The Worst Dinosaur Movie You've Never Heard Of

a while ago I stumbled upon what could very well be the worst dinosaur movie ever created and I know that's saying a lot because the unfortunate reality in the world of dinosaur movies is that there is a lot more garbage out there than there is good but man this one is bad like I kid you not we're heading towards dinosaur from the deep levels of bad the movie I'm going to be talking about today is 1994 soran made by Mark palonia if that name sounds familiar it's because Mark and his twin brother John were and still are very well known and even considered to be Legends in the world of lowbudget monster and Sci-Fi movies in fact their budget for each of their films are so low Mark doesn't even refer to it as low budget he prefers the term micro budget throughout the years the ponas have created such masterpieces like splatter Farm feeders Amityville and space who could forget among us then there's sharkenstein sharula doll shark cocaine shark there's a lot of shark ones in case you couldn't tell they're interest in movie making started all the way back when they were about five or six one day Mark was watching something on TV it was a showing of a movie called Godzilla versus the thing which was known theatrically as Math versus Godzilla and from there as Mark and John got older they'd band together to read up on film making write their own scripts and eventually film their own movie first with their dad's 8mm movie camera before eventually buying their own they'd get their start with movies like Church of the Damned hallucinations and splatter Farm given their interest with sci-fi and horror they made a lot of movies within that genre Killers aliens sharks they made an assortment of bad sci-fi and or horror movies but the palonia brothers were not strangers to making dinosaur movies either some of these included 2004's dinosaur Chronicles which I wasn't able to find a whole lot of information on or a copy of it anywhere that's easily obtainable at one point it looked like it was on Amazon but it's currently unavailable to watch but according to IM IMDb the movie was actually split into two stories with one of them being focused on a trio of friends going on a yacht trip after one of them wins the lottery after they get caught in a storm however the friends are marooned on an Uncharted island with living dinosaurs on it again not a whole lot of info but based on one review on IMDb it seems the movie had a mix of original footage of dinosaur puppets the brothers likely made themselves for this specific feature but it was also mixed with stock footage from older dinosaur films the second story is about a couple of gunmen having to defeat the overlord that rules over the zombies and dinosaurs that now overrun their postapocalyptic world believe it or not after doing some digging I was actually able to find some images of the dinosaurs from this film on the Internet movie Cars database of all places of course take these images with a grain of salt but we get a shot of some sort of ceratopsian dinosaur a close-up shot of a therapod dinosaur likely a catosaurus and for the final image we have this spinosaur like dinosaur which is interesting to see I don't know I feel like we just don't get to see a whole lot of old style spinosaur depictions in on-screen media that being said I don't fully know what's original and what's been used from other films but I'm sure that people will tell me given they've actually seen the films that these images could possibly be a part of along with that there's also 2008's dinosaur activity a found footage film about a group of friends who go on a cabin trip to the woods only to run into a bunch of large lizard-like dinosaurs I think the movie was supposed to be a dinosaur equivalent to something like Cloverfield or paranormal activities both of which came out around the same time while not very well known the movie is available on Amazon and it's as you'd expect not that good at all or even eventful for that matter and the dinosaurs don't really look like dinosaurs mainly just giant lizards that are called Dinosaurs in fact from what I can find it seems the movie wasn't always called dinosaur activity as I found it under the different title of monster movie and American monster after their vehicle gets wrecked and they're chased away from their cabin the friends make their way back to town on foot but turns out the whole town is under attack by the lizard dinosaurs and it ends abruptly with the lizards breaking into the shop that our characters were bunkered down in another notable thing about this film is that the lizard dinosaurs were actually made by Brett Piper who I've talked about a couple times before in his previous projects one of them being the nymphoid Barbarian and dinosaur Hell movie and I also mentioned Dino warp which is a movie that he was working on that unfortunately never came to fruition unfortunately for the palonia brothers John would actually pass away at the young age of 39 in the same year this movie would be released from what I can see in my research on these movies Mark and JN were a team and both shared the Same Love of making movies that love would be continued on by Mark as he would persevere and continue making the same kind of movies that he and his brother enjoyed making together as a result he would end up making a couple of of other dinosaur related projects in his long line of films between that point in time and now like 2015's Jurassic prey which funnily enough also takes place in a cabin and also features a similarly designed creature from dinosaur activity actually I'm pretty sure that is the case I'm pretty sure they actually took the dinosaur model from dinosaur activity and redid it for Jurassic prey Jurassic prey is also about a group of people who are stuck in a cabin together but instead of a group of friends it's a group of Thieves and of course along with that palonia also contributed to the Jurassic shark sequels man again with the