“There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”
George W. Bush
Okay, so here is the low-down dirty shame. In 1984 a book was published called Carnosaur. It had the same basic premise as Jurassic Park, which came out in 1989. When Spielberg started making Jurassic Park (1993), Roger Corman put an adaptation of Carnosaur into production. The result, Carnosaur (1993) had almost nothing to do with the original story and had some of the worst creature effects this side of the 20th century. It was entertaining. Carnosaur 2 (1995) came out, same bad effects and the plot from Aliens (1986). It was entertaining. Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996) came out and enough was enough.
Then, Corman thought to himself, we have all these crappy footage of rubber dinosaurs killing people. We need to reuse this. And thus, Raptor (2001) came to fruition, reusing the death scenes of the older films with new footage of Eric Roberts looking sexy in a sheriff’s uniform.
And here we are again. Reusing the same crappy footage of the world’s crappiest creature effects. Now done by the guy who created those creature effects, John Carl Beuchler, who wrote and directed this mess.
Jeff Fahey (the Lawnmower Man) plays a scientist who created a “eden formula,” it can recreate beings or something and of course, someone used it to recreate a rubber T-Rex from a low-budget 90s film. Tony Todd (the Candyman) is a spy who is trying to steal the formula and Dee Wallace (the 80s horror mom-man) is working both sides.
Tony Todd is almost always the best thing in the movies that feature him, and this is no exception. He knows exactly what pile of dino feces he is in and plays the part accordingly. He hams it up because who is going to stop him? The director of Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College (1991)? Nah, that’s Candyman right there.
The film was also called Tyrannosaurus Wrecks because the dino part of the film (most of it is people walking through a high rise) is the T-Rex running amok in the city. You know, like in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), except here the effects are just insulting. Sometimes the T-Rex is a 1960s stop-motion creature modeled after the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, sometimes it’s a rubber hand puppet that looks nothing like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park.
It’s just embarrassing.
