TITLE & REVIEW
Kylo Renn (Adam Driver -
Silence
) is a spaceship pilot.
His craft hits a meteorite,
and the escape pod ends up on a nearby M-class planet.
Of course, the survivors get menaced by local monsters.
Yes, this starts a lot like
Pitch Black
- of if we were to be less charitable,
After Earth
.
It turns out that the monsters are dinosaurs, and the planet is Earth ... 65 million years ago. Worse, the meteor that destroyed the ship was part of a larger meteor that is about to hit the planet and create an extinction-level event. The survivors have to get to their escape ship ...
The pilot is accompanied by a small girl who runs away and does not speak to him at first. Yes, they are basically Hicks and Newt from Aliens . Well, she is a stand-in daughter for him so is is a bit of a Ripley character instead. Anyway, this is not a very original movie but it does work if you consider it an alternative to Alien 3 . If Hicks and Newt had been seperated from Ripley, trapped together on a different continent, this is the adventure they might have had.
A Navy Seal rescue team are sent back in time to the age of the dinosaurs, to save the crew of the
Philadelphia Experiment
. In a display of terrifyingly bad camera-work and editing they are attacked by dodgy CGI dinosaurs.
Worse, when they return to the present day, a super-predator follows and tries to stomp downtown L.A. ...
The explorers include Dr. Frank Reno (Michael Gross - Tremors ), Erik Reno (Christopher Atkins - Lost City of Gold (2018) ) and LCDR Ellis Dorn (Greg Evigan - Tek Wars ).
The script is relatively decent, compared to other efforts in the genre. however, it is let down badly by the non-existent budget.
A MegaCorp run by Ronny Cox (
Robocop
) clones dinosaurs.
They run wild in downtown Los Angles, so Firefighter Treat Williams (
The Phantom
) has to save the day.
This is a western,
with lots of Mexican villagers
and cowboys getting eaten by a dinosaur.
Unfortunately the SPFX are sub-
Gwangi
.
This is part of a subgenre of films that came along after the success of
1 Million Years BC
. While that film has
Raquel Welch
in a fur-lined bikini, this one had to settle for Norwegian beauty
Julie Ege
. Not that her accent is a problem - there is no dialogue.
A group of dark-haired cave-people trek across the desert. They meet a tribe of blond-haired cave-people, and luckily they make friends.
This was directed by
Jim Wynorski
. A group of overweight soldiers en route to military prison
end up on an island peopled by beautiful women in leather bikinis.
They have to avoid getting eaten by dodgy stop-motion dinosaurs.
This is a found footage film - like
Blair Witch Project
, but with the African version of the Loch Ness monster.
A TV company hires a team to go to the Congo and look for dinosaurs They are an English crocodile hunter, his son (think Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: TNG ), a few redshirts and a couple of unrealistically beautiful young women.
The CGI is used sparingly, which is for the best. Usually it is over-used, which stretches the SPFX budget too thin and makes the whole film look cheap. However, there is still too much of it.
Dynamite blasting at a mine in northern Canada
accidentally unleashes a dinosaur that had been frozen in ice for millions of years.
Just like the classic
Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
, but with Canadian TV actors and crappy CGI SPFX.
The cast includes trucker Ty Olsson ( Supernatural ) and Michael Hogan ( Battlestar Galactica 2003 ).
This starts with a couple of scientists
exploring the South American jungle in a light aircraft.
Unfortunately the plane crashes into a remote chasm.
The good news is that both men survive the crash.
The bad news is that there is a hungry T-Rex on the loose.
Five years later, Captain John Steakley (Gary Stretch - Dead Man's Shoes ) leads a Special Forces mission into the jungle. His team rescues a hostage and captures the enemy leader. This is easier than it sounds, because the enemy footsoldiers do not fire from cover. Instead they just run towards the good guys as if they are in a melee rather than a gunfight.
The getaway chopper crashes into the same chasm, leaving the survivors to fight their way home through the dinosaurs. Back at HQ, Colonel Carter (Corin Nemec - Stargate SG-1 ) wants to send in another rescue chopper. However, Agent Grimaldi (Vernon Wells - Mad Max 2 ) insists on a 24-hour time-limit. After the time is up, they have to launch a missile and destroy that area rather than risk the enemy's bio-weapon get released.
