COMPANY: Royal Oaks Entertainment
RUNTIME: 92 mins
FORMAT: DVD
PLOT: A genetically-engineered Komodo Dragon has become a ginormous creature hunting people on a remote tropical island. A small group of scientists must stop the dragon before it escapes the island and destroys the rest of the world.
REVIEW: After having watched some of his more recent work, I was in the mood to go back and watch one of Jim Wynorski's previous movies that I hadn't yet seen, and since I love creature features I figured Curse of the Komodo was a good one to start with.
Right off the bat I was pretty surprised that the military Special Ops team in the opening minutes were not the main characters like I had initially thought, and that the Doctor they were sent there to evacuate turned out to be the main character, and for once he was not evil, nor did he create the giant Komodo Dragon on purpose - It was a byproduct of his formula for growing larger super vegetables, funded by the military, and he's actually doing all he can to keep himself and his crew away from that thing (including a pretty cool Starship Troopers 2-style electric perimeter). A group of fugitives land on this island in the middle of the night, due to the severity of the storm keeping them from going any further, and I was once again left pretty surprised to see two of them being played by Paul Logan from his pre-Asylum days, and the main Chicky from Raptor, since I had no idea they were in this and I enjoy both of them (One for his acting, the other for her looks - ha).
The monster effects looked pretty decent, though I wish the creature had more to do other then just show up, stand there in one spot while they shoot at it some, then turn and leave - That's pretty much all it does for 90% of its scenes in the movie. Still, it looked cool all the same, and I actually like most of the human characters so I didn't mind spending some extra time with them. This movie also made me realize how much I really miss monster B-movies that take place at night and/or during massive rain storms. It adds a level of atmosphere that isn't there for daytime scenes, and most monster movies these days seem to take place entirely during bright day scenes.
This one was a definite surprise for me as I wasn't expecting much at all and ended up really enjoying my time spent watching it - only thing that could have made it better for me was some better Giant Komodo Dragon action.
8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward