In case you ever wanted Dino Dicember to crossbred with Shark Month, here’s your goddamn unholy wish granted, because not even dinosaurs are immune to papermacie.
As luck (or lack there of) would have it, there is a Mark Polonia produced (and directed) dinosaur flick, once again brought into the world by Wild Eye Releasing.
I could have ignored this one, but i feel like i would be haunted somewhat if i didn’t cover it this year… and my appetite for punishment it unsatiable as ever, plus this one has an even worse metascore on IMDB than i expected, below the 2 out 10, what are we waiting for, LET’S GOOOOOOOO!
The cast has pretty much the usual ensemble of actors featured (and by now associated) in Mark Polonia’s film output, so what can i tell you don’t already know? Expectations are just gonna be near zero, as usual, but even the obvious turd has a chance to at least be entertaining crap.
In a way, it’s a safe bet because it’s gonna be unwatchable detritus or somewhat entertaining crap, expecting anything more than that is gonna be just delirious thinking, BUT there’s something to be said about wanting to make movies without actually having the budget for anything, the grit in still wanting to put out feature lengths with homemade toys and broken piggie banks, which i like.
So there’s a dinosaur in a movie called Jurassic Prey, you would expect that, how did it get there?
And by that i don’t mean the director sculping the prop for it, what is an Allosaurus doing in a remote wooden area? To kill the random group of characters that by chance (and script) found themselves together in a remot cabin for reasons too boring to explain aside from “crime shit”.
Still, how there is a dinosaur running around in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, to begin with?
…. oh yes, we’re told (not shown) that a random construction work in the area might have accidentally unleashed the monster, and i know the dino it’s not keen on mangos and celery due to the working title being “Meateaters”, and apparently used as an alternative title for the release on Full Moon’s streaming service, and still kept for the ending credits, but not for the actual title card.
I must say, there are some surprises in terms of special effects, as this time here they have a suit, at least some inflatable parts they move around (mostly the feet), the dinosaur puppet is actually a bit better made than before (it’s also clearly more flexible than previous papermaciè constructs), even a bit of stopmotion…. really crap stopmotion, of the same exact quality seen in The Beaster Bunny, which makes sense, since Brett Piper (a regular of homegrown cinema that often collaborates with Polonia) is involved, but sadly the stopmotion it’s worse than it was in Queen Crab.
Actually, the location of the cabin by the lake is eerily similar to the one seen in Queen Crab. Almost like it’s owned by the director or something like that.
I’ve heard of the clay dinosaur not matching the design of the physical main dino puppet, but actually it mostly does, is the other “inflatable” props being the worst offenders here.
You’ll still long for the ape suit in APE, yes, but i’ve seen worse, even from the Polonia Bros, even with a depth of field on par with some of the worst Early Access titles on Steam, laughable visuals resulting of badly splicing the “papersaurus” with the live footage, the works, pretty much what you’d expect from the premise and the Polonia Brothers, so let’s cut to the chase.
Is there some fun to be had from what amounts to “we have Carnosaur at home”? Actually, yes, there is, at least i can follow the plot, i can (mostly) see everything that happens on screen and hear the dialogues, the effects are so bad they do get some laughs, and it’s just 70 minutes long.
Wise Cafe (International) 