Dinoshark (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizons

RUNTIME: 92 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: A baby Pliosaur, a long-extinct prehistoric species of shark, swims away when the chunk of Arctic glacier that it had been frozen in breaks away due to global warming. Three years later, this 'Dinoshark' is a ferocious predatory adult and has made its way to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where it starts killing tourists and locals just offshore.

REVIEW: Over the course of this upcoming weekend (August 18th and 19th), the Space Channel here in Canada is airing some kind of Killer Shark Movie Marathon, where-in they will be airing such classics as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and its sequel Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, Sharktopus, Jersey Shore Shark Attack, Malibu Shark Attack, Dinocroc, Swamp Shark, and Dinoshark. Space was kind enough to send me a screener of Dinoshark for review, however I actually already owned that one on BluRay, so for the purpose of this review I'll actually be watching the BluRay copy in glorious HD! If you're interested in checking this one out for yourself, and you live in Canada, it will be airing at 6pm tomorrow night on August 18th on Space, but I highly recommend you tune in for the entire weekend of movies, because I've already seen each and every one of those and they all come pretty highly recommended by myself, even if I don't yet have reviews for all of them.

Now, the plot for this one is nothing special. In fact, it's a plot we've seen dozens of times over in dozens of almost-identical movies: Prehistoric shark gets thawed out from a glacier, makes its way to a beach-resort town and starts causing havoc (this time it's in Mexico though, as opposed to someplace within the United States, which was a welcomed change of locale). Of course our main ragtag group of  friends are the first to discover what's going on but nobody believes them when they try to warn the town, and with a big water-based event approaching, the town officials refuse to let anything get in the way of that event taking place, which of course leads to said prehistoric shark creating a massive bloodbath. Chances are you can name at least ten other movies with almost that exact same plot right off the top of your head at this very moment. And yes, while the plot is very uninspired and bland, the majority of everything else in the movie makes up for it and you don't even realize just how generic the plot is until after it's over and done with and you're thinking back on it.

A large reason for that is the fact that almost every character in this movie, from the main guy (played by The O.C.'s Eric Balfour) who's back in town after spending a long time away and he's living on his boat trying to find work, to his childhood pal who's now with Harbor Patrol and is stuck between helping his friend out and doing his job, to the ex-girlfriend/now-bestfriend girl, to the asshole Harbor Patrol Captain that hates the main character and goes out of his way to make things difficult for him and to try to pin crimes on him, to every other speaking-part in the movie – everyone has something about them that makes them enjoyable to watch and you can really have fun with this cast of characters. Helping that along are of course the actors who play them, who all do a surprisingly above-average job for a B-movie of this kind. I was also surprised to see Roger Corman have a pretty decent-sized role here. He almost always cameos in his own movies lately, but very rarely does he give himself such a large part as he does in this one, which was the role of a marine-life expert that has all the knowledge on this creature and helps the main cast out.

Another surprising factor is that because you enjoy these characters so much, you actually don't want to see many of them, if any, get killed (which plenty do, and not always ones you would expect) – it's actually pretty nice having a killer animal movie once in awhile where you actually aren’t rooting for the animal to slaughter every person on-screen. Between caring for the characters as well as finding out pretty early-on that characters you wouldn't normally expect to die, sometimes does in this movie, also adds an unexpected level of tension to some of the action and stalking scenes, which is another aspect that many of these fun summer popcorn monster B-movies normally don't bother to aim for. Also along those same lines of things these movies don't tend to do often, this movie had a really nice structured build-up. It wasn't just random scene after random scene that really could have been placed in any mix-and-match order, like say Piranhaconda or Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, but instead there was a steady progression of intensity from scene-to-scene as the movie went on, and it gave a really nice natural flow to the movie that's not often seen in these.

As for the actual Dinoshark creature itself, overall both the CGI and practical effects looked really good and another above-average aspect of the movie, though the shark did tend to change size pretty constantly throughout the movie, depending on what the scene called for (in one scene it can almost eat a boat in one bite, while in another it's dragging a human carcass through the water in its jaws and the human body can hardly fit in its mouth), but after watching these movies on a fairly regular basis you tend to just get used to that sort of size-changing anomaly, to the point where I almost never even pick up on it anymore. It helps as well that you stay distracted from the size changes because unlike many B-movies, this one keeps your attention pretty well, leaving little to no time for your mind to wander to other things, such as the changing size of the creature - trust me, there are plentyof cheese-filled campy scenes with this beastie! Putting aside the opening scenes of it escaping the glacier and shortly afterward eating a diver, there's still many great gem scenes, such as the one where Eric Balfour drives toward it on a jet ski and launches himself into the air toward the creature while throwing a grenade at it, or where it propels itself out of the water and takes down a low-flying helicopter, or when it snacks down on the participants of an all-girls teen water polo match, and of course the bloody massacre that the entire movie leads up to.

I do have one slight issue, but it's not a mark against the movie itself but more-so with the BluRay. The video on the BluRay cut back and forth pretty regularly; When it was good, it was perfect and pristine and exactly the kind of thing HD was made for, but just as often it was also pretty bad with an overabundance of grain present, with no rhyme or reason as to why some scenes were great while others were beyond shitty like that.

Dinoshark may not have been as unique or memorable as movies like Sharktopus or the Mega Shark series, but I would say it's an overall better movie in almost every regard, and I find it's a great gateway movie to kind of introduce newcomers to the B-movie genre by including plenty of cheese but without letting it define the movie or overtake it, and both the acting and effects-work remained above-average throughout, so it shouldn't scare away newbies like many B-movies would with their horrible acting and effects.

All in all, this turned out to be an entertaining entry in the killer shark sub-genre, and one that I would recommend to both B-movie lovers as well as just casual people looking to check out their first B-movie.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »

Piranhaconda (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizons

RUNTIME: 84 mins

FORMAT: T.V.

PLOT: A low-budget horror movie crew, inept kidnappers, and a reptile expert battle a monstrous anaconda/piranha hybrid in the middle of the Amazon jungle. 

REVIEW: Piranhaconda premiered earlier this evening on the SyFy Channel as part of it's 'Most Dangerous Month on Television' campaign, and I wanted to rush and get this review written and posted while the movie was still fresh in my mind, and right off the bat I have to be honest here - I was not impressed with this one. It was nowhere near as entertaining as Sharktopus or as fun as Dinocroc vs Supergator had been, and it wasn't even as good as Camel Spiders was, all of which have also been made by the same crew of people.