The Asylum presents yet another low-budget effort.
However, this at least passes the bechdel test
since the USAF Colonel and the head scientist are both attractive young women.
A US military convoy is transporting cages filled with exotic creatures. The creatures escape, and it turns out they are ... CGI velociraptors. Before long, lots of people are getting picked off one at a time and killed in presumably bloody but off-screen deaths.
The General (Eric Roberts - ) states that he wants to use the cloned dinosaurs for ground combat, just as flying drones are a substitute for other military forces. However, there is also a profit motive involved for the Military Industrial Complex.
This is a comedy remake of a 1970s American TV show about three people
(Marshall, Will and Holly) who get trapped in a mysterious wilderness.
Dr Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell -
Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back
) is mocked when he claims he discovered wormholes.
He and grad-student Holly (
Anna Friel
) go through the worm-hole,
and get stranded with foul-mouthed redneck Will (Danny McBride -
Your Highness
). They get chased around by a dinosaur,
and have to save the universe from an alien invader.
Ferrell and McBride each bring their own brand of humour to the film. Friel dresses like a slender Lara Croft, a reason in itself to watch the film. Unfortunately she uses her own Rochdale accent.
A decent version of this story was filmed in the 1970s, starring Doug McClure.
Why was this new version made?
The original work by
Edgar Rice Burroughs
must be out of copyright, so The Asylum got it on the cheap.
Some Americans on holiday get lost in the Bermuda triangle, and end up on a time-warped island. C Thomas Howell ( Red Dawn ) is in the Doug McClure role.
Thankfully the CGI dinosaurs are kept to a minimum. They actually look better than the rubber ones in the Hammer original!
The most original thing about this, compared to the Hammer version? The German characters actually speak their own language.
In the early days of the Cold War,
the US military test-launches a V2 rocket
equipped with a new atomic motor.
The guidance system works fine,
but the motor is more powerful than expected.
The rocket overshoots its target,
and crash-lands on a remote island in the South Pacific.
A pilot (Cesar Romero - Batman: The Movie (1966) ) is ordered to lead the recovery expedition. Well, he has experience - he crash-landed on an island in World War Two, and had to lead local guerrillas against the Japanese occupation forces. Most of the all-male crew are military men, except for the scientist who designed the rocket.
Minerals in the island's bedrock disrupt the plane's systems, causing it to crash. Luckily, a native girl in the local village speaks English which she learned from a missionary on a nearby island. She points the crew towards where the rocket crashed, atop an inhospitable mountain.
The explorers climb the mountain, and discover the plateau is infested with dinosaurs. Our heroes, armed with M1 carbines, have to fight off brontosauruses and triceratops.
The first dinosaur is close-up footage of an iguana, but the rest are stop-motion shots of the Ray Harryhausen variety. Later there is some stock footage of an explosion. We can safely say that the fact that this movie was shot in black and white helps conceal the relatively poor quality of the special effects.
A gang of tweenagers (including
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
) end up on a mysterious island.
Luckily, Dr Harryhausen (Adam West -
Batman
) is there to give exposition.
They must save
Carmen Electra
from giant ants.
As befits the Ray Harryhausen reference, the monsters are portrayed through good old-fashioned stop-motion animation.
A couple of nerds lose a billionaire's undersea drone
while exploring the sea bed.
He forgives them - obviously he was not based on Elon Musk -
and takes them along on his personal submarine to recover the drone.
A scientist woman forces herself onto the crew roster,
claiming that she will have the company's oil-drilling rights revoked
if they do not take her as their environmental inspector.
This is the most unbelievable aspect of the whole movie,
even when they discover that the drone has awakened
a weird giant starfish-looking kaiju.
The kaiju surfaces, causing a tsunami, and the US Coastguard is alerted. General Horne (Eric Roberts - The Expendables ) sends in a submarine and a destroyer, to no avail. It is up to the unlikely band of survivors to save the day.
The only thing that can stop a bad kaiju with a temper is a less bad kaiju with a temper. Luckily the scientist woman's mentor lives nearby, and is the world's expert in kaiju. She helps the heroes find and awaken the appropriate monster.
