So, experience tells me i should be reviewing The Belko Experiment since it’s International Workers Day and all, but i have very little to say about it, it’s a fun “battle royale but office enviroment” from writer (as he didn’t direct it) James Gunn and director Greg McLean, but it’s shockingly devoid of any twist or variation to the formula that had already been done, there’s some good actors but the characters (especially the protagonist) are mostly – and oddly – forgettable, it kinda never evolves, shakes up or does the battle royale formula in a fresher or interesting way, and the second part lacks the flair or escalation it leads you to believe it’s coming.
It’s still a decent film with some good, bloody moments, and one i still recommend checking out, after adjusting your expectations, because its one of those case were a movie suffers from being exactly what it leads you to believe it will be, so it’s not surprising it’s mostly remembered as a kind of missed opportunity, one where the satire ends and begins on the obvious, for once.
and despite the film teasing a “Phase 2” (not of MCU kind), for better or worse a sequel has yet to materialized as there were no plans for it and – to most people’s knowledge – still aren’t, at least at the time of posting.
So yeah, to still give you a review and compromise with the spirit of the holiday (while also technically reviewing 2 movies), i’m gonna review Attack Of The Sabretooth, directed by “NOT that George Miller (this is the one that directed The Neverending Story II, Tidal Wave No Escape, Zeus & Roxanne), a cheap ass made for tv horror flick i found on DVD for 3 bucks at a flea market some years ago and that i happened to have the DVD laying about on my desk.
Not that i found the movie under that title, as in Italy it was released as Primal Park, which is kinda clever in terms of being obvious bait but also being kinda on-point, since it’s another Jurassic Park rip-off and – in a rare case of the people responsable for naming the movie more likely to actually having seen it – the extinct animal attraction venue is actually called “Primal Park” in universe.
Also, for some reason in Italy it has another alternate title, The Wild 2: Open Season (the subtitle translates to “hunt is open”, to be literal), not to fool fans of Disney’s The Wild, you know, the one that looked like a Madagascar rip-off but just, but because Attack Of The Sabretooth is basically the “sequel” to another movie simply called “Sabretooth”, directed by James D.R. Hichox (i remember reviewing his crocodile killer flick Blood Surf some time ago), also a made for TV film about cloned sabertooth tigers, retitled for the Italian home video market as “Wild: Mountain Ambush” (again, i’m translating the subtitle for convenience), despite not even being made by the same production companies, not having the same director, FX company/ies or any the actors.
But they do share the main writer, Tom Woosley, so yeah, let’s play pretend and say “sequel”.
Regardless, yes, it’s the cheap Jurassic Park knock off you’d think it is, in terms of story just swapping the dinos for another extinct creature, the sabertooth tiger, and the secluded island is one in the Fijis, but its might be a lot cheaper than you expect in terms of effects, because honestly you’ll miss the competence of an Asylum joint, at least the ones where they bother a bit more, since the effects for the creatures themselves are akin to the shitshow of the Zoombies movies.
Maybe a itsby bitsy better but that is countered by the fact Kinectimals looks better, and by some of the ugliest and obvious “5 dollars CGI” i’ve ever seen in one of these, more specifically i mean a building that has an ugly, untextured CGI golden statue of a sabertooth tiger on top, one of the most hilariously, embarassingly bad, unbelievable “effects” i’ve seen, this golden shower-colored crap “statue” (see image above) that immediatly sticks out to the view.
And it’s hard to not dismiss it because the effects for one of the statue’s golden teeth falling off and killing one of the main villains it’s cheap enough to already make this one an entertaining shitty B-movie, it’s so amateur hour that honestly it turns out funny, and presentation doesn’t fare much better otherwise, i mean, i’ve seen Jym Wynorski movies (that use one of his many pseudonyms) that have better lettering, even the credits look like they were done by a child on Windows Movie Maker, we’re just a tad above homegrown cinema but we can hear the musk of papermacie monsters, acquaintaces used as “actors” and shooting in the director-writer-editor’s backyard.
For the rest, yes, it’s got everything you’d expected from the formula, from the characters having the IQ of a broken rock, them being a random mish mash of people that shouldn’t be there together outside of their purpose as premium cat food (investors, friends of the park CEO, a random group of college teens on some sort of fraternity’s scavenger hunt in what’s a pre-opening shareholder oriented presentation, etc), and i just mentionend Jym Wynorski, but this whole incident kicks off because a fat guard enters and leaves open one of the electrified enclosures…. to recover a page of some soft-core porn mag.
Not that it matters because the tech savvy college kid hacks the security system of the whole park (they didn’t want to get caught stealing their assigned item for the scavenger hunt), opening ALL the enclosures in the process. Good programming, fellas, thank god there were no nukes on the island.
Almost forgot, it also has the obligatory roped in washed out actor, a Carradine, too, but it’s not David, it’s one of his brothers, Robert Carradine, playing the lead security guard, and being by far the best actor of the bunch (which includes the debut of Cleopatra Coleman), because at least he tries with the awful material, not that it stops acting as a whole being terrible, with some actors hamming it up, other barely managing to gather energy for the atrocious dialogues, but i’ve seen worse.
You know, it IS utter garbage, the kind of “3 out 10 (or lower) on IMDB” trash you’d think it is, it’s bad but manages to be so in a funny way, stupid but entertaining because of his cheapness, it’s awful acting, the sub-Asylum tier of “special effects”, though they did made some physical props for the sabertooth tigers killing sequences, the movie does fulfill its low goal of having a bunch of dumbass detestable characters being eaten and ripped apart by ancient killer tigers, with a lot of blood and gore, cheap as they both are to look at.
And honestly i can’t help but smile and laugh at the movie being extra silly and in the last act throwing in a mutant deformed sabertooth tiger that clumps around on his hinds legs like it’s a Garfield creepypasta thing but meant seriously, that alone makes the film almost “worth it”.
Wise Cafe (International) 