Escaping from China with a microfilm of the formula for the mysterious "Lotus X", Lord Edward Southmere, a King's Messenger, is chased by a group of Chinese spies.
Back in London, Lord Southmere runs into the Natural History Museum and hides the microfilm in the bones of a large dinosaur skeleton. The spies decide to steal the dinosaur, so they can search it properly, and load the Brontosaurus skeleton on the back of their steam lorry. Some nannies steal the vehicle, which they drive through the foggy streets of London before being carried off to safety on a flat wagon at the back of a train.
The spies eventually find the microfilm at the museum inside the bones of another large dinosaur skeleton, and all misunderstanding is set aside, with good results for all.
The book on which the film was based, The Great Dinosaur Robbery, was aimed at an adult audience by its authors, Robert Forrest Webb and David Eliades, and was set in New York. The authors, both very experienced UK national journalists and best-selling authors, extensively researched material in New York and were greatly assisted by the American Museum of Natural History, and by the New York Police Department responsible for that area. The authors were disappointed that the humour of the film was aimed at a very much younger audience than that in the book, which had been published, in several languages, extremely successfully throughout Europe and also in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.
Production
Filming
The film was shot on location in England at Elstree Studios and Pinewood Studios. Additional filming took place at London Zoo, the Natural History Museum, and around Windsor and Holyport Green, Maidenhead.[3] While One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing was in production, Bresslaw and Sims also appeared in Carry On Behind, another film being made concurrently at Pinewood Studios.
Ustinov, Revill, and Bresslaw—all white actors—performed in yellowface makeup to portray Chinese characters in the film.[4][5]
Special effects
The special photographic effects for One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing were handled by British special effects artist John Stears. The steam lorry used in the film was a mockup, with the mocked up boiler smaller than that on a real steam lorry.[6] The Diplodocus skeleton model featured in the film was later used in Star Wars (1977), in the opening scenes in the Tunisian desert.[7]
^Wong, Eugene Franklin (1990). On Visual Media Racism: Asians in the American Motion Pictures. University of Denver. p. 206. The third film, produced by Disney's BuenaVista, One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975), retained the practice of using white males in racist cosmetics in order to portray Asian males, particularly on the major role level. In addition, the Asian characters, in this case Chinese, were depicted as vicious and unscrupulous persons not above murder to achieve their demonic goals.
^Ono, Kent A.; Pham, Vincent N. (2008). Asian Americans and the Media: Media and Minorities. Polity. ISBN978-0745642741.
^Coulls, Amthony (2020). Steam Lorries. Amberley. p. 58. ISBN9781445698502.
