Raptor

Roger Corman

Peacock Film

Flashback DVD

R4 DVD

Roger Corman is the maestro of cheese and Raptor serves up large dollops of B grade goodness. Made in 2001 this is a film which looks and sounds like it came from the Eighties or Nineties and is so unbelievably bad you will laugh all the way through it. Even the name is a con; this is a film about genetically engineered T-Rexs. Don’t they know the difference between a Raptor and a T-Rex - obviously not. This is Jurassic park on a very, very low budget with No CGI and with absolutely none of the intelligence.

The film opens as some young, drunk teens race through the desert and pull up just before their 4 x 4 goes over the edge of a cliff. One gets out for a leak and before he knows what hit him, a baby dinosaur tears off his dick and climbs into the van tearing his associates apart. The camera pans to the blood splattered sticker on the tailgate of the car and the titles begin to roll. We begin to suspect what we are in for…

Sheriff Jim Tanner and wild animal expert Barbara are called in to investigate the killings and find large animal tracks and hear a roar in the background. What is that terrible sound they wonder ? Within a short time the body count begins to increase and even with a red herring about an escaped criminal, we know dinosaurs are the culprits. So much for any suspense…

Soon Tanner learns about the Eunice Corporation where Dr. Hyde is ensconced doing animal experiments. They visit and conveniently hear loud “dinosaur like” noises and after doing some “internet research” learn Dr.Hyde majored in dinosaur genetics. It seems some years ago he was employed for a government funded operation called “The Jurassic Storm Project” which was cloning Tyrannosaurus Rexs. The project was disbanded but he decided to carry on working on his project in clandestine labs.

Now he is working for the private sector and selling his dinosaur clones to the highest bidder. However, some are now loose and six people are dead and something must be done. Dr. Hyde is the iconic mad scientist and the other characters are pretty two dimensional.

The military don’t want their name connected to the rampaging dinosaurs when the story hits the media and so send in the secret Delta team to deal with the dinos and Dr. Hyde. However when the power gets turned off, the dinos are let loose and are ready for a showdown.

This is truly appalling cinema, the dinosaurs are ridiculously bad and the acting atrocious. The finale when a toy Tonka truck battles a model dinosaur has to be seen to be believed. Corman had packed the film with long shots of corridors, extraneous plot and things blowing up so he can limit how much dinosaur he needs to show.

This is truly a silly movie which is so utterly pitiful you will scream with laughter from the very moment it opens until the stupendously silly ending…

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.3 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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