A big problem with Piranhaconda is that there's no overlaying plot in the slightest until over halfway through the movie, so a good 70% of the movie is mostly just random generic scene after random generic scene that could  have easily been placed in any random order without changing the movie one iota, with an occasional misc death scene sprinkled in there. Then when they do finally put some form of plot in (I.E. the kidnappers attempting to put their plan in motion, and the film crew having to try to escape from them), it's mostly just boring, uninteresting and totally takes away from the rest of the movie and what people are actually watching a movie called Piranhaconda for - the damn Piranhaconda! They actually go almost half an hour without showing the creature at all, to focus on this uninteresting subplot of boring, terribly-acted human villains.

Adding to all of that, the title creature itself is very uninteresting as well. Giant snake with a piranha head? Other then visually, how is that any different at all then a regular giant snake? Change the visual model of the creature's head, and nothing else at all, and you could slap Anaconda 5 onto the title of this movie instead and have it fit perfectly. The creature doesn't even do any non-snakelike stuff - I was expecting some good water play or something else, but it mostly just slithers across the ground like normal and eats people like a normal giant snake would. They could have done so much more with the whole crossbreeding part in terms of cheesy scenes like Sharktopus did. Hell, they even say in the movie that it can burrow under the ground and come up to attack, which sounds friggin' awesome, but then they never actually have the Piranhaconda do that at all. It certainly didn't help that every single scene was shot in the exact same locations as Supergator, Dinocroc vs Supergator, and parts of Camel Spiders so with this being the 4th movie in the last couple years to use all these exact same locations, it's getting really rather boring now to watch different people run down the exact same paths and by the exact same factories, and get eaten in front of the exact same waterfalls. Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski are really going to have to step it up for their next release if they want to impress me, locale-wise.

On the plus side, I do like the twist of there actually being multiple creatures and not just the single one (though it was a total missed opportunity as well, seeing as how they do nothing at all with that really, but it's the idea of it that I like), and I thought the actual creatures themselves, in terms of the CGI graphics, actually looked pretty good and interacted with the physical objects realistically and quite well, which that alone can be a tough feat for these kinds of movies to overcome.

Also, those looking for a bloodbath will be kept mildly entertained as the red stuff hardly stops flowing, from gunshot wounds, to severed body limbs, to exploding people, there's enough in this one to keep your eyes on the screen during the action scenes. Sadly, while there is a nice bit of bloody deaths, there's not a whole lot of variety to them, as the majority of them are just the exact same kind of deaths over and over. Still, it's at least something, and something is always better then nothing in my books.

Other then those couple hings though, and a few funny lines of dialog, there really wasn't much in this one that I could find to like, sadly. Even the presence of Michael Madsen, an actor I tend to really enjoy (especially in movies like this), couldn't make this one worth it to me.

I had really been looking forward to Piranhaconda a lot as well, especially after the greatness of Sharktopus and Dinocroc vs Supergator, but this came nowhere even near as good as those movies had been.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »

Camel Spiders (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizons

RUNTIME: 85 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: When a U.S. soldier returns home from Iraq, he accidentally brings with him a cargo of deadly baby Camel Spiders that soon get loose in a small town and start breeding, killing anyone that they come across.

REVIEW: I've gone on many recent rants about the over-abundance of killer shark movies and how I'm glad that it seems 2012 is the Year of the Spider, what with movies like Camel Spiders, Arachnoquake, Mega Spider, and Spiders 3D all announced at various points for this year, I'm thrilled to see B-Movie companies (for the most part) making a shift away from sharks finally. So of course it would go without saying that I would be reviewing each killer spider movie that comes out this year, to help get the word out and do my part to help get those sales figures up so companies continue to move away from sharks for awhile. Of course with that said, it took me longer then I planned to get my hands on Camel Spiders, mostly due to lack of extra-spending funds, but long story short I got the BluRay in the mail the other day and popped it in, really hoping that Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski (using here his well-known pseudonym of Jay Andrews) would not let me down and that I would actually be championing something good.

I have to be honest though and say that after the snazzy camp-filled opening title sequence ended (that directly took the theme music from Dinocroc vs Supergator at that), I soon started getting a tad worried. The film style was a bit below what I would expect from a Corman movie (though really should have seen coming from Jim Wynorski, considering he also did Raptor and Cheerleader Massacre), and there were some questionable creative decisions such as roaring spiders, when these spiders are supposed to be normal camel spiders and not mutated or aliens or some other genetic anomaly, just regular ol' camel spiders in Iraq...that somehow roar and also screech like they're long-lost relatives of the Warrior Arachnids from Starship Troopers. The brutal acting (which admittedly is to be expected), dreadful CGI creature effects (normally to be expected, but the CGI creature effects in Dinocroc vs Supergator, Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski's previous team-up movie, were above-average so I was kind of expecting something of that caliber here as well), embarrassingly bad CGI helicopters, and just the general overall cheapness of the entire production certainly didn't help matters much.

But it didn't take long for me to change my tune somewhat and lighten up a bit. Once the action moves away from the war-torn desert landscapes of Iraq and into middle-of-nowhere small town Nevada, and the spiders finally launch their invasion on the town, something along the way changed. I can honestly say I don't have a clue what it was, it's certainly not anything within the movie itself as all the detractors I mentioned above still stuck around for the most part, and even a few more got added to the mix (which will be discussed below in greater detail), but something within my mind-set changed and I just started to enjoy what was unfolding in front of me – a fun campy little roll in the hay, along the lines of a lower-budget Tremors but with some killer spiders invading the small desert town instead of monster worms.

That's not to say there weren’t some major problems after that point of course; The CG creature effects seemed to get even worse as the movie went on, and the spread of the spiders made no sense at all - Three of the Camel Spiders came over from Iraq, yet within the span of three scenes that appeared to all take place around the same time as one another, there were already two completely separate nests, one out in the desert and another one in a gas station in the middle of town (where the spiders previously were never even near), plus a couple straggler lone spiders here and there as well. The movie also seemed to repeat one of the major (and probably only) issues I had with Sharktopus, and that is constantly introducing random nobody characters that we don't care about nor get to know anything at all about and that have nothing to do with anything else in the movie, and then killing them off in that very same scene that we're first introduced to them. Dinocroc vs Supergator did all that correctly, by having most of those characters have two or three scenes previous to their deaths to better establish them before they bite it (or in this case, 'it' bites them – ha!). Granted, this doesn't do it as often as Sharktopus did, but it still did it enough that it irked me.

