Pterodactyl (2005)

User Rating:

3.3/10   

Director:

Mark L. Lester

Writer:

Mark Sevi (writer)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Horror

Tagline:

Ptowering Pterror

Plot:

A dormant volcano deep with the Turkish forest holds within it a deadly secret. Perfectly preserved, a nest of pterodactyl eggs are ready to hatch... |

Plot Keywords:

Volcano | Covert Operation | Prehistoric Egg | Prehistoric Monster | One Word Title

Cast

Cameron Daddo	...	Prof. Michael Lovecraft
Coolio	...	Capt. Bergen
Amy Sloan	...	Kate Heinlein
George Calil	...	Serling
Ivo Cutzarida	...	Yolen
Steve Braun	...	Willis Bradbury
Mircea Monroe	...	Angie Lem
Jessica Ferrarone	...	Zelazny
Danna Lee	...	Gwen Kemper
Howie Lotker	...	Jason Donaldson
Duke Faeger	...	Burroughs (as Dusan Fager)
Todd Kramer	...	Clarke
David Nykl	...	Herbert
Petr Jákl	...	Tezo
Mikulás Kren	...	Berk (as Miki Kren)

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Germany:18 | UK:18 | Canada:14A | New Zealand:R16 | Netherlands:16 | Australia:MA

Filming Locations:

Milin, Czech Republic

Company:

American World Pictures (AWP)

Trivia:

Many of the characters are named after famous science fiction and fantasy writers - Burroughs (Edgar Rice), Clarke (Sir Arthur C.), Donaldson (Stephen), Heinlein (Robert), Herbert (Frank and Brian), Lem (Stansilaw), Lovecraft, (Howard Phillips) Serling, (Rod), Yolen (Jane) and Zelazny (Roger).

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Angie's arm gets ripped off by the pterodactyl and you see bloody strands on the severed arm but in the next shot it's clean and neat as if it were cut instead of torn off.

Quotes:

Captain Bergin: Now, keep your mouth shut, or your teeth won't make the rest of the trip!

Movie Connections:

References "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (1986)

Poo-odactyl

Don't get my wrong it's not all bad – there is a good few minutes when a scantily clad blonde runs through the jungle.

Here's the story line, I will try to give it to you straight, with an unbiased approach – a bunch of annoying US students and their dumbass lecturer are for some unknown reason in Romania when they decide it is a super idea to explore a volcano deep in some forest. Only when they arrive, they spend their time running away from CGI Pterodactyls, which have just hatched (probably out of an N64). But that's not all they do, they also produce incredibly annoying sentences, for example after many of the students have been eaten by these winged Nintendo graphic beasts, the lecturer sighs 'what am I going to tell their parents' and in another scene, when the blonde hoochie mama has had enough of all the fun and antics that always accompanies running away from Pterodactyls, she expresses 'I just wanna go hooommmee' and talking about a missing nerd - 'you won't find him, a Pterodactyl took him, I told you 10 times, why don't you believe me?!'. Hmmm, i wonder why, doesn't the word extinction mean anything to you?

Soon after getting into a spot of trouble with the old dino's, the idiot students and their lecturer bump into US 'Special Forces Team', or rather 'Special Needs Team'. Unfortunately for them the Special Forces Team are just as lame as themselves, It doesn't appear that the producer spent a lot of time casting for this movie, as the team looks like a bunch of store clerks. Sure their people skills may have proved invaluable if the dinosaurs could actually converse in English, but unfortunately for them - that wasn't the case that day. The team may have been lead by Coolio, but this flick is no gangster's paradise. I'm sorry, I had to sneak that one in.

After a romance is born between a student (Kate) and the lecturer, there is a scene where the a Pterodactyl flies away with the student and the lecturer does what any caring, loving person does, he picks up the nearest gun and starts shooting rapidly in the general direction of the beast and the student, whilst shouting 'Kate! Kate!'. Hilarious stuff. After another student has been sliced up a little, the others go and see if she is OK - obviously not, being attacked by a dinosaur and all, but anyway, her eyes are still open and you can see her chest rise and fall with breathing, but they shout 'she's gone, leave her', a few minutes later they unsurprisingly hear her release a loud scream, then one of them brightly announces 'it must be Kate!' and another adds 'yea, I know I can hear her screaming!', Please! Are you serious, who writes these scripts? – a 3 year old kindergarten kid with an active imagination?

The Special Forces Team spend their time shooting the Pterodactyls for hours on end, they may as well have been shooting water pistols or cap guns as the bullets had no effect, but as they are under-cover store clerks, who can blame them for their naivety & false optimism?! Finally, if you have chosen to ignore all the reviews, and do decide to view this monster-rosity of a movie, pay close attention to the scene where they are making their way across a ravine simply by lassoing a sheep and using a rope to climb/shuffle across. Isn't it amazing how an adult can have all their body weight hanging from a rope, yet the rope is slack and their muscles non-flexed? I thought so.

At the end is where Coolio puts the cherry on the cake where he releases this humdinger of a line: 'It is time to dance baby, and I am your DJ', but instead of dancing, he breaks his promise and at the same time lives up to the song - guns don't kill Pterodactyl's, rappers do.