This is a sequel to
The Land That Time Forgot
, which ended with Tyler (Doug McClure -
Warlords of Atlantis
) casting his manuscript into the ocean as a message in a bottle.
In a masterpiece of quick exposition, this movie drops us straight into the plot.
A rescue mission is en route to the lost continent,
led by pilot Ben McBride (Patrick Wayne -
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
) and his mechanic Hogan (Shane Rimmer -
The Spy Who Loved Me
). The good news is that they were sponsored by a newspaper, the London Times.
The bad news is that the paper's condition was
they sent along a reporter - Charly (
Sarah Douglas
). She is an ace photographer,
although her camera is so big it needs a tripod.
Yes, this movie may be set after the First World War
but the camera is a Victorian anachronism.
Four of the explorers land on the remote continent. Hogan is left to repair the seaplane, while McBride takes Charley and the Professor to look for Tyler. They find a cave-girl named Ajor ( Dana Gillespie ) who wears a cleavage-enhancing costume and provides the necessary exposition.
The happy ending of the previous movie was quickly reversed, and the continent was conquered by a hostile tribe called the Naga.. This is disappointing for the audience, but good for the story because it allows lots of action to compliment the adventure. That said, the story has the same basic plot as most Doug McClure films. The good guys who used a prototype of a vehicle quickly get captured by minions of the Evil Overlord such as the Executioner (Dave Prowse - Star Wars: ANH ) , and have to free themselves in lots of great action scenes. This storyline also covers Flash Gordon (1980) , perhaps the last of these 1970s action-adventure films.
Judy Greer
sends her kids to stay with their Auntie,
Bryce Dallas Howard
, a senior executive at the dinosaur theme park.
They arrive in a scene reminiscent of
Westworld
only with a catamaran instead of a hovercraft.
The place is as busy as the theme park in the
Scooby Doo
Movie, but with real monsters instead of animatronic scares.
Unfortunately, the more real the monsters are the harder it is
for the people running the place to up their game every few years.
In the first movie, the heroes were menaced by one T-Rex and some raptors. The second movie had TWO T-Rexes, plus raptors. The third time round it was a T-Rex, a Spinosaur (super-predator), plus the obligatory raptors. This time, mad scientist Henry Wu (BD Wong - Gotham ) has cooked up something special. It has the size of a T-Rex, the claws of a raptor, the camouflage of a chameleon (or a cuttlefish), and other superpowers that nobody bothered to tell Security about. What could possibly go wrong?
Auntie is too busy with VIPs to look after the kids, so she lets her assistant ( Katie McGrath ) play nanny for them. They ditch her and go walkabout. What could possibly go wrong? Auntie has to team up with Starlord ( Guardians of the Galaxy ) to rescue the kids. The adults start bickering like Han and Leia in Star Wars (a cliché for romantic pairings in Hollywood flicks), get lost in the jungle (Romancing The Stone), but eventually Auntie turns into a James Cameron Action Woman.
This is a better disaster movie than San Andreas , and it technically passes the Bechdel test (auntie has phone chats with her sister and her assistant about her nephews). However, it is just trying too hard. Every character is a blatant archetype, every dinosaur species must be allowed to steal a scene, and so on.
This takes place three years after the events of the previous film.
Not only has the park been closed,
but the island is now the site of an errupting volcano.
How the volcano's active status was not discovered when the original park was built
a quarter of a century previously is put down to an act of god.
Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum -
The Fly
) makes an appearance at the US Congress hearings,
and airs his opinion that the dinosaurs should be left on the island
so that the volcano can kill them all in a natural way.
He certainly remembers the events of
Jurassic Park II: The Lost World
when a T-Rex ate half of San Diego.
Ironically, of all the movies that is the one that this one most resembles.
Claire Deering ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) runs a group that wants to save the dinosaurs. She is recruited by Mr Lockwood (James Cromwell - Star Trek: First Contact ), a billionaire philanthropist and former friend of John Hammond, who offers to help her cause. He has created a new sanctuary where the dinosaurs will be safe. Why they do not just use Site Two, scene of the second and third movies, is not explained.