Once the actual spider invasion started however, my mind quickly left all that and I began to just enjoy myself a bit more, as a group of the town's residents, along with the Sheriff (played by an almost unrecognizable C. Thomas Howell), a Military Man and Woman that got stranded in that town on their way to a military base, and a couple sketchy land developers get trapped inside this tiny diner with the killer spiders trying to get in – and from this point on, like I mentioned above, it pretty much becomes a lower-budget Tremors in tone, with spiders instead of worms. The fact that it also takes place in a small town in the middle of the desert helps make that connection as well, as does the fact that they attempt to leave town in a crappy truck.

Helping the entertainment factor here for this part of the movie was the nice little bonus of everyone introduced in the previously-mentioned diner scene actually ending up sticking around for awhile and didn't just get offed later in that scene, and all these characters were actually enjoyable to watch, as most were quite quirky in their own unique ways and we also got some decent amount of backstory on each one, which made them pretty likable and I found myself hoping that at least a few of these people might actually live (some of the deaths and survivors may even be a bit unpredictable). Once the movie settled down and focused primarily on this group, that's when my attention was kept best. There is a second group of characters – some college kids played by actors in their late 30's that looked nothing like college kids that get stuck in a house out in the woods, but these characters were neither interesting nor well-acted so I didn't care for those scenes as much. I was actually waiting to see how these two storylines would intersect at the end, but oddly enough they never do. They really are just two completely unrelated stories that have nothing to do with each other in any shape, way, or form, like two mini-movies intercut together. Luckily this sub-plot of the college kids wasn't the main focus and the movie centered more on the other more interesting group the most, as they tried to work together and devise a plan to rid the town of the invading killer camel spiders. It even seemed like the director didn't care much for the college kids part of the story, as he seemed to just drop it from the movie mid-way without any resolution to what even happens to these characters; at one point we cut away from them to focus back on the main group and then we just never do go back to those characters again - it was actually pretty weird and made me wonder what was even the point in having those scenes in the movie to begin with.

Another really disappointing aspect in that otherwise-good second half of the movie was that there wasn't really any in-town mayhem like I was wanting to see. The main diner group didn't take long to get away from the diner and out into a military bunker just outside of town where they holed up for the remainder of the movie, and the other story in the movie took place in a house in the middle of the forest which left next to no scenes actually taking place inside the town itself, which I was looking forward to seeing, especially after that one creepy scene in the gas station near the beginning with the store workers strung up in the giant spider web. It was a pretty glaring missed opportunity in my eyes to not have the central action taking place within the town itself.

Speaking of those spiders though, I have to say that really enjoyed that the killer animals here were just regular animals: No genetic mutation or science experiment or alien creature or anything of that style, just 100% regular blood-thirsty animals. Of course they're in no way accurate to the real-life version of these spiders apart from their visual design, but hey – this is a Roger Corman monster movie so I was never expecting that anyway. Besides, less accurate normally means more cheese, and that's perfectly fine by me! For instance, there's a couple really hilarious Facehugger-inspired moments in the movie, as well as some gory limbs being ripped off of dead bodies, that we would have never gotten if they tried to go with a realistic portrayal.

All in all, it may not have been as good as I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't outright terrible either. If I had to place it on a chart with the other recent Corman/Wynorski team-up movies, I'd say it was not as good as Dinocroc vs Supergator (my personal favorite by this partnership) or Sharktopus, but more along the same level as Dinoshark – possibly a peg or two below it, as Dinoshark at least had some decent creature effects while Camel Spiders' were horrid and this also came with a pretty large missed opportunity and pointless side-plot. But while this one may be the weakest movie yet from the recent Corman/Wynorski team-ups, there's still enough within it to keep a B-Movie fan such as myself at least moderately entertained, thanks in large to the likable main characters of the primary group, some hilarious spider kills, and a few fun action beats.

I wouldn't tell you to rush out and buy it right now, but if you happen to come across it while browsing at the store and it's at a cheap price, or it shows up on Netflix or TV, then I'd say it's worth at least a one-time watch – you could certainly do a lot worse out there.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »

The 10 Best B-Movies of 2011

 

Now that we're at the end of the year, every Site seems to be doing a 'Top 10 Movies of 2011' list and it made me want to do my own - but not some generic list that you can find on any site, that would include mostly all the same films as each other - no, I wanted to do one such list that fits my personal tastes - a list of the 10 Best B-Movies of 2011! Now to be honest, this entire list is pretty much being done on the spot, with no research behind it other then my own memory of what I've seen so far this year and which ones still stick out as having been really good in my memory after all this time, so forgive me if I ended up forgetting some by accident. Also, there is still plenty of movies from this year that I haven't yet seen, so it's possible I've potentially skipped over a few diamonds in the rough due to that as well, since this list is based off what I've actually watched myself.

The following list won't be in any specific order, as I clearly love all of them for them to even be on the list, so putting them in any kind of ranking order is a bit moot.


- Asylum puts out one or two movies about every single month, at least. Some are honestly not that good, at all, but most are a blast of low budget cheesy fun, and out of those ones this mockbuster of the more well-known Battle: Los Angeles has got to be one of my all-time favorites. You can read my full, previously-released, review of Battle of Los Angeles here.






- With the amount of movies Asylum releases, it's no surprise that more then one would make their way onto this list. This is the movie that Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus promised to be, but stumbled to deliver. Mega Python vs Gatoroid is filled with non-stop cheese and laughs from beginning to end, with 80's pop sensations Tiffany and Debbie Gibson stealing the show from the title creatures on more then one occasion. This is how you make a fun low budget monster movie.




- This one originally aired on TV in 2010, but was released on DVD and BluRay this year, so I'm counting it as a 2011 movie. Roger Corman is famous for a ton of well-known B movies from the 60's onwards and he returns this decade with Sharktopus - a movie that you can pretty much accurately guess what you'll be in store for based off just the title and cover art. Pure cheesy goodness all the way through with never a dull moment. This is one that one day I hope to see a sequel to.




- Hostel: Part III may not be as good as the first, but way better then the horrid second movie, and quite faithful to the tone of the series despite that it's not made by Eli Roth. Some really nice kills and unexpected twists throughout. Should have ended 5 minutes earlier then it did though, as the actual ending wasn't nearly as good or leave as much of an impact as the 'first ending'.






