So I was surfing the web looking for something dumb to watch and fell down the Roger Corman rabbit hole. Man was that guy amazing. Besides making entertaining (if not good) movies over 70 years, he influenced films for years. He never rally made a blockbuster, but he also never made a complete dud. A master of the budget film and tight timeline Corman made a slew of films for mostly nothing and they all made their money back and then some. More importantly he was one of the best of recognizing talent and then developing it until it moved beyond him and his production company. Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, James Cameron and numerous others owe their careers in part to working with Corman. One of his later creations was Carnosaur. He heard about he novel by Harry Adam Knight and purchased the rights. It was written 6 years before Jurassic Park and when Corman heard they were making that into a movie he rushed production in the way only he could and pushed the movie out the same year, but earlier than Jurassic Park. Carnosaur weirdly stars Diane Ladd, the mother of Jurassic Park's Laura Dern. Carnosaur was hard to find and I actually had to get it off eBay for more than you would expect. It was worth it. The camp of the movie is fantastic, the story top notch and the "message" of it hits harder when thought about than Jurassic Park's in my opinion. Not to say it's a better movie, it absolutely is not. But its well worth a watch and deserves to find a home on streaming somewhere.
The other dinosaur film I watched is much more recent. 2025's Primitive War is a different beast altogether. Who needs practical effects when you have bad CGI? Why make it contemporary when you can make it a Vietnam War period piece? What sounds good? Jurassic Park and Predator mashed up! That'd be awesome right? Well, it's full of special a T-Rex that snaps its mouth at the guys and the sound is like what happens when I do the finger pop in my cheek. The CGI Dinos look worse than the 1993 (yup 30+ years ago) Jurassic Park ones do. The T-Rex chases guys off a cliff and instead of going 20 feet to the left it passes them by just so the movie doesn't end so soon. Somehow this movie is over 2 hours long. Of course you can learn to navigate the jungle and survive the dinosaurs (thanks 2 female characters!) but its man that is the real enemy. None of this is to say that the movie is awful, it's just nothing special. If you like action movies with too much testosterone and or anything with dinosaurs give it a shot.
No comments:
Post a Comment