Claire recruits her ex-lover Owen Grady (Chris Pratt - Guardians Of The Galaxy ), a black nerd and a Latina veterinarian ( Daniella Pineda ). The security man is rent-a-villain Ted Levine ( Silence Of The Lambs ), so it is obvious that some villainy is afoot.
This movie really tries to push the female lead as an action hero. She is active, not merely a Final Girl who gets chased a lot, but we still empathise with her when she is in danger. The macho man is a lot less sympathetic, he is basically a comedy character because the audience never feels sorry for him despite the terrible dangers he is placed into. In fact, in one sequence the female character does all the work and then saves the male character.
The subplot also pushes for female supremacy. In the previous film, a couple of young boys went off exploring and had to be rescued by the adults. Now, instead of the fool-Hardy boys it is Nancy Drew - a young girl who plays detective and uncovers the villain's plot.
In the third act, the villain's plan is made clear. Henry Wu (BD Wong - Gotham ) has created yet another monster. This one is called the Indomidus Raptor, so it has more Raptor blood than the Indominus Rex cross-breed. The villains hire Toby Jones ( Wayward Pines ) to auction off their monstrosity.
One thing is for certain. The so-called good guys are bound to start feeding people to the dinosaurs. Yes, the old save-the-monsters morality always pops up. They have no idea of the consequences of their actions. When the villain monologues them, he points out their hypocrisy. Claire ran a park that enlaved dinosaurs and used them as entertainment, and she even signed off on the creation of the Indomidus Rex. Owen was a military contractor whose job was to weaponise velociraptors. Despite this, they still refuse to act responsibly.
The final sequence is narrated by Goldblum. Man choosing to play god has altered the nature of life on Earth. This seems set up for the final movie in the Jurassic World series. Yes, no matter how badly this one is there might still be yet another Jurassic World movie.
This starts with an informative documentary clip
giving exposition about the events in and after the previous film.
The dinosaurs were let loose,
and now they have taken over the eco-system.
However, nobody wants to do anything about it.
This is clearly a metaphor for climate change.
Claire Deering ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) and Zia Rodriguez ( Daniella Pineda ) spend their time uncovering illegal dino-breeding farms. Meanwhile, Owen (Chris Pratt - Guardians of the Galaxy ) captures rogue dinosaurs and brings them in alive. If the monsters were of a supernatural origin - demons, vampires or werewolves - would the so-called heroes be treating them so gently?
For the last four years, Claire and Owen have been parenting the clone girl. They have isolated her in a log cabin, off the grid and away from other humans. That said, she has still got an English accent. Also, even though she is only fourteen years old they leave her Home Alone. She develops a tendency to ignore the rules and wander into the local town. Naturally, she gets abducted by dino-rustlers.
Claire and Owen go after the girl, who is sold by Soyona Santos ( Dichen Lachman ). This results in a girl-on-girl confrontation, which at least helps the film pass the Bechdel test. Claire and Owen hitch a ride on a plane flown by the movie's token black woman, Kayla Watts ( DeWanda Wise ). This pilot has a lot in common with Owen, and they bond on their shared military service. She would be a perfect love interest for him, if he did not already have one. However, she goes out of her way to make it clear she is a lesbian. Yes, she ticks three diversity boxes in one character.
Meanwhile, there is a subplot that actually matters more than the main plot. Ellie Sattler ( Laura Dern ) discovers that genetically engineered super-locusts have been released in America's farmland. She teams up with Alan Grant (Sam Neill - The Dish ) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum - The Fly ) to prove that the evil bio-tech mega-corporation is responsible.
The villain is, of course, an old rich white man. His name is Lewis Dodgson, obviously a reference to Lewis Carroll AKA Charles Dodgeson. He looks and acts like a caricature of Steve Jobs. However, his secret base is connected by a hyperloop system (which moves things short distances very slowly) so he might be an Elon Musk type. He was the one who bribed the tech support mole in the first film, and was thus ultimately responsible for the failure of the Park. Now he has Henry Wu (BD Wong - Gotham ) as his head scientist.
The result is a hotch-potch of cliches and predictable tropes. Colin Trevorrow takes most of the credit, although Stephen Spielberg is listed as a Producer so is not above blame.
