mesozoic era.

Phil Tippett. You have done a wonderful job with this awsome animation. I've seen this before when I was young and it never gets old to me.

How has this not reached a Million views!?

Loved this on the 1985 "Dinosaur!" show with Christopher Reeve. Hands down best dinosaur animation until Jurassic Park in '93. I watched it probably a hundred times on VHS. Really well done, sir! Holds up even today.

I saw this in 1988 as part of a dinosaur documentary with Christopher Reeve hosting. It was chilling then, and still is nearly 40 years later

The sound effects are just glorious. Brilliant animation. It must have taken years to produce.

This film is one of my earliest memories and the source for my love of everything dinosaurs

Better than Jurassic World

Here's an extra fun fact about this...this experimental short film was actually the catalyst of an idea that Phil Tippet would eventually share with RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven to make a dinosaur movie project...a project that after several budget disputes, rewrites, development delays, and changes in leadership would eventually become Disney's 2000 movie Dinosaur (a childhood favorite of mine).

Lo vi cuando tenía como 6 años por primera ves ahora tengo 34 y me causa una sensación que no puedo describir, gran obra de arte

I remember watching this since when I was lil kid

A whole lot more realistic than CGI, aside the lack of smooth movement.

I could swear there was another one like this. With a dinonychus chase scene. But then again, the last time I saw this was 30 years ago on a tube TV as a child.

I watch this so much as a kid in the 3D Dinosaur Adventure CD. This is remarkable

Shivers went through my spine when I saw this on my subscription list. Fantastic movie, a true pinnacle of stop motion animation!

An incredible amount of work, beautifully shot and deserving of thunderous applause! With a full understanding of what it must have been to shoot something this awesome in 1984, I can say that this work is unparalleled in it's time.

This is the first time I've seen the complete short outside of clips of stock footage from the dinosaur episodes of "Really Wild Animals" and "Eyewitness" and the CD-Rom "Microsoft Dinosaurs." This is amazing.