- Honestly, there's not really any plot to speak of with this movie, just seemingly random scene after random scene. But it's entertaining random scene after entertaining random scene, filled with really inventive and gory zombie kills by way of a whole slew of unique weapons, within some great post-apocalyptic set pieces, making it really feel like a fast-paced FPS video game adaptation. Plus it has Zombie Tigers.




- I'm never one to turn down a made-for-TV creature feature, but it's always an added bonus when it actually turns out good. Swamp Shark stars the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer as she battles a really old, really vicious shark that has made it's way into the swamp lands of her small town. Both the CGI shots, and the quick practical shots of the shark were surprisingly detailed and well-done, and the movie itself had a better-then-average plot, filled with better-then-average actors for this kind of flick. This one was a blast and a half.




- I love the Spanish horror flick [Rec]. I'm also one of the few that love the American remake of it, Quarantine. And as much as I enjoyed [Rec] 2, I'm glad this direct-to-video sequel decided to go its own path, because to my surprise, I ended up liking Quarantine 2: Terminal even more then I did the first Quarantine. Well-worth checking out for fans of the first, because this one is not only better, but also builds upon it in ways I never expected. It's more then one of my favorite B-Movies of the year - it's also one of my favorite horror movies of the year.




- While this is a sequel-in-name-only, when it comes to going direct-to-video that's almost a better route to take sometimes. This however felt like it could have easily gone to theaters. It was highly entertaining with a competently-written script, filled with very well-acted characters, excellent use of genuine tension, some really fun and explosive action scenes, and a creepy villain that you just love to hate. What more can you ask for in an Action B-Movie?




- Asylum's modern-day mockbuster of this classic story is pure adrenaline-fueled entertainment from beginning to end, with fun quirky characters that I never got tired of following, and well choreographed action scenes. Even has a couple of sword fights thrown in for good measure, which is quickly becoming a staple of Asylum action flicks. I wouldn't mind at all seeing further adventures of this group of Mission: Impossible wannabes.




- Sure, the actors may not be the greatest, the dialog is atrocious, and parts of the script are incredibly messy - but it's still the best of the Howling sequels, and overall a pretty damn fun little popcorn werewolf movie, with a gothic castle-like school as it's main setting. They also stick to mostly old-school practical man-in-suit effects for the werewolves which I can very much appreciate, keeping the design pretty close to the design of the werewolves from the original movie (which is something none of the other sequels ever bothered to do). As a werewolf fan, despite it's shortcomings, I can't help but see the genuine effort that went into this one and enjoy it based on that alone. The gory kills and fun werewolf-on-werewolf fights help as well though.

Honorable Mention

- I have a few too many issues with this one to count it as among 'The Best' of the year, but despite those issues it's still a really entertaining movie if you're a fan of the series thus far, and it's extremely short runtime (about an hour if you don't count the opening and closing credits) helps you to overlook a lot of it's problems because the movie moves at such a fast pace that it's over before you have much time to think. If you're not a fan of the previous two movies though, then there's no need for you to attempt this one because nothing in this will make you like it above the others.

Read more »

Raptor (2001)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Concorde 

RUNTIME: 81 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A small town Sheriff and a Wildlife Officer look into some grisly murders and discover that not only is a dinosaur on the loose, but it came from the nearby Government laboratory and they go to investigate, but only end up making things go from bad to worse as they accidentally cause all the Carnosaurs...err, I mean dinosaurs... in the lab complex to get loose.

REVIEW: I had really wanted to see Carnosaur 4 get made for the simple fact that I thought Carnosaur 3 was easily the weakest in the series and would have liked to see the series go out on a higher note. While Carnosaur 4 was never made, another movie was brought to my attention in it's place: Raptor. Made by all the same people and acts as kind of an unofficial Carnosaur 4 (apparently they couldn't get the Rights to the title, for whatever reason since it was made by the same company and people, however it's even regarded as Carnosaur 4 in parts of the world). As soon as the DVD arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to pop it in and check this Raptor out and get started on a review, fully excited to get back into the world of Carnosaur.

Oh boy. This movie is bad. Even by my very low standards.

First off, there is no new dinosaur footage in this movie - every single scene with a dinosaur in it is just stock footage from one of the three Carnosaur movies, and while that stock footage was integrated pretty well in the first half of the movie, the second half was botched all to hell, combining shots from each movie together into the same scene, despite the fact that they don't match up at all. One part has a famous Tyrannosaurus vs Construction vehicle scene that this series is known for...except it's made up of footage from both Carnosaur and Carnosaur 2, despite the fact that the construction vehicle used in the first movie was different then the construction vehicle used in the second, but this movie treats them the same, so you'll see a shot of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting, cut to a reaction shot of the person, then cut back to the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting again...except now the vehicle is suddenly a different one, even though it's supposed to be the same. The second half of the movie is filled with that kind of stuff. Up until that point, I actually didn't mind the use of stock footage as, understandably, the props and suits had gone into disrepair and couldn't be used in a 4th movie, and said stock footage was integrated pretty well. Hell, they even got an actor from the first movie back for this for a few scenes, just so they could re-use his death scene (although he is considerably older here then in the re-used stock footage, but it's the attempt and effort that counts). But then the second half of the movie comes along and does the above-mentioned horrible botching every step of the way and it just gets gross. There are quite a few scenes where we see someone get attacked, but then we cut to stock footage from one of the Carnosaur movies and suddenly it's a completely different person being chomped down on by the dinosaur in place of the one we were just seeing, and in a completely different location then the one the character was just in. It really made no sense whatsoever and was some of the most horrid use of stock footage that I've ever seen (in one scene from Carnosaur 3 used here, we see life boats and a life preserver hung on the wall...yet the characters in this movie are in the middle of an underground basement-level of a Government facility in the middle of the desert...). To further the point, when the dinosaurs start running amok in the facility, the Government sends in not one team, not two teams, but three different, unrelated, teams of Black Op soldiers to deal with it, so that they can use footage from both Carnosaur 2 and Carnosaur 3, where the government/military characters were dressed wearing different uniforms. And one of these teams is dressed in...rain jackets. Yes, rain jackets. No explanation is given in-movie at all for sending in three unrelated teams, nor why one team is dressed in rain jackets despite the fact that it's not raining outside.

