MAX HEADROOM

The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking in Chicago, Illinois, on the evening of November 22, 1987. It is an example of what is known in the television business as broadcast signal intrusion. The intruder was successful in interrupting two television stations within three hours. Neither the hijacker nor the accomplices have ever been found or identified. 

"REALISTIC"

In rural southern Illinois, a toy company began selling "realistic" baby dolls to expectant mothers. Apparently, after one mother had her child, the toy baby would start crying. Eventually, the "rocking motion" advertised to calm it down wouldn't work, and you couldn't get it to stop without shaking it. Eventually when it started crying the parent would have to beat it, and the beatings and thrashings would have to get harder and harder to get it to be quiet. The only thing that seemed to shut the baby doll up permanently was to bash its head against the wall to destroy whatever mechanism triggered the crying. On more than one occasion though, neighbors called the authorities to report child abuse, and when the police arrived they found the bloody remains of infants smeared across the walls and the floor. In most cases the mother couldn't understand why the police were there; she just "got rid of the stupid doll," as she rocked a baby-shaped bundle in her arms.

BAD DREAM

"Daddy, I had a bad dream."

You blink your eyes and pull up on your elbows.
Your clock glows red in the darkness; it's 3:23.

"Do you want to climb into bed and tell me about it?"

"No, Daddy."

The oddness of the situation wakes you up more fully.
You can barely make out your daughter's pale form
in the darkness of your room.

"Why not, sweetie?"

"Because in my dream, when I told you about the dream,
the thing wearing Mommy's skin sat up."

For a moment, you feel paralyzed;
you can't take your eyes off of your daughter.
Then, the covers shift beside you.

EL FANTASMA

THEY'LL CREEP UP ON YOU

REVIEW: THE DINOSAUR EXPERIMENT

As the opening credits roll on the film you're about to watch and review, and you find yourself saying, "Well, at least Lorenzo Lamas is in this," you know you're in trouble. If, from the earliest onset, you get a gut feeling that you're about to spend 90 minutes undergoing cinematic mediocrity, and you consider the presence of the guy from "Renegade" to be a positive, well, Jesus.

Jesus Christ.

A group of strangers find themselves all stranded at a road-side diner/gas station (conveniently all within minutes of each other) when the old weird hick guy/scientist who lives in town shits the bed and allows his experimental velociraptors to escape. The strangers must band together to fight off the dinosaurs all whilst trying to stay awake in their own film.

Hold onto your butts.

A horror/comedy hybrid that contains neither horror nor comedy, The Dinosaur Experiment attempts to be a strange assemblage of Jurassic Park, Tremors, The Hangover, and something Roger Corman might have produced in between Ensures. The film features a collection of flat, bored performances meshed with over-the-top, scenery-chewing, kitchen sink performances, all making for a wildly uneven experience. Every line of dialogue designed to elicit a laugh instead induces a groan, and every character archetype is not only present and accounted for, but the subtle approach to their archetypal construction is turned down to negative 11. 

"If you're gonna have a horny frat-boy character, he should be, like, at least twice as horny," this film screamed in my face.

What you've got here, ultimately, are a random hodgepodge of characters, half of them pretty girls clad in the skimpiest costumes possible (but don't worry it makes sense in the context of the film LOL) wandering from one set-piece to the other so their arms/heads/hair can get ripped off. There's even a funny black pimp character, whose every line is automatically funny because he's got a purple suit on and is wearing an obviously fake wig. (He dies on the toilet just like that dude from that other, better movie about dinosaurs made by that guy who produced Real Steal.)

(Oh, and: Spoiler.)

hu·mor ˈ(h)yo͞omər/ - (noun)
1. the quality of being amusing or comic, esp. as expressed in literature or speech.
"his tales are full of humor"

The visual effects are pretty decent, considering the budget on this project was obviously quite low, and I'm actually quite pleased to see an attempt at keeping the under-explored dinosaur horror sub-genre at the very least active. The problem is that's not nearly enough to even so much as recommend this as a one-night rental.

Experience filmmaking 15 minutes in the making: The Dinosaur Experiment.  

But from here it looks like a six-foot turkey.

 

CLOSE CALL