12 Days Of Dino December #51: Ice Road Terror (2011)

Another one that’s been long overdue, and not because of any specific reason, besides resulting absurdly elusive to find so far, outside of buying a used import DVD of it on Ebay, which was also unbelievably expensive, hence the post-poning until eventual availability.

That did came when i found the thing uploaded on Youtube in full some months ago, glad i didn’t blow 40 bucks or something on just the US DVD copy. Without the box.

Especially for what is literally just a random SyFy dinosaur movie, Ice Road Terror is nothing more than that, and in hindsight it might sound like a mockbuster of that Liam Neeson starring film, The Ice Road, but that came out a decade later, in 2021, the title of this – apparently – its meant to reference a TV series i’ve never heard before, called Ice Road Truckers.

This movie too is about “ice road truckers”, as in a couple of truckers that are driving through Alaska’s frozen rivers in order to deliver some equipment to a remote diamond mine in the region.

But on arrival they encountered a prehistoric creature that had been long dormant in the ice.

Typical.

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Sabretooth (2022) [REVIEW] | Beeg Cat Means Beeg Trouble!

Before the year ends, it’s time to fullfil some promises nobody care about, so after reviewing Attack Of The Sabretooth (AKA Primal Park) back in whenever that happened, i realized almost before i finished writing the review, that this was sorta/kinda/vaguely a sequel to another movie about sabertooth tigers, as in they were sequelized only when localized in some foreign markets, as they have nothing to do with each other… aside from the writer, being Tom Woosley for both otherwise unrelated movies about extinct tiger species going about killing people.

Still more sensible than most of the italian cannibal film being retitled as “Cannibal Holocaust 2” when not even the lead actor’s dingus is a shared asset.

Simply titled “Sabretooth”, this is yet another TV movie that debutted on the ol’ Sci-Fi channel about killer animals that might or not be mutants or resurrected extinct evolutionary cul-de-sacs because Spielberg did a killing resurrecting the ancient lineage of the KFC bucket a decade ago.

And Roger Corman was also there to rip chickens up with its Carnosaur, then again, Clint Howard WAS eating chicken in front a chicken coup (and dinosaurs).

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Zombie Shark AKA Shark Island (2015) [REVIEW] | #thesharksix

Of course this was already done, i would say i’m surprised it took so long for the obvious idea to actually materialize, but then again it came out in the mid 2010s, an all time high for cheap ass shark movies unafraid to lower the bar even further, this time with the brilliant “ “what if but zombies?” concept, but – again – we never had this specific flavor of shark movie, so whatever.

As even a blind rock could guess by now, it’s a TV movie for SyFy (retitled as Shark Island in some releases), and it’s from director Misty Talley, actually her first shark attack flick, before Ozarks Sharks/ Summer Shark Attack and Mississippi River Sharks (both previously featured here), but also starring Jason London, whom i guess he’s “shark movie borgeusy” since he also shows up in Dam Sharks, for one.

So we have all the ingredients for a mildly fun timewaster… and the result it’s exactly that.

I could end the review here, but lets talk about the plot, despite there being no real need to, since Zombie Shark it’s exactly what it says on the tin and what you’d think it would be.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember# 33: Pterodactyl (2005)

There’s no more Carnosaur movies for me to review, and while this isn’t directly related to that series, nor comes from one of his companies, it’s directed by another prolific director versed in both cult classics and huge big box blockbuster successes, Mark L. Lester, here clearly in his “TV B-movies” phase, decades after his adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter , Roller Boogie, good ol’ Commando or Class of 1984.

As one could simply guess, this is indeed a dinosaur TV movie made for the Sci Fi Channel, produced by Lester’s American World Pictures, and apparently was the highest rated tv movie of this type commissioned by and for “SiFy”. At least according to Mark L. Lester’s bio on IMDB.

The plot it’s that pterodactyls have survived and thrived to the present day, nesting into a dormant volcano within the forest of Turkey, preying on whoever and whatever they come across.

So of course that’s exactly where a group of teenagers are led for a science expedition by Professor Lovecraft (pretty much all the characters are named after science fiction and fantasy writers, that’s cute), but worry not, there are also US commandos led by Captain Berge (played by Coolio) hunting Russian terrorists that supposedly are hiding inside the nearby dormant volcano.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 27: Planet Raptor (2007)

Raptors: the second fiddle of the dinosaur orchestra.

(The third being the pterodactyls, btw)

Nothing beat the word “raptor” as a way to get your attention when scrolling through the channels in a boring saturday afternoon, or while searching trashy TV movies that just couldn’t come up with a weird or catchy title able to shoehorn a pun with “t-rex” or “dinosaur”, so “raptor [noun]” it is.