And it's a real shame too, because apart from that stock footage debacle, this movie actually had some potential. It's more or less a remake of the first Carnosaur movie, but minus the dino-birthing disease and with more likable lead characters (the Sheriff is actually played by none other then Eric Roberts, oddly enough, though even saying that he's phoning it in may be giving too much credit). And IMO, this movie actually worked the mad scientist angle better then the original Carnosaur. Here, the guy (named Dr. Hyde if you can believe that) was actually making intelligent dinosaurs at the request of the Government to use in overseas warfare in a project titled Jurassic Storm, but then he decided to go rogue and wanted to instead sell them to the highest foreign bidder, but before he can get that far they break loose and start causing havoc first in the nearby small desert town, and then in the facility itself.

To flesh out Eric Roberts' Sheriff character, he has a teen daughter (played by a porn star that looks almost as old as him) that sets him on the path of figuring everything out, as she and her boyfriend get attacked by the escaped Raptor and results in her getting hospitalized and the Sheriff wanting revenge on whatever attacked her, which leads him to the nearby government facility. To aid him along the way is a Wildlife Control Officer (played by a stripper, who has since gone on to star in many movies of this elk). At first they think the creature may be an escaped cougar, which is a subplot not in the original Carnosaur movie but is in the original Carnosaur novel that the series is based on, so it surprised me they included it here, and a surprise that is more then welcomed. If the movie had continue to follow the path of the original book, even the stock footage may not have seemed so bad for me because that book was pure awesome. Adding to the cast, just over halfway through we get two teams of Black Op military characters, and then a third team shortly after that. Most, like in Carnosaur 3, are just background cannon fodder and don't even have names or more then one or two lines of dialog, but there is a couple that are given personality and they're pretty fun to watch, especially the hard-as-nails swear-loving Boston-native leader of the 'Black Team'.

Also in it's favor is lots of good gore (granted it's all from stock footage of the other movies, but they could have gone near-goreless like the third movie did, so props have to be given there), and surprisingly they got James Horner to do the music. What kind of giant ass favor he owed these people, I'm not sure, but it was good to see his name there because the music is one of the movie's strongest points and is really befitting of a much better movie then the one the music ultimately ended up being for. Often times I'd zone out of what was happening on-screen and just listened to the awesome music.

There's honestly not a whole lot more to say, since most of it is just a clip show of the previous movies, which I've already reviewed. If this movie had been filmed using the actual props and costumes of the previous movies instead of horribly badly-integrated stock footage, it actually would have been a really good Carnosaur 4 or Carnosaur remake, as a lot of the actual plot itself was pretty good.. Unfortunately the use of stock footage to the degree they use it, especially in the second-half of the movie when all the dinosaurs take over the facility and all those random Special Black Op teams are sent in, as well as some of the newly-shot story aspects that had to be there in order to have the stock footage scenes make sense, really brings it down to not even being enjoyable on a so-bad-it's-good level, as it's just too damn distracting and really takes you out of the movie, instantly making you think of the better Carnosaur movies.

2/10 rooms in the Psych Ward
 

Read more »

Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Concorde-New Horizons

RUNTIME: 80 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: When terrorists accidentally unleash the last remaining Carnosaurs, a Special Ops team is sent in to fix the problem.

REVIEW: After I managed to get my hands on Carnosaur and then Carnosaur 2, it was only a matter of time until Carnosaur 3: Primal Species came my way via Ebay. After Part 1 met my expectations, and Part 2 exceeded them...well...Part 3 was already in last place by numbering default so I guess it decided to stay there, but not without putting up a decent fight.

I'd go into the inner workings of the plot, except I don't really remember. That's the biggest problem of this movie – it's just so forgettable. Every time I watch it, I've forgotten about 90% of what happens in it almost right away. There is no real plot to this one - Terrorists hijack a Government transport truck they believe is carrying uranium, but instead it's carrying the last three surviving Carnosaurs (two Raptors and one Tyrannosaurus), which wake up and kill the the terrorists. Then some cops go in and check the warehouse out, also getting killed. Then a military Special Ops team is sent in to retrieve the truck, but they get ambushed by the Raptors and retreat. Then they return, get ambushed again, and retreat. Return once more and lead the dinosaurs onto a boat, get said boat out into the middle of the ocean and, going against their orders to capture the dinosaurs alive, blow the boat and everything on it into smithereens. The end. That is literally the entire plot. There were some good ideas scattered around in there, but they mostly just replaced plot with mindless action. Don't get me wrong, mindless action can be a good thing, but not when there is no plot connecting those mindless action scenes.

One of the good ideas they touched on in this that I did like was that similar with the first movie, we actually get to see the Government side of things during these events, now that the Government has taken control of the top secret Carnosaur Project. We of course get a beautiful female scientist who's in charge of the project and has been studying the Carnosaurs and wants them captured and brought back alive as she's near a breakthrough in reverse engineering them. While she's not exactly a saint, she's not nearly as insane or evil as the older scientist lady from the first movie. That one had wanted the dinosaurs to take over the world, while this one is just in charge of the now Government-controlled project, which consists of trying to reverse engineer the remaining Carnosaurs so they can create their own Carnosaurs and use them to somehow (never really explained) unlock potential cures for human diseases and other medical breakthroughs. Can't really fault them too much for that I suppose, although she did come across as a tad bit minor-crazy with her constant insistence the the dinosaurs be captured alive. By way of this subplot, we also get a pretty interesting in-depth briefing on the Carnosaurs and we're given far more information on them then we were in the previous two movies combined, with the reveal that they actually have some human DNA in them which explains why they're incredibly intelligent. It also includes newly revealed information on how these animals are starting to evolve and are becoming even more deadly then they already are. Gotta give props when a sequel takes what we already know from the previous movies and then adds onto it and builds on it to give us something fresh, especially when it's the final movie in the series; gotta up the ante somehow.

I also liked the over all basic plot of terrorists accidentally unleashing the dinosaurs and the military team being sent in - except that's ad deep as the plot goes and the action scenes all take place either in a warehouse (why the dinosaurs never feel the need to actually leave that warehouse is never explained) and then on a boat. Admittedly, I actually liked everything that took place on the boat far more and would have preferred it if the majority of the movie took place there instead of mostly all in the warehouse and just the last 15 minutes on the boat.