sharks we have the original Jurassic shark from 2012 which from what I can see palonia didn't contribute to but he did direct the sequel Jurassic shark 2 Aqua Apocalypse in 2021 and Jurassic shark 3 SE venge in 2023 holy [ __ ] man these names of course there had to have been some starting point to all of these movies as in there was a first dinosaur movie that the palonia brothers were worked on and that movie would be sorians from 1994 soran is about a group of fossil Hunters that are working not too far away from a construction site that blows a hole inside a hollowed Mountain that contains two still living dinosaurs a Stegosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex now awakened and free the two dinosaurs roam around the area terrorizing the locals and our main characters honestly it's a pretty standard concept and really nothing too ridiculous or outrageous for a dinosaur movie but it's not necessarily the plot that makes this movie extremely terrible it's pretty much everything else about it and one last thing to note real quick before getting to the movie it seems that Jon didn't actually contribute to this one not only is he completely absent from the film his name doesn't show up anywhere on the credits either so I guess he sat this one out on both ends of the camera seeing how I'm pretty sure we've covered everything you need to know about our revered filmmakers I think now is a good time to get to the movie the movie starts with a couple of text Walls that states how the modern world has seen dinosaurs and other prehistoric life before lending legitimacy to the story that we're going to be watching right now yeah guys remember the MIM bimbe I I'm sorry am I reading that right Mima bimbe Mima bimbe yeah this dude's an absolute classic modern dinosaur crypted everyone knows what the mimba bimbe was what the [ __ ] is this thing oh it's it's a brosaurus apparently what is this the redheaded stepchild T the other dinosaur and legends of Africa anyways our main story takes place in 1992 where a construction crew is doing some mining work a few miles away from our main characters which is a small group of I guess college students out on a fossil hunt in a region known as fossil Valley for their University our characters consist of Allan the one who seems to be taking his job the most serious and is played by Mark palonia himself which is a common occurrence in palonia films typically both brothers would star in their own movies because of course they would there's also Lynette who seems to be crushing on Allan who doesn't reciprocate the same feelings back to her on the account that he's trying to focus on his career and then there's Charlie the third wheel and goofball of the trio who doesn't really take anything seriously and doesn't want to be there but is because the plot needs a comic relief character and since they couldn't find one they got Charlie instead so a couple of things to note real quick about the movie probably the most notable is the quality yeah finding a clear copy of this movie wasn't exactly easy as the only version I can find was on internet archive which I'm pretty sure was ripped from the VHS copy of it given its quality considering VHS to digital conversions can be pretty Hit or Miss at least from what I've seen of them the quality is definitely low and might even look a bit disorienting in some parts so just a quick warning in advance if you're a bit sensitive to that another thing I would like to know about this movie The dialogue and line delivery are like really bad worse than usual in these kind of movies I'm not kidding there's something so unnatural with the way the characters are talking to each other it somehow felt even more wooden and unprofessional than some of the other terrible movies I've seen they'll ruin the rock layers with all their stupid blasting there's nothing here but rocks this place sucks well it's about time you noticed me Mr all work and no play very funny take a look at this man two more weeks to this scientific digging crap we could go home I'd do anything for a beer right [Music] now well I guess I better get back to work it took me a little bit to understand why the lines were like this and it wasn't until I read the soran's entry in the dinosaur filmography when it finally hit me according to the author of the book he States the film was and I quote apparently shot silent and then atrociously dubbed so yeah that explains that we continue the movie with the quote unquote construction crew but really it's just one guy with a hard hat who detonates an explosive charge to the nearby Hill that ends up opening a massive hole within the Earth the explosion is big enough to cause our characters from a few miles away to feel its Tremors causing them to do some weird looking dance moves When the Smoke Clears the construction worker then decides to go into the hole to investigate which by the way this is what the hole looks like it's just a black colored in section of the mountain which the construction worker goes into and discovers a still living stegosaurus that seems to be in a deep sleep meanwhile Allan and Charlie decide to check out what caused the Tremor and on their way over to the site we get a little more character development because why not it'll give us something to do until the dinosaurs get here it's really nothing too riveting we learn Allan and Lynette have known each other for years and seem to have dated at one point but it's clear Allan prefers to focus on his passion of archaeology and instead Charlie who's more of a Carefree kind of guy has a different mindset and prefers to go after women over working to which Allan responds with this if you put half your efforts into archaeology as you do trying to land a woman you may just amount to something damn Allan is just holding back no punches with Charlie going back to the construction worker he tries to get himself out of the cave but gets himself lost and for whatever reason he just really loves announcing things