TAMMY AND THE T-REX (1994) ** ½

Director Stewart Raffill has made some weird rip-offs in his time.  Raffill’s The Ice Pirates was the nuttiest Star Wars rip-off ever made.  His Mac and Me stands as one of the most warped E.T. rip-offs in history.  Although 1994’s Tammy and the T-Rex was clearly cashing in on Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, it owes just as much to Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend.

High-schooler Tammy (Denise Richards) won’t let jock Michael (the late Paul Walker) date her because she’s afraid her psycho ex Billy (George Pilgrim) will kill him.  When Billy catches them together, he quite literally throws Michael to the lions.  (There just so happens to be a wild game preserve down the road… convenient.)  While Michael is laying in a coma, a mad doctor (Friday the 13^th Part VII’s Terry Kiser) steals his body and puts his brain into an animatronic dinosaur.  Once Michael becomes self-aware, the dinosaur goes out and gets revenge on Billy and his gang. 

When Tammy and the T-Rex was originally released, it looked like a harmless kid’s movie.  That’s because all the extreme gore had been removed by the producers.  Thanks to Vinegar Syndrome, the gore has been reinstated so we get to see all the squished faces, severed heads, and ripped-out guts in all their glory.  I’m sure the film would’ve played strangely enough without all the blood and guts.  With them, it just makes the whole experience that much more puzzling. 

I mean, you have to wonder who this movie was made for.  It’s almost like a Disney Channel film directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis.  It’s so schizophrenic that it’s hard to really appreciate because of the wild shifts in tone.  (At least The Ice Pirates is consistent in its WTF tone.)  However, for fans of seeing big-name movie stars paying their dues by starring in low budget crap before they were famous, it’s kind of hard to beat. 

I think the thing I enjoyed most about it was the conceit that the dinosaur is animatronic.  It’s as if Raffill knew he wasn’t fooling anyone with that dinosaur.  Either that or they didn’t have the proper time and budget to light and showcase the giant prop to effectively make it look realistic.  I bet when Spielberg saw this, he was kicking himself for using “real” dinosaurs in his flick.

As much as I wanted to like Tammy and the T-Rex, there were just too many clunky parts that didn’t quite fit.  The most ill-fitting stuff is included in the subplot where Tammy tries to steal a dead body to use as a host for her boyfriend’s brain.  This does lead to a truly bizarre scene where she does a striptease for a disembodied brain, so it’s not all bad.

AKA:  Tanny and the Teenage T-Rex.  AKA:  Tanny of the Teenage T-Rex.  AKA:  Tammy and the Teenage T-Rex.  AKA:  Teenage T-Rex.