Edwardian England, 1903.
A clifftop mansion is burglarised by a fish-faced stranger.
A beautiful young woman goes missing.
The square-jawed hero and the comedy relief (a Terry-Thomas type)
discover a secret passage and explore the caverns below.
They discover an underwater city ruled by Captain Sir Hugh (Vincent Price -
Witchfinder General
).
This was based on a poem by Edgar Allen Poe , and made on the cheap by notorious B-Movie studio AIP (American International Pictures). The female lead ( Susan Hart ) is a talented performer, but she was also the twenty-something wife of the fifty-year-old Producer. The part written for Boris Karloff ( Frankenstein (1931) ) was played by John le Mesurier ( The Italian Job (1969) ). If this had been made ten years later, the heroes would have been played by Doug McClure and Peter Cushing.
A group of European pirates led by Captain Christopher Lee (
Dracula
) takes over a village of English-speakers led by Andrew Keir (
Quatermass And The Pit
). Yes, it sounds like the previous year's
Pirates Of Blood River
. However, this is a different film with a slightly different script.
This time the year is 1588, and the pirate ship is a privateer vessel that was part of the Spanish Armada. There is no safe harbour for the pirates to repair their vessel in, so they tie up in a remote creek on the south coast of England. Sort of like Frenchman's Creek , only these pirates are not overly romanticised.
The pirates take over a local village and enslave the villagers. Of course, the plucky Brits fight back.
This is a Hammer production from the late 1960s.
There are no famous faces in the cast,
but they are all experienced supporting players from the
Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee films.
The story is based on a novel by
Dennis Wheatley
, and one of the characters is actually seen reading a copy of the book.
The story is set aboard a cargo ship that has seen better days. There are a handful of passengers aboard, but they all have nasty secrets. Worse, the captain is smuggling tons of volatile explosives. The crew are a mutinous rabble. And finally, the ship is steaming straight into a tropical storm.
Everything is set up for the survivors to arrive at the Lost Continent of the title. However, it is only a remote island and it only appears at the end of the second act. Just in time for the survivors to battle some conquistadors. Well, who expected the Spanish Inquisition?
This follows the basic premise of the classic 1950s swashbucklers.
They are set in a fictionalised past,
in an era when the rightful ruler (eg Richard the Lionheart)
has been usurped by a pretender (eg Bad Prince John),
so the generic hero (eg Robin Hood) must fight evil
by restoring the true order.
In this particular story, set in 1651,
the rightful ruler is Charles II and the usurper is Cromwell (John Le Mesurier -
The Italian Job
).
The protagonist has murdered over twenty Cromwellian troopers, and helped thirty-three Royalist VIPs escape to France. This is meant to make him seem like a version of The Scarlet Pimpernel , the character who inspired Zorro who then inspired Batman . He is called the Moonraker, a regional term for a smuggler. Of course, smuggling was only big business in the 1700s when England was at odds with France and thus French alcohol was unobtainable through legal means.
The Moonraker (George Baker - ) , actually a rich Earl who poses as a middle-class Puritan, hangs out at a seaside inn run by his former servant - a peasant who clearly has a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome. A stagecoach arrives, with a handful of tourists aboard. One is a comic relief character, a fat greedy selfish oaf of a Royalist who unexpectedly turns out to have a backbone and manages to put himself on the line. Another is a young Puritan woman ( Sylvia Syms ), the much younger fiance of the middle-aged Colonel whose duty it is to capture the Moonraker. Naturally, she becomes the Moonraker's love interest.
Captain Wilcox (Patrick Troughton - Dr Who
This is a Hammer Studios adventure film.
The intro credits give us some exposition on the backstory.
Once there was a group of Huguenots who fled persecution in Europe.
They went to the Americas, and named their settlement Isle of Devon.
The terrain, being that the movie was shot in England, might be North America.
However, the local river is infested with South American piranhas!
The hero (Kerwin Matthews - 7th Voyage Of Sinbad ) ends up in a Scarlet Letter situation. The village elders, led by his own father (Andrew Kier - Quatermass And The Pit ), sentence him to fifteen years hard labour in the village's very own prison colony.
