12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 59: Area 407/Tape 407 (2012)

In our quest to maybe eventually one day review all the dinosaur films ever made, i had to wonder if we missed something.

We features dinosaur comedies, dinosaur battle royales, virtual dinosaurs of the future, some really decrepit pieces of dinosaur media, and an over excess of soldiers fighting raptors.

Heck, we even did see attempts at mixing the dinosaurs with a found footage film in the very decent and mostly realized The Lost Dinosaurs, and today we found him a play-date of sorts with something i never heard once about, and i had to stumble upon by combing upon lists of dinosaur films.

and i mean “stumble” because you wouldn’t guess a movie called Area 407/Tape 407 would be abotu dinosaurs, which i guess should count as a spoiler. I suppose?

Let’s be real, it’s not that much of a spoiler when you have the poster art for the film sport the recognizable “triple clawed scratchmark” that might as well spell “Velociraptors”, or a Garfield creepypasta abomination, i suppose.

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12 Days Of Dino December # 55: The Invisible Raptor (2023)

Sadly i learned of this midway through doing last year’s batch of reviews for 12 Days Of Dino Dicember, so i wasn’t able to cover it back then, but we’re fixing that right now.

The idea is both cute and obvious as hell: a dinosaur film without the dinosaur.

More correctly, the dinosaur is there, it’s a velociraptor, but due to “science” it was made super smart AND invisible, escaping from the lab and going on a rampage, leaving it up to a disgraced paleonthologist (reduced to mascot costume shenanigans at a dino themed amusement park) to save the day from the invisible menace.

I don’t need to, but i will point out that this so obviously feels like them stumbling into a somewhat genius solution when they couldn’t afford the dinosaur in their dinosaur film.

The film knows everyone would have sussed that out immediatly, so it plays as a horror-black comedy that’s basically a spoof of all things Spielberg… well, mostly a flood of references mushed in together, with protagonist being Dr. Grant Walker, an appropriately named fusion of Indiana Jones with Dr. Grant and i suppose Chuck Norris’ character from Walker Texas Ranger, maybe?) as he teams up with an hapless security guard in trying to stop the invisible dinosaur, while everyone obviously doesn’t believe his story until it’s too late, Jaws style.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 54: Jurassic Island (2022)

If you are gonna make a low budget dinosaur film, i can’t nor will stop you.

Obviously, how else i’m gonna keep doing this rubric otherwise?

Still, consider this a courtesy more than a request: please call it anything else than “Jurassic Island”. There are simply way too many films titled as such.

I understand wanting to keep the “Jurassic” in as it helps shows up in searches (and fooling someone into renting this, believing it’s one of the big budget Jurassic Park/World films), just fucking choose another noun.

Plus it is makes it sound like it’s a kids film… which is very rarely the case.

Might as well ask since it’s not like i have much to say about the plot.

So much i would be tempted to just outright skip it.

I mean, what do you think the plot for a movie called “Jurassic Island” is?

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12 Days of Dino Dicember # 49: War Of The God Monsters AKA The Flying Monster (1985)

I know this is technically Giant Monster March material, but it’s Christmas, and kaiju are often dinosaurs in some way, so let’s have some technically correct fun with this obscure South-Korean kaiju film, The Flying Monster, better known as War Of The God Monsters because it is law for genre cinema films like these to have multiple titles.

1985 was definitely an interesting year for kaiju film as this was most likely made as a response to the North-Korean produced Bulgasari, itself made because of Return Of Godzilla debutting one year prior. Then King Kong Lives almost killed all of this new found momentum.

Directed by Jeong-yong Kim, War Of the God Monsters/ The Flying Monster (originally titled “Bicheongoesu “, which would translate literally to “(The) Undead Beast”), and it does somewhat still fits for Dino Dicember, the plot IS about a shunned professor trying to prove that dinosaurs still exist, with a young reporter trying to get a story from him.

But at it turns out, “Vegamunk” is right, as various giant dinosaurs (and a Pterodactyl kinda thing, the titular “flying monster” i suppose) suddendly appear, forcing the odd to confront the peril and find a way to save the world from the kaijusauruses.

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The Spooktacular Eight #28: Suburban Sasquatch (2004)

Enough of Mark Polonia’s stuff, let’s go deeper into the homegrown cinema territory with a “classic” by David Wascavage, Suburban Sasquatch.

Sometimes you think you know a certain genre, then see shit like this or Fungicide that makes you realize, yes, we can go lower than an early Polonia Bros direct-to-video film made in the late 90s, there is a 10^th circle of movie hell… or heaven, depending on whom you ask.

If you ever wondered what those Donald Trump VS Bigfoot VS Nazi Shark fuckin movies would have looked like if they were made in the 90s, and were somehow worse than Curse Of Bigfoot… well, wonder no more, because while this was made in 2004, it looks like the first Feeders film or something like that, it’s that territory of shooting your own shit with pocket change (and some “locally sourced” weed as stand-in for salaries) as budget, with your friends as “actors” and location shooting meaning you most likely recorded the footage (“filmed” is too strong of a word) somewhere in some woods or field near your home, or inside a friends’ house.

This is HIGH amateur hour stuff, my fellows bad movie buffs, so amateur it hurts.

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[EXPRESSO] Mantopus! (2025) | Octaman’s Father

Had to see a newly released on Amazon Prime Video film called “Mantopus!” that is retro styled meta comedy about a now washed horror director finding the titular “man-octopus” hybrid in a mysterious antique shop and deciding to use it as the star of his final horror film, Mantopus, a Creature From The Black Lagoon knock-off.