Unlike the previous movie, there aren’t really any memorable characters this time around. Granted, the ones we get are likable so that's a step up from the first movie in that department, but really, once the movie is over, there's only two or three that really stick with you. One would be the above-mentioned female scientist in charge of the current incarnation of the Carnosaur Project, another is the Sylvester Stallone look-alike leader of the Special Ops team who doesn't have much distinctive personality but the fact that he looks like he could be a long lost twin brother of Stallone makes him memorable all on its own, and finally we have the character named Polchek, who confusingly, is played by an actor from the previous movie and is given the exact same personality as the character that actor played in the previous movie (Monk from Carnosaur 2), but the two characters actually have no relation to one another at all. Normally that would probably bug me, except that despite his horrible acting I loved that character in Carnosaur 2 and I love him again here, albeit under a different name. Everyone else in this movie is not only forgettable, but pretty much just xerox copies of each other and only serve to be cannon fodder for the dinosaurs. Hell, I don't think most of them were even given names. On top of that, these guys are supposed to be a hardened military unit, yet the electrician tech characters in the previous movie had more testosterone and bravado then these characters do. And don't get me started on the acting. It's not like this series has ever had good acting, but this one takes the cake. You know it's bad when the worst actor of the previous movie is the best actor in this one.

But nobody really watches these movies for the deep human characters. As long as there's gore, the masses are kept happy. And while this is by far the tamest in the series when it comes to the gore, there's still a few good juicy bits in here; an awesome arm-ripping scene, a few scenes with massive blood splotches on the floor and/or walls with body parts strewn about, a head being ripped off, and a couple more that I won't spoil here. Unfortunately they're so spread out and most of the kills are cut away from before we see much that what we do get is just too little and far too spread out. This movie has by far the largest body count in the series...so why is it so damn tame on the gore?

The dinosaurs themselves still look really good for such a low budget movie though. Where the second movie had used different designs and models from the first movie (Tyrannosaurus aside), I was worried about what route they would go with this one, but I was happy to see they kept with the dinosaurs from Carnosaur 2. The only exception to that would be maybe the Tyrannosaurus. They either used a different robotic model this time around, or the thing was already starting to go into disrepair cause while it looked to be the same design as in the previous movies, there was just something totally off about it this time around that I can't quite put my finger on. Another thing that they kept from Carnosaur 2 is the same heightened intelligence of the dinosaurs, constantly setting traps for the human characters and outsmarting them. Actually, the heightened intelligence became quite an important plot point in this one. They did not, however, keep the creepy clicking noises that the Raptors make when they're on the hunt. That was a personal favorite aspect of the second movie for me and I was disappointed that they didn't carry that over here, for whatever reason. Without those creepy stalking noises, it removes a layer of suspense and atmosphere that the second movie was filled with and this movie really could have benefited from, especially once they got on the boat and had to hunt the creatures down in tight claustrophobic hallways.

We do get to see the Tyrannosaurus earlier then usual though, which was a nice change. In the first movie we get one look half-way through, but it's not until towards the end we get a real good look and the creature becomes a main driving force of the plot, and in the second movie it's not until the final 10 minutes that we even get a glimpse of it. But in this one, it makes it's first appearance and goreless kill less then 20 minutes in and then continues to pop up throughout at various points of the movie, which I wasn't expecting and oddly enough liked a lot more then I would have normally thought. After all, we've seen it enough times now between the other movies, there's no point in keeping it hidden until the final few minutes and use it as shock value anymore. Just let it come on out and have fun with the other dinosaurs. Then of course it returns in full glory at the end to once again be the 'Final Boss' of the movie, which this movie changed up and doesn't go with the construction vehicle fight like the previous two, and instead goes it's own route that really worked for me. Actually, dare I say, out of the climatic Rex fights from all three movies, this one is my favorite as the two surviving characters do battle against it on the deck of the transport boat and defeat it in a truly awesome way. They also added a new problem into the mix by having the Tyrannosaurus starting to breed, and as revealed earlier in the movie – each generation of Carnosaur is more evolved, more intelligent, and more dangerous then the previous generation, so that little addition really helped to bring more threat to the movie, which is always good to see for a final entry of a trilogy.

Another welcomed and surprising change is that while the first movie took place almost entirely during night scenes, and the second took place almost entirely in a low-lit cramped claustrophobic facility, this one takes place almost entirely during the middle of the day, with most of the scenes happening in broad daylight. Sure, the darkness adds atmosphere but we already had two full movies of that so for the third one it was good to see it changed up. And for those turned off by that, have no fear as it does return to both night time scenes and low-lit cramped claustrophobic areas once they get on the boat and out into the ocean so those scenes aren’t entirely absent.

When all is said and done, I really loved how they tried to change so many aspects in this entry instead of just copying the previous two movies, and I loved how they really upped the ante here to a level not reached by the first two movies. After all, by Part 3 you kind of have to start doing some things differently to make it stand out above the other two, so I can really get behind those changes and appreciate them. And despite not really remembering much even 15 minutes after its ended, it kept me entertained while I was watching and I never once looked to see how much time was left on it. It also never shies away from showing those addictive low-budget dinosaur effects; I'd say this movie shows them off better then the others, mainly due to lots of bright daylight scenes, and the Tyrannosaurus gets the most screen time here then out of the other movies in the series. Unfortunately, it's also filled with really boring and forgettable characters, a real lack of gore, no plot to speak of, and it's just an all around forgettable entry in the series, which all combines to really stop it from being quite as good as the first two.

On top of that, I feel they really dropped the ball with the lack of plot; you finally have these dangerous creatures that are getting more dangerous by the minute, loose in a damn city...and they just stay in the one building the entire time. What they should have done was had these things running loose around the city while the Special Ops team tries to covertly re-capture or kill them. That would have been an excellent third and final movie, especially with the Carnosaur's version of the Tyrannosaurus Rex standing among skyscrapers and roaring, or the Raptors sneaking into people's houses while they sleep to kill them in their beds or something. Alas, that idea alone is better then almost anything we actually ended up getting.

Despite my over-all disappointment with this entry, two out of three ain't bad and I still enjoy the series as a whole, and even this weaker entry has enough good stuff in there that if you're a fan of the first two then I still suggest you check this one out anyway. If you didn't like the others though, then nothing in this one will change your mind any. If the dinosaur suits and models hadn't gone into unfixable disrepair shortly after this movie was made (or during the making of it in the case of the Tyrannosaurus), I would love to see a 4th movie if for nothing more then to see the classic Carnosaur dinosaurs back on screen again, especially since the end of this movie sets up another movie so perfectly. Hell, with Roger Corman recently having returned to making campy low budget Direct-to-DVD flicks (Dinocroc, Supergator, Dinocroc vs Supergator, Sharktopus, Dinoshark, the upcoming Piranhaconda) maybe there's a little sliver of hope that he may do a Carnosaur 4: Extinction Revenge or something. Just maybe... (but really honestly not likely)

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »

Carnosaur 2 (1995)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizon

RUNTIME: 83 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: After the U.S. Government looses communication with a top secret plutonium facility out in the middle of the desert, they send in a team of technical specialists to find out what happened, but none of them are prepared for what they discover – surviving Carnosaurs from the events of the first movie had attacked and made the base their new nest.