to himself and tunnels all look the same what was that somebody's following me eventually he runs into the Cave's second inhabitant a Tyrannosaurus Rex the T-Rex attacks him and he lets out the most Oscar worthy death sounds I have ever heard in a [Applause] [Music] [Applause] movie see what happens when you announce things to yourself and don't shut up sure it's all fun and games until a literal dinosaur comes out of nowhere and [ __ ] kills you you hate to see it we have the same problem in California actually except we don't call them dinosaurs we call them crackheads but they also bite so it's basically the same [ __ ] anyways going back to our characters we get more of Alan just unwarrantedly destroying Charlie Alan why are you so interested in dinosaurs anyway because they're big green and ugly kind of like you the two eventually make it to the construction site notice that there has been an entire hole blown up at the side of a mountain they find a scale on the ground and then they just kind of stand there until they're like well time to go back and that's pretty much it like really guys you didn't want to just investigate a little bit more or like what I me you walked all this way you might as well but you I guess nobody can force you to do it whatever but later that evening the stegasaurus finally awakens from its several million yearlong nap and makes its way out of the hole ready to become an absolute menace to society and partake in some Tom Foolery it's explained later on the dinosaurs were kept alive and preserved by Rock gas which slowed their bodies to a sort of hibernation state which sounds like a stretch but whatever what can you expect from a movie like this something logical well now you're just asking for too much the next day Lynette goes off to take some pictures in the woods and she runs into a fresh track of therapod footprints before being startled by Allan who comes from behind her and you can tell you can tell she was startled by the performance she gives you scared me sorry you know I've got a hand it to these guys you have to be on a certain level of bad when living dinosaurs are more believable than your acting I mean at that point it almost feels like determination anyways Allan sees the tracks and instead of maybe I don't know assuming this to be something man-made like a normal person he seems to believe these tracks were made by a real dinosaur simply given by how fresh they are and with that they make their way back to town to contact their professor professor Tanner from the University to fill him in on their find meanwhile we cut to a random kid going fishing in the woods before he's attacked by the T-Rex and another thing I want to point out is the music choice help dude's literally yelling out for help as he's getting chased by a bloodthirsty monster and they were like yeah let's pick the most upbeat track to put behind this scene I guess you could say he wasn't ready to face the music wow that was a really dumb joke but you know what don't bite my head off about it back at the hotel Allan tells Lynette about his call with Professor Tanner telling her that he seems excited about their find seemingly not questioning the validity of this at all just taking their word for it I guess because why not sometimes I wonder if his interests are more than scientific and she's completely right about this assumption because Tanner ends up calling a big game hunter named you'll never guess Hunter to track down the dinosaurs for him hello well Professor Tanner long time no see what does my scientific friend want this time dinosaurs and the prize of a lifetime I swear I feel like I'm watching a [ __ ] cartoon who speaks like this in real life anyways while Hunter goes off Hunting Allan and Lynette go off to try to find their dinosaurs we haven't seen anything yet are you sure someone isn't playing a practical joke on us oh so now you're bringing up the possibility of this whole thing being a prank what made you come to this realization the fact that oh I don't know you guys are literally out in the woods hunting for [ __ ] dinosaurs oh [ __ ] never mind so uh yeah these two finally find one of the dinosaurs or what's left of one I guess speaking of the dinosaurs there were a lot of methods that these guys used to bring them to life if that's what you want to call it they were recreated using puppet heads for close-up shots smaller scale models for full body shots stopmotion models at one point the movie even shows a 2d animated closeup of the T-Rex's eye that looks like it was made on Ms paints now I'm sure the small crew that the palonia brothers hire to do the molds effects and animations for these scenes did their best but let's just say you get what you pay for and this movie looks like it costs less than my rent actually rent is pretty expensive in California but you guys know what I mean anyways all of a sudden the T-Rex comes out of the woods and chases our characters and the stegosaurus off while Allan and Lynette head back to the hotel the T-Rex and the stegosaurus have an epic battle sequence and by battle sequence I mean they Roar at each other for a few minutes and never make any kind of physical contact because you know that might damage the puppet models and God know knows these guys aren't going to want to spend the extra all of like 10 bucks to replace or fix them going back to Allan and Lynette when the two aren't able to contact Professor Tanner again they attempt to pack their things and head out but are stopped by Hunter who wants them to lead him to the dinosaurs he's hired to hunt down that's like half the job man like you're trying to get people to do your job for you I thought you were the you were the best guy you suck this is about the time Allan and Lynette realized Tanner's true intentions with the Dinosaurs wanting to have captured for himself so that he can exploit them and make millions what the [ __ ] this dude hasn't even seen the dinosaurs how does he know they actually exist like why why would