Adventures in Dinosaur City

Here's a prehistoric-themed double bill of new releases that demonstrates that they don't make cheesy movies like they used to. Adventures in Dinosaur City is the extremely tepid story of three dinosaur-obsessed teens who get zapped not into the past but into their favorite sci-fi TV show. While the costumes can't touch the ones on the real sitcom Dinosaurs, at least the dialogue's true to prime time; the protest ''Let's go, you Cro-Magnon moron'' gets a riotous ''What did he mean by that?'' from the CMM.

Compared with Adventures, Roger Corman's drive-in quickie Teenage Caveman looks like The Best Years of Our Lives. Stilted scripting and minimal production values aside, this one at least has a story, and young Robert Vaughn looks sufficiently troubled and sincere as a Dawn of Man James Dean. The ''surprise'' ending anticipates that of the more highly regarded (but at its heart, equally dopey) 1968 Planet of the Apes, and the movie's solid black-and-white cinematography is captured well in Columbia Tri-Star's video transfer. D-