Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Bad filmmakers, bad filmmakers, what you gonna do?, 28 May 2006
This is the first of the atrocious cinematic buffets served up by the buxom Bad Movie Police, featuring Sgt. Elke Mantooth (Ariauna Albright) and Lt. Drucilla Dread (Lilith Stabs) in decidedly non-regulation uniforms. After breaking up another cinematic crime in progress and warning us of the dangers of bad movies in general, the girls tell us about Lance Randas, #1 on the cine-terrorist most-wanted list, describe his top ten crimes in making a putrid little film called Galaxy of the Dinosaurs, and then present us with the evidence of the movie itself. I don't think comparisons of the Bad Movie Police with Mystery Science Theater 3000 are valid, but the kind of folks who enjoyed MST3K will quite likely get a big kick out of the Bad Movie Police as well. I for one love the whole BMP concept. Producer J. R. Bookwalter has come up with a pretty brilliant way of giving his own atrocious films a second chance to make a few bucks - by ridiculing his very own turkeys, starting with Galaxy of the Dinosaurs, he has turned his old, hopelessly unwatchable films into wickedly cool, hilarious viewing experiences.
Galaxy of the Dinosaurs is the very definition of a low-budget movie. It was originally shot, on S-VHS no less, over three and a half days in 1992 for the exorbitant sum of $1500 (although you'd swear it had to be even less than that). That may or may not include the cost of the Mac on which the editing (and pasting of stock footage from the cheesy Planet of Dinosaurs) was done. All of the original video was shot in the woods behind director Lance Randas' father's house in Mogadore, Ohio. The opening spacecraft sets are way beyond cheap, the story is an exercise in ludicrous futility, and the acting is just horrible all the way around.
Basically, some alien space travelers makes a pit stop on Earth, only to find themselves trapped on a desolate, dinosaur-inhabited planet that doesn't seem Earth-like at all. As they wander around a desolate, winter-time forest, they keep running into stock footage of dinosaurs in an environment that is the exact opposite of their own. Desperate for food (especially the silly guy dressed for a Hawaiian vacation), they go to town on some hallucinogenic sprouts or mushrooms, which makes the film's first death by dinosaur scene a source of great amusement to the rest of them. We viewers go on to enjoy the deaths of several more characters, as the dwindling population of bad actors keeps the movie from lasting more than an hour or so. Before the end credits mercifully roll, however, writer Jon Killough has a secret or two to reveal to the survivors and the hand-full of viewers who hang on that long without passing out or going insane.
The DVD has lots of special features. Having rented the film online, I did not get the chance to see any of them, but I still feel comfortable giving the DVD four stars - not for Galaxy of the Dinosaurs, which is a one-star movie if I've ever seen one, but for the ingenious, self-parody packaging of the film using the Bad Movie Police device. There is plenty to laugh at in Galaxy of the Dinosaurs, and the BMP concept just makes the whole viewing experience much more fun and entertaining than it has any right to be.
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