7 'So Bad They're Good' Dinosaur Movies
Has The End of Oak Street brought back the bad dinosaur movie? Here are some so bad they’re good examples of the genre.
David Robert Mitchell’s new film, The End of Oak Street, has been dividing critics and audiences alike. Some think it is great, others believe it to be terrible, but either way it has people talking. In all honesty, it doesn’t matter whether The End of Oak Street is legitimately good or not, the mere presence of dinosaurs running amok is enough to draw in a crowd.
Ever since the release of Jurassic Park, the world has been obsessed with dinosaur movies and although few can match the intensity of Spielberg’s work, there is something charming about all of its imitators. The lack of Spielberg budget has led to some wobbly dinosaur effects, but also some inventive moves, and an overwhelming amount of insane concepts. For the true dinosaur movie connoisseur, here are some of the best examples of dinosaur movies at their worst (but are actually super fun).
Like shark movies, when it comes to the creation of a dinosaur film, no idea is off limits. This is demonstrated best in the 2017 horror comedy The Velocipastor. The premise sees a priest travel to China after the death of his parents. There he inherits a mysterious ability that allows him to turn into a dinosaur. Although initially horrified by the development, he soon puts his new powers to good use by fighting crime.
Somehow a superhero, horror, comedy, and dinosaur movie all at once, The Velocipastor throws everything into the pot. The result is a chaotic mess, but the kind of mess that pairs well with a late night screening, beer, and pizza.
Tammy and the T-Rex is deserving of more love than it gets. Starring an early career Paul Walker and Denise Richards, Tammy and the T-Rex tells the tragic love story of Tammy and Michael who are torn apart from one another when Michael’s brain is implanted into an animatronic dinosaur suit. This new development isn’t enough to stop their young love, though, and the pair desperately try to stay together.
The main reason why Tammy and the T-Rex is not a bigger hit than it is, is because the studio released the wrong version. Although made with the intention of being a very adult and bloody affair, in the wake of the success of Spielberg’s movie, the decision was made to edit it to make it more family friendly. The result was a jumbled mess that made little sense, but the reinstatement of the original version for its more recent DVD and Digital release has seen it finally earn the Midnight Madness status it has always deserved.
Based on Ethan Pettus’ novel of the same name, Primitive War was a surprise success at the box-office. While $1.2 million worldwide might not sound like a lot, for a film of this scale it really is. Most assumed it would go straight to streaming, but it surprised everyone when it had to keep extending its theatrical window to reach more fans, with lots of fans clamouring to see it.
The story is set in the year 1968 during the Vietnam War. A recon unit is sent to an isolated jungle valley to look for a missing platoon. Upon arrival they find themselves faced with a prehistoric foe far more ferocious than those they are at war with. Featuring Jeremy Piven, Ryan Kwanten, and Tricia Helfer, Primitive War has some pretty cool moments, and some fractionally more historically accurate dinosaurs, the design team including some feathers and fur along with the scales. For those that enjoy Primitive War, a sequel is already in the works
After the success of The Hunger Games a lot of films tried to copy the formula to varying degrees of success. One that took the idea, mixed in a dash of Death Race and The Running Man, and warped it to include dinosaurs was The Jurassic Games. Set in a dystopian society where violent reality shows are vital entertainment, the titular games place ten death row inmates into a deadly VR game in which they do battle with dinosaurs for a second chance at life. Unfortunately the game malfunctions and the carnage becomes real.
Packed full of very obviously computer generated dinos, The Jurassic Games has a consistent sense of fun that manages to wear down the audience's defences.
Carnosaur had the misfortune of being released in the same year as Jurassic Park. Thankfully, in some territories it snuck out first, but anyone that caught both couldn’t help but compare the quality of dinosaurs in the two projects. The comparison feels unfair given the vast difference in budget, but when one was primarily using hand puppets, and the other full animatronic creations, the results were staggering. Carnosaur was never meant to trick the viewer into thinking that dinosaurs had returned to Earth though, it was instead intended as a schlocky B-movie, and it excels in that regard.
Produced by the legendary Roger Corman, just like Jurassic Park, Carnosaur was based on a novel. The story sees a genetically mutated dinosaur escape and begin to satisfy its massive hunger by snacking on the residents of a nearby desert town. It even spawned four sequels, enough for a very silly marathon of dinosaur mayhem.
One of the biggest problems that low-budget dinosaur movies have is that they just don’t have the money to rival the work of Stan Winston. This means that what is created is either clearly a person in a rubber suit, or terribly rendered pixels. While this can form part of the charm of these smaller scale films, one movie had an ingenious idea to make a dinosaur story with next to no money: make the dinosaur invisible.
The Invisible Dinosaur is an insanely silly B-movie that sees a small American town become food for an escaped science experiment as a resurrected velociraptor has been turned invisible. This leads to a ton of kill sequences that have people being attacked by an unseen force. Only an amusement park paleontologist and a security guard can stop the invisible foe and the results are hilarious. The Invisible Raptor is also unashamed in its homages to Jurassic Park and is full of callbacks and lines from the dinosaur classic. During the film's time on the festival circuit they handed out The Invisible Raptor action figures, which were indeed empty cardboard packaging (to those without an imagination at least).
Theodore Rex is a movie that few people wanted made, especially star Whoopi Goldberg. The actress famously got stuck with having to make the movie, and although her chagrin can be felt throughout the movie, it has that undeniably ‘90s B-movie charm. This is exactly the type of film that rented well in small video rental stores across the world, and there is a generation that was raised on Theodore Rex. As such, it is hard to look at Theodore Rex with anything other than nostalgia-tinted glasses.
Set in an alternate future in which dinosaurs and humans work side-by-side, Theodore Rex is a buddy cop movie that pairs tough detective Katie Coltrane (Goldberg) with a T-Rex named Theodore. The two must put aside their differences to track down the person behind a slew of prehistoric animal murders. Theodore Rex falls somewhere between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Super Mario Bros, making it the ultimate guilty pleasure.