REVIEW: After I was finally able to see the first Carnosaur way back in 2001, after a life-long journey of trying to obtain it, I ended up having to wait even longer to see Carnosaur 2. See, the small town I was living in at the time, the video store there had only the first Carnosaur and there was no such thing as Ebay or Amazon back then (or at least not popular and not on the mind of a 16 year old with no credit card), so it wasn't until 2005 that I was able to finally see the sequel, which was by way of ordering the VHS version off Ebay (which I had to get a friend to order for me as back in those days, you had to have a credit card to order on Ebay as there was no such thing as paypal). So how did I find it when compared to the first?

Even better.

Whereas the first was a Monster-on-the-loose in a small town kind of movie, this one is much more of a cramped low-lighted enclosed-space survival horror along the likes of the video game Dino Crises. To start off, I want to make it clear that Aliens is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi/horror movies, and this movie is Aliens. It's as if they took the exact same script but turned Ripley into a male, Newt into a male, set it at a facility in the desert instead of another planet, and replace the aliens with Raptors, and then you've got this movie. I am not kidding when I say it's the exact same movie as Aliens. Even some of the dialog is word for word the exact same. And you know what? I'm fine with that, because it ended up making for a damn entertaining movie. I always say that if you're going to rip something off, rip off something good.

The robotic effects and rubber man-in-suit props used for the Raptors in this movie, as well as the animatronic and model effects used for the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the end (filling the Queen Alien role) are quite different and much more advanced then the puppet and man-in-suits they used in the original. Sure, compared to something like Jurassic Park they may not look very good at all, but for low budget B-movie sequel of the early 90's, and especially when compared with the first movie, they look great. Adding to that are the new creepy-sounding clicking noises the Raptors make while they're hunting their prey. This movie actually used the sound of the Raptors to create some awesome tension that the first movie never even attempted to do. You know there's one or more Raptors around due to being able to hear the clicking noises they make, but the character can't see them anywhere...that is until they attack and take him out.

One of my main complaints I had about the first movie were the characters and the fact that every single one was totally unlikable and you couldn't get behind any of them. I'm proud to report that is not the case this time, as you tend to care for almost every character this time, though admittedly, that may be due to the fact that all of them are carbon copies of the characters from Aliens; there's the wise-cracking scaredy-cat, the tough-as-nails command-barking leader, the female pilot who ends up getting munched on as she tries to warm up the copter for their retreat early-on, the sketchy company man with his own agenda, the kid that survived the initial massacre (though why there are kids living at a top-secret Government facility, I'll never know), and of course our average everyman hero that becomes a kind of father figure to the kid. There are a few others, but you get the idea; far better then the first movie's mad scientist, law-breaking hippie, and always-drunk construction vehicle maintainer, that's for sure. This time, I never got tired or bored of any of these characters and it wasn't hard to actually root for them instead of the Carnosaurs. In the last movie when it came down to the drunk hero fighting off the Tyrannosaurus in a construction vehicle, you really didn't give a shit if he won or not, but this time when in the exact same scenario (yellow construction vehicle taking the place of the Aliens' load lifter in a throw-back nod scene to the first movie), you actually want the hero to win.

As for the gore factor, there is a bit less then the previous movie as most people are dragged away to be killed off-screen, however the things we do get remain quite faithful to the style of the original movie (an arm being ripped off, a stomach being gouged out, a head gorily detached from the body, mutilated body parts strewn around, and some good splashes of blood).

Now, after all that praise I suppose you're wondering if I have anything negative. Well the answer is Nope, not really. It's a bit slow at first and takes awhile to really get going, which may turn some people off, but it didn't bother me at all as it used that time to set up the characters well and set up some good tension, both things that the previous movie was lacking. And some people may not like the fact that the Tyrannosaurus only comes in for the final 10 minutes, and while it would have been nice to see more of it during the movie like in the first, I loved the build-up to its reveal and wouldn't trade that in for more screentime for anything. It was an excellent 'Oh...shit...' moment (though it does beg the unanswered question as to how exactly, it got down to where it was when the characters discovered it, and how exactly it got up to the surface again afterward).

The only thing that really struck me as odd was that there's a picture on the back of the VHS and DVD cases that isn't anywhere in the movie and consists of the Tyrannosaurus Rex eating a woman in a red dress that's nowhere to be seen in the movie. Not sure if it was a cut scene from towards the beginning of the film when the Carnosaurs first attack, or if it was made purely for advertising reasons, but neither that scene nor character is anywhere in the movie. I can't fault the contents of the actual movie itself though, just because the advertisers dropped the ball on one small picture on the back of the box.

There's not really a whole lot more I can say on this movie, as like I said above this movie IS Aliens, but with dinosaurs instead of aliens. You want to go into the specifics of the plot and the various character arcs? You already know them. Read a review on Aliens because anything I'd have to say on this would just be rehashing what you already know from that movie. Fans of Aliens should like this movie for the simple fact that it's the same movie, but with dinosaurs. Fans of the first should like this movie for the simple fact that it keeps what you like from that movie, and improves upon the rest. This is one of those rare movies that not only can I watch it over and over again whenever I so much as look at the cover art, but it's also one of those movies that as soon as the credits start rolling, I could easily go back to the beginning and start it over again right after. It's just that much fun for me.

While the first will always hold a special place in my heart due to my past history with it, this one is without a doubt the actual better movie.

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »

Carnosaur (1993)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizon

RUNTIME: 83 mins

FORMAT: Special Edition DVD

PLOT: A mad scientist brings carnivorous dinosaurs back to life to set them loose on the world in a bid to destroy humanity and give the world back to the Dinosaurs. To help them along, she also unleashes a deadly dino-virus to infect the women half of humanity.

