★★½
“Where the deer and the pterodactyls play.”
A title like this is inevitably going to come with all manner of expectations, and these will largely be things that any film is ill-equipped to fulfill. That’s all the more the case, when your movie is clearly a super low-budget endeavour. By most objective standards, this could be seen as terrible, and I wouldn’t argue with you. But for all the flaws, and enthusiasm that exceeds technical ability, this is made with clear affection for its elements. That goes quite some way in mind to excusing the problems. In particular, there’s a love for the world of stop-motion dinosaurs, which I share. For example, the narrator is Martine Beswick, who co-starred in the classic stop-motion dino epic, One Million Years B.C. I presume Raquel Welch was unavailable…
Truth be told though, there’s only one “actual” cowgirl here. That’s Bunny Parker (Vienhage), who is hired by schoolmistress Rebecca Crawford (Wiley), after her husband is snatched and taken away by a pterodactyl. No-one believes her, flying reptiles not exactly being native to to the wild West, which is why she turns to Parker for a search and rescue mission. Also along for the ride is saloon madam Debbie Dukes Riley Masterson III (Vega), who has come into possession of a satchel of pterodactyl eggs, which may help explain the creature’s aggressiveness. After a long trek through the wilderness, they reach the cave complex where the beasts make their home. Let battle – involving guns and a convenient, large box of dynamite – commence!
I did enjoy the stop-motion work by Ryan Lengyel. Even if it’s not up to the standards of Ray Harryhausen, to put it mildly, the work involved is still apparent, and his models’ interactions with the human cast were particularly well done. Kennedy matches this footage with larger models and puppets, and the results were worthy of praise, given the clearly limited resources. That said, other aspects are embarrassingly sloppy. Would it have killed one actress to have removed her glaringly anachronistic nose-ring? Some of the guns, too, look like they came out of a Christmas cracker. Period pieces like this are particularly unsuited to low-budget work, and it seems fair to suggest that Kennedy bit off more than he could chew.
However, he wisely keeps things moving, and at 71 minutes, this isn’t likely to outstay its welcome. Well, providing you do have the necessary tolerance for movies where imagination greatly outstrips the budget. The three leads all go at their roles similarly i.e. perhaps with more enthusiasm than talent, though it’s an approach appropriate to the overall attitude. Less successful is import scream queen Thompson, whose character Doris Yates seems to serve little real purpose. She may well have emailed her scenes in. I went into this thinking, “It’s probably going to suck, but I hope it does so in a reasonably entertaining way.” Overall, I’d say that nailed it, with just about enough moments where we were laughing with the film, rather than mocking it.
Dir: Joshua Kennedy
Star: Madelyn Wiley, Haley Zega, Carmen Vienhage, Dani Thompson