It’s one of these modern retro styled comedies akin to stuff like The Lost Skeleton Of Kadavra, but set in the late 50s-early 60s, arking back to the drive-in era of monster movies, with a Michael Gough-looking director (as the whole movie it’s basically a tribute to him), a slimeball making stuff like the fictional “Frankenstein In Texas” to the dismay of his producer, running “not-American International Pictures”, but the director becomes mad and starts using the monster to eliminate his “enemies”.

I will say it’s an interesting proposition, because while it’s not too hard by now to emulate the visual style of these shlocky films, you ironically gotta have decent actors able to deliberately act bad the purposefully stock dialogue that seems somehow dubbed in post even when it’s obviously not, but Mantopus manages to get that and most importantly gets right the feel of these old movies, and the tone, that both makes fun but also celebrates with sincerity these films, that actually likes the drive-in trashfests about monsters with little to no budgets but high on violence and “nudity”.

It’s all done with affection instead of spite or mockery, the overacting is lovely as its the deliberate awkward delivery of basically every line and stock discussion, it’s a quite fun film, though it’s a very niche movie made for a very specific audience, one that loves cheesy horror of yore and will notice the posters aren’t for made up old movies.

Land Shark (2017) [REVIEW] | #sharkapalooza

As we learned through years of shark movies, pretty much anything goes, especially as the budgets move closer to zero, even in these cases you can do a poster that’s way better than the movie could ever be, at the very least. Money is important, but lacking it can’t stop you making your movies about shark of any kind or type, as we already saw in Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast.

It’s another Mark Polonia film, but it’s one that immediatly, even after hundreds of these no budget sharks film (often made by him or his friends-colleagues), does make one stop and reflect on the fact that – maybe, maybe – this is crossing some unspoken line or etiquette, even amongst this kind of shark film, when you make a rip-off of Sand Sharks.

And also of Super Shark, which had a giant shark somehow moving on land, but that one was actually so craptastic to be memorable, both movies far older than this, so one has to wonder if – maybe – it wasn’t intentional, but i find it hard to believe the Polonia Brothers (of all people) weren’t aware of previous movies like Sand Sharks. To be more correct, i simply don’t.

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Shiver Me Timbers (2025) [REVIEW] | Night Of The Sailor Comet

As the time of writing (and posting, since i improvised this trifecta of Popeye horror films’ reviews) this is the more recent in the batch of 3 horror films based around Popeye’s copyright falling into the public domain that were basically dumped on VOD, all released in a matter of months (or weeks) from one another, and while i’m fairly sure there by September (to be very generous) this specific declination of the fad will have died down due to diminishing returns (since it’s the third time, after Winnie The Pooh and Steamboat Willy’s Mickey Mouse) … i’m not putting this mini-marathon of modern “public domainxploitaition” in “extend mode” if another one or more of these eventually crop up, i’m not playing catch-up anymore.

So let’s see how Shiver Me Timbers, the debut film for director-writer Paul Stephen-Mann, fares out.

In the summer of 1986, a group of friends, led by Olive Oil and her brother Castor, are going on a trip in Northern California to witness the rare Haley’s comet meteor shower event, but they couldn’t expect that a comet piece would fall to the ground that night, a piece lodging itself into the corncob pipe of a reclusive fisherman living nearby, Popeye, now turned into a monstrous, violent killer with superhuman strenght, ready to sate its bloodthirst on Olive and his friends..

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[EXPRESSO] Awaria STEAM | Ghostsmoochers Inc.

After taking the internet by storm with “Johnny Bravo goes to hell for a demon girl harem” AKA Helltaker, vanripper is back with a new game on Steam, Awaria, sporting a new original soundtrack by Mittsies, and being more of a bullet hell- action puzzle game thing “about working in a haunted maintance tunnel”, which yes, means ghost girls to talk, interact and sometimes kiss, though, the Steam page content warning makes it clear by saying “it’s all tame”. It is. Pretty cute designs, still.

It also has the same business model as Helltaker, as in it’s free, but to support the developer you can buy the optional DLC as a “thank you”, which also nets you a digital artbook and a Babezki (a kind of Polish muffin) recipe, but again, you can also unlock the same content in the in-game gallery.

Gameplay is pretty frantic, and has you move your character about to collect items, activate item printers and interact with broken generators, requiring certain items to be fixed in a limited time, while avoiding the ghost girls attacking you, as you die in one hit, a drone will take a hit for you and respawn every 10 seconds, which are lot more than they sound given you’ll need to be constantly zipping around the level.

It’s a 2 hours affair, a bit more if you want to finish the game on Hard difficulty and unlock everything, but it’s quite intense, the gameplay is easy to learn but actually challenging and rewarding, the final boss levels this time around are better designed (as is the game overall compared to Helltaker), Mittsies soundtrack is another banger, pity for the sometimes laggy performance, but it maybe be my old rig.

Once again, i highly recommend playing it and supporting everyone involved.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #39: Dinosaur From The Deep (1993)

Don’t worry, this one has dinosaurs in it.

Most likely, anyway.

Didn’t think about that being a required feature, but that’s why you should do some research first, just in case, otherwise you get duped into watching a cannibal movie, somehow.

No my friends, this time we’re in for some semi-notorious lower case Z-grade filet from France, with Norbert Moutier’s Dinosaur From The Deep.

After all, the success of Jurassic Park wasn’t an USA thing only, at all, so here comes a low budget film done to capitalize on Spielberg’s dino opus and hopefully trick enough people (especially younger dinosaur enthusiasts) into renting or buying it on VHS, only to realize it’s basically a “shot in shitteo”/”home video film” of French people with no budget.

What were they gonna in 1993/4, look up the metascore on sites that didn’t exist yet, or required anyone in the household NOT to use the phone?

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