The horror, the horror

I just subjected myself to what was, hands down, the worst dinosaur movie I've ever seen. That, my friends, is saying something. I love dinosaurs. I never grew out of that phase, so any movie featuring dinosaurs automatically catches my eye. And I really don't set the bar terribly high for my dinosaur movies; I enjoy damn near everything I can find with my favorite prehistoric creatures in it. Bonus points if there's a triceratops.

Raptor got no bonus points. Raptor, actually, got no points at all.

I knew I wasn't getting a Jurassic Park when I picked out a movie produced by Roger Corman, starring Eric "Acting? What's that?" Roberts and Corbin "I have a distinguished film career" Bernsen. What I'd forgotten is that Corman, legendary cheapskate that he is, never spends a dime he doesn't have to. The opening scene features a trio of teens racing around the back country in a jeep. The stop, and the one with a beer in his hand hops out to take a leak while the other couple start to make out. Recipe for disaster, of course, as they are attacked and torn apart by a mid-sized rubber dinosaur puppet.

Anyone who's seen Roger Corman's epic dinosaur flick Carnosaur* probably recognizes this scene (unless they've blotted that movie from their minds). Corman didn't just recycle the idea, or the script, he spliced the footage from Carnosaur in as the opening sequence. So, about 60 seconds into the movie, I knew I'd made a horrible mistake. For the first time in my life, I found myself watching a dinosaur movie with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Due to a combination of morbid fascination, laziness, and an inability to stop a movie once I've put it on, I found myself unable to stop watching. And what I discovered was easily 1/3 of the movie was recycled footage from Carnosaur. In a couple of these scenes, they didn't even bother trying to match the actor's appearance from seconds before (when there were no dinosaurs around).

To call the cast actors would be generous. I could outact Roberts if I were in a persistent vegetative state. And Bernsen seemed to be wandering through the set half-heartedly looking for puppies to kick to establish the evilness of his character. The only characters that even made me smile the tiniest bit were the military guys sent in to clean up the mess. They seemed to think that saying "f*ck" a lot was the best way to indiciate they're military. I mean, I swear a lot, possibly too much, when I'm in a relaxed atmosphere, and I'm sure soldiers in tense situations do so to some extent, but even I thought it was gratuitious. And that's saying something.

One thing I definitely learned from this movie is that dinosaurs didn't actually walk, except for the big t-rex-ish one. Instead, they glided about roughly an inch above the ground without bothering to move their legs or even pretend to have any normal means of locomotion. While this did mean the vastly overused impact tremor effect shown in a puddle or glass of water was conspicuous in its absence, that's certainly not worth giving up any of one's evening to see.

In short, even if you enjoy bad movies the way I do, you should run screaming if you ever encounter Raptor. To help with this, I included the image from IMDB of the movie's cover so you'll be on alert. Seriously, don't watch this. I'm traumatized, and that's hard to do.

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* I actually liked Carnosaur. It was a fun watch, and had an interesting premise. Instead of a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong, it was a genetic experiment gone horribly right.

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