Dino Dicember #24: Poseidon Rex (2013)

Yes, the ever elusive Water-Dragon type of T-Rex, because nowadays you could make fake monster movie poster art with Pokemons as a joke, and realize someone did it for real already, beat you to it years ago. And if someone had to do it, might as well be the director of cult films like Commando, Armed And Dangerous, and Class of 1984, Mark. L. Lester himself, as he eventually went back to doing B-movies for TV or the home video market after the “Hollywood years”.

Because, really, the sharks enjoyed preying on B-movie beaches for decades, it’s time to move out and let dinosaurs do it for a change. At least in some of the cover art, in this specific case it does happen, but often with movies like this the posters promise more than what the movies themselves can actually deliver.

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Dino Dicember #19: Super Mario Bros The Movie (1993)

I could have waited until that animated Super Mario movie Nintendo commissioned Illumination (urgh) released… but sure as shit it isn’t coming out this year (not like it was gonna, it was slated for a 2022 release before the COVID-19 pandemic anyway), and i’m doing Dino Dicember… well, in Dicember, so it’s a pretty good “excuse” for me to watch and review the infamous Super Mario Bros live-action movie. And i do enjoy the challenge, it’s not like it’s this obscure adaptation nobody on the internet talked about, but let’s give the movie a fair shake with almost 2 decades of hindsight.

And yes, it totally counts, since it’s about a dinosaur dimension that originated from the meteor that hit Earth 65 millions years ago, which actually created two parallel dimensions of Earth, one inhabited by reptile people descending from dinosaurs, and ours of “human people” descending from primates. As the resources have dried up on the “dino end”, the leader of the dino-people, Koopa, sends minions in our dimension to search for a fragment of the meteor that split the dimensions to begin with, so he can unite the two and rule them under his scaly thumb.

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Dino December #18: The Land That Time Forgot (2005)

Of course we’re not reviewing the original novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, or the more known 1975’s adaptation by Amicus. We’re doing the 2009 one, done by The Asylum, which in a way it’s kinda fitting, and… kinda isn’t; sure, it’s about dinosaurs, but usually the company sticks to ripping off Jurassic Park and whatever it spawned over time (including the Carnosaur series), not so much in adapting Burroughs. Almost as surprising as the lack of many adaptations this story received, very little in comparison to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.

The story follows the same premise of the book (which didn’t start off but in the later parts develops into a “lost world” story, as popularized by the aforementioned Conan Doyle’s opus), but it set in modern times, it involves frigging portal/dimensional rifts the group of main characters, which aren’t soldiers but just some random persons that were doing some “extreme vacation-activity” thing. Given this is an Asylum production, i’m not really surprised, i mean, they’re not gonna try to film it as a period piece, you just know they ain’t going to… and they don’t.

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Dino Dicember #13: Jurassic Attack / Rise Of The Dinosaurs (2013)

Quite the functional, generic-ass title, i must say.

This one has TV movie and genre actor Corin Nemec of Stargate SG-1 and Beverly Hills 90210‘s fame, whom also was in Dragonwasps, Sand Sharks, Dracano/Dragon Apocalypse, and many more, including… Robocroc, which it’s exactly what it sounds. And will be quite likely reviewed here in a double feature with Roboshark. Eventually.

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Dino Dicember #12: Terrordactyl / Jurassic Wars (2016)

“Pteranoperil” was too bland, i guess, but feel free to use that one, if you want.

So yeah, i got this while hunting for dinosaur flicks on Amazon, and the UK DVD copy goes under the “Jurassic Wars” title, but at least the cover promises pterodactyls… and the movie is about pterodactyls. Checks out, not always a given with these kind of movie covers that promise more than the movie can actually deliver.

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Dino Dicember #11: The Eden Formula (2006)

Wait, this movie isn’t produced by Roger Corman, how it could it count as the second unofficial sequel/spin-off of the Carnosaur series?

Well, this time the connection is both direct and oblique, as it’s directed (and written) by John Carl Buechler, who worked on the special effects for the 3 Carnosaur movie, and – for whatever reason – he decided to crib stock footage from the first Carnosaur flick. Times.. never change.

Sorry for the screenshots’ abysmal resolutions and quality.

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Dino Dicember #10: Raptor (2001)

With a title that cuts to the chase and it being released 5 years after Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, first question is how and why you would consider it related to the Carnosaur series, at all?

I guess because is produced by Corman yet again under his company New Concorde… and due to the fact it uses stock footage from all the Carnosaur movies. Heck, even the DVD cover it’s also 40 % stock footage of the ones used in the american releases!

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Dino Dicember #9: Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996)

Remember when Carnousaur 2 script couldn’t definitely decide if to consider the first movie or not, so it just gave an explanation for the dinosaurs that could kinda link the two movies together?

Well, the third one doesn’t even try to follow one of the movies or both, so it’s no wonder it was released in the UK simply as “Primal Species”, might as well use the subtitle as the alternate title, since this one wasn’t even conceived as part of the Carnosaur series, originally.

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Dino Dicember #8: Carnosaur 2 (1995)

2 years later, following the rise of a new dino-human hybrid race… Wait, this is that type of sequel, just slap another number on the name of the previous movie, and do whatever the fuck you want with it, as long its about the same general theme and/or subject. Continuity, thy name is Corman.

This time we have a group of scientist that go a nuclear mining facility in Yucca Mountains (just missing an atomic Tor Johnson followed by gray, dull narration) to investigate a potential meltdown, but instead find dino eggs in one of the caves. Not, not radioactive dinosaurs, that would have been kinda fun, just the boring old cloned type of mutant dinosaurs. You can guess the rest.

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Dino December #5: The Lost Dinosaurs / The Dinosaur Project (2012)

With such a title and a plot synopsis, The Lost Dinosaurs comes across as a Congo knock-off, with dinosaurs instead of simians. So i was – if anything – surprised to learn this is filmed in mockumentary/found footage style, which i think it’s a first for these dinosaurs themed flicks. I wasn’t expecting a jurassic take on Blair Witch Project, of all things. I don’t like this style, i really don’t, but i have to respect the effort into coming up with an absurd idea like this, even if the movie turns out to a complete shitshow.

The plot sees Luke, an adventure enthusiast, secretly embark with his father and uncle on an expedition to find the legendary cryptid Mokele Mbembe (basically the african cousin of good ol’ Nessie) in Congo, and in secluded jungle they actually find animals looking like dinosaurs, thought to have gone extinct 65 millions years ago…

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