Cheap Primal Species (Video) (Jonathan Winfrey) Price

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Customer Reviews of Primal Species

What did this movie have against donkeys?
When the words "Roger Corman presents" comes on the screen, you know you're in for some thing. Unfortunately, what you're in for here is a bad plot and incomprehensible writing. The movie starts off with some European terrorists (we have to be politically correct, after all) attacking a military convoy guarding a truck carrying what they think is uranium and take it to an abandoned warehouse in a harbor. What's actually inside the truck are two genetically built velociraptors and a female T-rex. Incidentally, the great method of keeping these three animals secure is to blow cold air on them - and thats it. I guess defense budget cuts took away cages.

So a team of army special forces are sent in to recover the three dinosaurs. But they aren't TOLD what they're looking for because "That's classified" - which is like saying, "OK boys, we need you to kill this guy. Nope sorry, we can't tell you who, that's classified." Of course, it's not until AFTER the carnosaurs have killed two team members that the higher-ups say, "Oh yeah, by the way, you're up against three dinosaurs." By the way, they can't KILL the carnosaurs because apparently these things were bred to help stop disease. However, at no point in the movie are ever told WHAT disease these carnosaurs can cure, or WHY the government chose dinosaurs in the first place. The sharks in "Deep Blue Sea" were forgivable because the super-IQ was an unknown side-affect, but this is just ridiculous.

After many deaths, the characters say, "Hey! Here's an idea! Let's put them on a boat AND THEN try to capture them!" instead of saying, "Wait a minute, it's not the method that's failing us, it's the whole LOGIC." As predicted, this doesn't work either, and so they must resort to using C-4, which they suddenly have. I guess the C-4 fairy paid a visit or some thing, I don't know...

Usually a film like this can get by with a bad storyline, but this had some atrocious writing in it as well. The marine Johnson is a black marine, so he gets to say stereotype things like, "Take dis mutha fugga!" When the police storm into the empty warehouse and see five small body parts scattered around a big room their sergeant says, "Looks like a plane crashed through here!" And by the way...what was with all the donkey references?! You think I'm kidding? The colonel calls Polchek a "dumbass donkey" at the beginning of the movie, then there are two more donkey remarks while they're hunting the carnosaurs, and then at the end of the movie the girl marine says, "Johnson, if you see any thing bigger than a donkey, shoot it!" Did the writers have a thing for donkeys? What is this!?

There is ONE good scene though: while the female scientist is blabbing on about the features of the three carnosaurs, Polchek and Sanders are passing notes to each other and snickering the whole time. They were taking the film about as seriously as I was.

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Unkillable Dinosaurs On The Rampage
Last week I rented Carnosaur 3. This is the third in the series but they do not seem to be really linked. Carnosaur was based, very loosely, on the book of the same name by Harry Adam Knight which then became the basis for JURASSIC PARK.

In this the third installment a group of terrorists attack a military convoy transporting class 4 materials. They were hoping for plutonium but found a tyrannosaurus rex and a pair of deinonychus. These beasts were meant to remain dormant in a refrigerated environment but, thanks to the terrorists, they are now free on a shipping pier. An anti-terrorist squad is brought in to capture the dinosaurs before they have a chance to breed. Someone decided to grow them as self-fertilizing hermaphrodites. It turns out they are nesting on a freighter so the military pulls out of the dock thus isolating the dangerous beasts. Unfortunately things do not go as planned.

This movie was better done than the first movie with better acting, better story and better continuity. If you like dinosaurs you will want to check out this movie.

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MY FUNNY VALENTINE
Alright, just how many lemon sourballs did they have to give Scott Valentine to make him keep that Stallonish type sneer throughout the whole movie? In an obvious effort to shed his sitcom/family type roles, Valentine plays Rance like he just had two or three enemas and can't wait to get to the pottie. His performance is so ludicrously bad, he's enjoyable.
This third in the series was obviously tired, as they've never done the fourth. It' not grossly bad, just not as good as it could have been with a little more regard to plotting, pacing, and credibility. Janet Gunn tries to outdo Valentine in her role as the doctor determined to take the dinosaurs alive to study them and make unbelievable progress in curing diseases? Then halfway through the movie, she's a gun-toting soldier, obviously in heat with Valetnine, and she doesn't need her glasses either. Rick Dean's Polchek tries so hard for comic relief, but delivers his lines with such lethargy, you wonder what kept him propped up. Fortunately, Juliana Vail and Morgan Englund, as two marine grunts, give the picture some strength and credibility.
Roger Corman took over the helms of producer for this one, and his standard tacky touches are oh so evident.
It's a fun little movie in its own deranged way; the arm wrestling between Vail and Dean is so ridiculous, you can't help but laugh; here they are in the midst of killer dinosaurs and they want to show who's tougher, he or she.
Rent--don't buy, though.