This also happens to be the “sequel” to another SyFy Channel mandated dino flick, Raptor Island, which we covered last year, so it’s no wonder it has alternative titles like Raptor Island 2: Planet Raptor, and shit like that, but it’s also unsurprising how sketchy are its claims of being a sequel to that other movie. It’s just part of the package to lie in this regard for this TV dino movies.

And it’s also “a sequel but not really” in the same way these usually are, with one or two actors from that previous one and it being shot in the same – kind of cheaper foreign country (this time the woods of Bulgaria take a rest so the Romanian ones can “swap in”), that’s all in terms of thing carried over, as the director is different (this time at the helm we have Gary Jones, of Mosquito, Spiders and some episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess fame) and the plots don’t really connect.

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Roboshark (2015) [REVIEW] | Livetweeting The Shark #sharksncrocspartdeux

Robocroc left me feeling very meh and mildly bored, so Roboshark would have to pick up any pace in order to better. Or worse.

Regardless, it was originally one of the many shark movies making their debut on SyFy during the second annual Sharkenado Week of 2015 on the channel, and like most of you would have already guessed, indeed, it’s not a sequel at all, just shares the concept of something cybernetic getting into contact with predator animals and turning them into robotic-cyborg version of themselves.

But honestly the circumstances of the movie’s release it’s a perfect framing in what climate Roboshark came out, because it was indeed a time where everyone wanted to be in on the joke, ride the meta self-awareness sea train but deliberately doing it WITHOUT a “Don!”, engineering itself to be made fun of, to have people online live-tweet the shit out of it, to make you look at the freak, hoping that word of mouth and horrible reviews would make for unorthodox promotional material, because making that view counter go up is the only reason to make the thing in the first place.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #14: Triassic Attack (2010)

To give us a breather from an apparently endless strain of incredibly stupid scientists who would resurrect Hitler and put his brain in a T-Rex for the lulz… this time no one is cloning anything, or tampering in god’s domain without a rubber octopus on strings.

None of that shit.

Sorry for the screenshots “salvage fest”, but despite IMDB listing it having an italian release date (which is true since it was aired on tv here… i guess once), i couldn’t even find images of the apparent UK release, let alone a UK DVD, it’s not even one of those dino flicks gated off to non-UK Amazon Prime Video users. And apparently none of the major streaming services has it.

I’m not paying extra to import it from the US or get a Japanese copy, sorry, not for Triassic Attack.

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Dinoshark (2010) [REVIEW] | #sharksncrocs

More Roger Corman, continuing his b-movie legacy well into the new millennium with the “Roger Corman Presents” line of made for TV or direct-to-video b-movies he produced, this one being a spin-off of sorts of the Dino Croc series. Yes, series.

At the time of writing i haven’t got around to those, not that it matters, as a movie like this was simply bound to be made, and i’m surprised it took this long for the words “dinosaur” and “shark” to be married by the ol’ “b-movie priest”, but i guess 2010 was the year for this kind of trash, as Roger Corman also produced Sharktopus.

The first of the “Sharktopus trilogy” i mean.

Also, apparently this is a remake of 1979’s Up From The Depths, another Jaws rip-off/inspired film.

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Bone Eater (2007) [REVIEW] | So, as i pray

Yes, there’s more. There’s always more TV movie monster movies for me to dig up… often just picked to kill off some time on a sleepy saturday morning from my Amazon Prime Video watchlist (when the frigging service decides to keep or relist them without charging more for it, despite being obvious fodder, always were, always will). And there’s a 40 % chance Jym Wynorski directed them.

Jym Wynorski direct this as well, why even doubt he didn’t direct them all at this point?

And as you might have guessed from the year it was released (and my other reviews of similar TV movies), it’s another SyFy commissioned crapfest produced via CineTel films, who also brought us movies like Lavalantula, the Ghoulies franchise, Super Shark, Indipendence Daysaster, even the new strand of I Spit On Your Grave sequels (following the 2010 remake). Just to name a few.

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Ice Spiders (2007) [REVIEW] | Ski Spiders

As promised in the review of Spiders 3D, here’s the review of the spider creature feature TV movie Tibor Takacs directed before the 2013’s Nu Image/Millennium Film one that happened to pretty much be a remake of the 2000’s movie Spiders, produced by the same company.

You might argue i maybe should have done this before Spiders 3D, and you would be correct, but i didn’t even find out Ice Spiders existed before doing research for the other one, so here we are.

I should have guessed that a movie like this would exist, because i do believe this type of genre B-movies (especially if made for TV like this one) will eventually fall victim to what i call the “Pokemon Singularity”, with desperate filmakers mixing and matching animals with a random element/type, and if we can have sharks made of ice, sand (so “earth”), fire (atomic), even ghostly “dark” sharks, sure as shit we can have a movie called Ice Spiders. Possibly about literal spiders made of ice.

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