Our hero promptly escapes from the top security stockade. He gets lost in the swamp, but is found by friendly pirates led by the one-eyed Captain Leforge (Christopher Lee - Dracula ). Judging by his accent the Captain is apparently French, while the Huguenots - a French sect - speak in English or North American accents.
The hero agrees to guide the pirates to his home village, so he can get even with the elders who imprisoned him. However, he starts to have doubts about his new companions. One of the pirates (Oliver Reed - Gladiator (2000) ) gets a bit over-amourous with the women.
Once back in the village, the hero teams up with one of his friends, Timothy Blackstone (Dennis Waterman - Scars of Dracula (1970) ). Despite his grudge against the elders who unfairly imprisoned him, he turns against the helpful pirates in order to save a treasure that he never even knew existed. It is about more than just the treasure - it is about mercilessly killing all of the intruders. Yes, just like every slasher film since Texas Chainsaw Massacre (itself in the footsteps of Deliverance) the inbred hillbillies want to hunt down and slaughter the intruders who transgressed.
This is one of the lesser-known efforts by Hammer, House of Horror.
It is part of a slew of caveman movies they released in the late Sixties,
the most famous of which was
One Million Years BC
. At least they got their money's worth out of the props, scenery and costumes.
A Big White Hunter in Africa in the 1960s gets somehow transported back in time to a prehistoric era. The evil brunette cave-women (led by Martine Beswick ) have enslaved the blonde cave-women. Our hero is chosen as the evil brunette Queen's concubine. He objects to her cruelty, so she has him punished.
The final bookend sequence introduces the hero's partner - business partner, that is - John (Stephen Berkoff - Werewolves Vs Strippers ).
This is a Hammer swashbuckler set in 1648.
Captain Tom Sylvester (Oliver Reed -
Gladiator (2000)
) and the Cromwellian Ironsides are searching for King Charles Stuart,
so he can be put on trial for his crimes against the people.
However, this movie seems to be from the perspective of the Royalists.
Cromwell is referred to as a murdering despot,
while in reality he merely challenged the Stuarts' belief in divine right to rule.
The colonel in charge, Judd (Lionel Jeffries - First Men On The Moon ) is a turn-coat, and his own daughter regards him as being a villain because of it. She still holds her former sympathies, to the Royalist cause. Luckily for her, Captain Tom wants her for his wife. He is smart enough to work out what she is up to, but realistic enough to compromise himself in order to get what he wants.
A Royalist insurgent nicknamed the Scarlet Blade leads a gaggle of peasants in a series of raids. Yes, this movie tries to make it look like the people were voting AGAINST democracy - or at least the steps in that direction which Cromwell made.
Judd's daughter knows that Sylvester is only helping the Royalists because he wants her to marry him. However, she flaunts the fact that she has chosen the Scarlet Blade instead. Poor Sylvester is now caught between two camps, regarded as a potential traitor by each side.
In the good old days of the British Empire,
three explorers journey across the African desert to find a lost city.
Peter Cushing (
Star Wars: ANH
) is the elderly mentor, Bernard Cribbins (
Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150 AD
) is the comic relief and John Richardson (
One Million Years BC
) is the handsome heroic one.
The city is ruled by the undying Ayesha, She Who Must be Obeyed (Bond babe Ursula Andress ) and her High Priest Christopher Lee ( Dracula ).
This is a Hammer version of the Victorian adventure book by H. Rider Haggard . The thing is, the original book is more about exploration than action.
This is a follow-up to
She (1965)
, set about a century after the original.
While the book was written by
Rider Haggard
, this sequel is scripted by
Peter O'Donnell
- the British writer who created
Modestry Blaise
.
The story is about a young woman ( Olga Berova ) who has visions that summon her south towards the Sahara desert. Unfortunately she is preyed upon by predatory men along the way. However, anyone who tries to interrupt her progress falls victim to a swift and merciless supernatural revenge.
The woman is being summoned to the hidden city, where the survivor of the first film is now ruler. He believes she is the reincarnation of Ayesha, so he wants to perform the sacred rituals on her. However, it turns out to be more complicated.