REVIEW: There are many movies that solidify themselves into your mind as being associated with a particular time in your life. For me, one of those movies is Carnosaur. And the time of my life it always reminds me of? Grade 10 of High School when I first started getting into low budget B-movies. Actually, this is was one of my all-time first low budget B-movies, and for that, I'll always hold a special place in my heart for it.

I've been a huge dinosaur nut ever since I was 3 years old. Possibly even before that, but my memory of being one goes back to when I was 3 (Yes, I actually remember this) and I saw my very first look at a dinosaur – a rubber (and I've since been told a very annoyingly squeaky) toy Triceratops. My parents bought it for me and from that moment on, my life's biggest passion was born – Dinosaurs. Growing up (and still to this day), I have to see anything that has dinosaurs in it, no matter how good or bad. As a kid, that wasn't really a problem – until 1993 when my 8-year-old eyes befell a little VHS tape on the video store shelf called Carnosaur. The dinosaur on the cover looked just awesome (again, at the time and to my kid eyes), as I had never before seen a live-action dinosaur beyond old black and white movies (side note: When I saw Jurassic Park for the first time later that very same year, it blew my friggin' little mind). I looked at the pictures on the back of the box and instantly knew I just had to see this movie. However, when I went to go bring it to my parents to rent it for me, they had forbidden it because it had the dreaded R Rating that has a long and evil history of stopping many young kids in their tracks. Now, to my young mind, I couldn't understand why a dinosaur movie - something I had thought was a topic that was always kid-friendly - was R Rated. Over the years, I kept seeing not only Carnosaur but it's growing number of sequels – first Carnosaur 2 and then Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, always checking out the pictures on the back and thinking how awesome these movies must be. Then in 2001, once I entered Grade 10 in High School and I was able to go out and rent what I wanted, the next time I saw the Carnosaur VHS tape sitting in that video store, I snatched it up and watched it.

And yes...it was bad. Very bad. Horrible. Dreadful even. And I loved every minute of it.

From the get-go you know this will be a very dark movie as we open on a scene of chickens in some kind of factory being caged up and prepared for slaughter, along with images of coded DNA sequences and hints of some kind of gene splicing, all playing to very overly-dramatic dark music. We then we see living chickens from that same place get shipped out in the middle of the night on a truck, where a very badly-obvious puppet baby dinosaur hatches from a large egg in the shipment (which was created on purpose by the movie's resident mad scientist as a means to destroy the world...some how...). It proceeds to slaughter every last chicken before moving onto the driver and then escaping out into the desert.

And thus starts a chain of events that includes, but is not limited to, carnage-filled dinosaur attack of a group of partying teens, tiny baby dinosaur being found in an egg about to be cooked for breakfast, a dinosaur ripping off someone's head, women getting extremely sick from a mysterious flu-like illness, hippies that had chained themselves to construction vehicles as a statement getting slaughtered by a dinosaur, the police trying to solve the mysterious deaths, a woman giving birth to a baby dinosaur, Alien-style, a mysterious group of hazmat-wearing government soldiers killing everyone in their path, and an escaping fully-grown Tyrannosaurus Rex who's head is apparently strong enough to break down a very thick solid stone wall with no damage or pain to itself.

Sure, the script itself makes no sense in the slightest (my descriptions above offer about just as much of an explanation as the movie does for these events), and the acting is what you would expect from a low-budget direct-to-video movie of the early 90's, but there is more then enough gratuitous gore at the hands...err...claws... of the badly-animatronic and puppeted (and in some scenes even rubber-suited) Tyrannosaurus and baby Raptor, with enough horrible and useless dialog that seemed like it was just thrown in there at the last minute with no thought to it (the Jurassic Park reference FTW though), to make any lover of bad movies enjoy this one on at least some level. There's even a very awesomely-bad scene towards the end where we see the Tyrannosaurus Rex fight against the main character in a construction vehicle.

As I said above, this is one dark movie. The tone was set from the opening seconds and it kept that tone right through the entire movie. Just about the entire thing takes place either in a dimly-lit laboratory building or in the darkness of night with the exception of one or two short scenes, and along with our dinosaur killing spree, we also have women coming down with a new sickness and giving birth rather rapidly to baby killer dinosaurs, along with the Government stopping at nothing to stop that sickness from spreading, even if it means murdering everyone. There's also constant pop-up subtitle updates throughout the movie the keep track of how much the sickness has spread, which I thought was a delightfully dark and cheesy thing to do, although I'm sure it's real reason was more-so to just remind the viewer of the side-plot of the sickness when the movie was focusing on a different aspect. Even the ending is one of the most downer and depressing endings to a movie I've ever seen, and was probably the only real way they could have ended this while keeping faithful to the the tone of the rest of the movie. Any other ending would have almost felt like a cop-out.

The only real problem I have is with the characters. Nobody really gets any characterization except for maybe the mad scientist lady. Even the main character himself feels more like a side-character, which I guess isn't really that big of a problem simply because nobody at all is likeable in this movie, including that very same main character. Sure, that also helps add to the dark and depressing tone of the movie, but it was something I wish they had gone in a different direction with. A movie like this really needs a good likable lead character to get behind and root for, especially with a scene like the one I describe above where he climbs into a construction vehicle to battle with the Tyrannosaurus at the end. The only exception I could maybe give is to the town's Sheriff, but really, he was only in all of about 4 scenes, all of which were very short. However, in his very limited time he proves that he is one total bad ass, as right in the middle of town square he blows the rubber head off the Raptor after it's already struck a killing blow to him and he's holding onto his life just long enough to kill the damn thing. Now that's our true hero of this movie, and he ended up hardly being in it.

There was also one scene that went on way too long (a good quarter or more of the movie) where the mad scientist lady proceeds to explain her entire plan to our main 'hero' while he has a gun pointed at her, and the two have a nice little 20-minute chat about it all. I half-expected someone to pull up a table and a set of chairs and offer them tea and crumpets. That entire scene went on way too long and was also quite boring after the first couple minutes. It was a bit of a stumble in an otherwise well-paced movie.

That one section of the movie, unlikable characters, and 0 characterization aside, this is one really fun, albeit quite depressing, low budget bad movie that makes for an excellent drinking game movie with a room of friends one rainy weekend night.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward


A note on the Special Edition DVD: This is marked as a Special Edition DVD and thus you would think it would be different then the regular DVD, but really it's not, beyond having 'Special Edition' branded down the left hand side of the cover. That is literally the only difference, so if you already own the regular DVD and see the Special Edition version out and about, you won't gain anything by picking it up again.

Read more »