you go through all this trouble to do something that you don't even know is real like like you this could all be a prank by your college students like why why you why you just why you just falling for it dude what the [ __ ] good thing we're told all of this out loud by Hunter otherwise we would have never figured it out he'll make millions and I'm getting paid bring him back I love the way he talks it's so funny okay I know earlier I was kind of [ __ ] on the way he was talking but I I I've kind it's grown on me it's funny I just find it really funny fun fact Hunter is played by Todd Carpenter who's appeared in many of the palonia brothers films from what I can see he started back with them sometime in the early '90s and to this day he's still appearing in some of Mark's movies as he's even set to appear in an upcoming one called the stocking honestly it's just interesting and really cool to see this dude so involved with the Ionia brothers and their many projects going back to the movie Allan and Lynette are held hostage by Hunter and are forced to take him out to the woods to find the dinosaurs and while that's happening the T-Rex and the stegosaurus take their Feud over to a nearby lake where a family is out enjoying their summer day by the water but that gets interrupted and we get a whole lot of dinosaur fights T-Rex Slaughter and once again poorly chosen music later on Charlie who actually saw Hunter taking Allen and Lynette hostage goes to see the Carnage left behind by the dinosaurs and the whole thing just looks like a Halloween decorated lawn honestly the imagery and the music and even the video quality actually makes it look like this scene could be pretty unsettling if it wasn't for the context that the reason these corpses are here in the first place is because they were collateral damage to a fight from dinosaurs that looked like they were the product of inbreeding and it's because of that I lowkey find this scene kind of funny shortly after the attack a newscast plays out updating the locals that the two dinosaurs had taken their battle to a small resort area of town rampaging through and wreaking havoc offscreen of course because no way they could afford that but luckily we have stock videos of firefighters and burning buildings to give us a good reference of what happened going back to Allen and Lynette they take the hunter to the construction site where they have been blowing up rocks with dynamite one of which Allan is able to sneak in his pants as they continue Hunter is eventually knocked out by Charlie who was able to catch up to them and fills them in on the destruction the dinosaurs had caused despite you know not really having anything to do with the Dinosaurs aside from being the first ones to see it Allan takes it upon himself to do something about it and the three go after the dinosaurs where they witness the final battle between the two sorians stegosaurs wed it doesn't stand a chance isn't there anything we can do no and like they just don't do anything like I get it what can they do but like we literally just watch them watch the dinosaurs fight seriously at one point we even get a still-frame montage of each character's face that Fades to one another because this film is trying to pass this moment off as serious and sad of course the quote unquote serious moment gets broken when Hunter shoots Charlie all of a sudden which wouldn't have happened if they just took his gun from him in the first place see it's criticisms like this that I feel are valid even in a lowbudget movie because it's not like it would have cost anything for the characters to just I don't know not be dumb like they could have taken the gun but get ambushed by Hunter causing a struggle and eventually hunter gets the gun back and then he shoots Charlie from there which makes a whole lot more sense instead of them just making the dumb decision to leave the gun behind I know I might be overthinking this but I honestly feel like this could have even made the film slightly more entertaining but whatever I guess anyways Hunter holds them at gunpoint before Allan eventually stands up for himself and mildly fights him off meanwhile the T-Rex is able to keep the stegosaurus down for a bit and then focuses its attention on Lynette and you can tell this is a serious moment from her actor's line delivery alone help me but because this movie follows the standard carnivores equals bad guy herbivores equals good guy Trope that you usually see in dinosaur movies the stegosaurus charges at the T-Rex to defend Lynette which ultimately leads to its death Allan continues fighting off Hunter managing to take his pocket knife from him and stabbing him as he's left there to Die the T-Rex focuses its attention on Hunter and finishes him off rest in peace to the best character of the movie also this is like the third time they've used this dying groan sound effect [Music] [Applause] [Music] with that the only thing left to do now is to deal with the T-Rex which Allan does by [ __ ] out the TNT from his back pocket lighting it Mak sure to State one last horribly delivered oneliner on this you prehistoric piece of luggage and throws it at the T-Rex's open mouth even though it looks like he completely missed it and blows the T-Rex's head up putting it down for good so sad the way this all had to end in a way it's good they're home no sir they're dead but you know who's not dead Charlie because he ends up making it the three walk off back to town as the camera Fades back to the cave revealing a nest of eggs left behind by one of the dinosaurs okay how funny would it be if the eggs hatched and it was just a bunch of T-Rex stegosaur hybrids you cannot prove to me that that's not what's inside those eggs anyways the movie ends with Lynette back at her house getting ready for bed before all of a sudden the T-Rex breaks through her wall and attempts to eat her but it's all a fake out because it's revealed to be a [Music] dream and that's it and that was soran and man was it pretty bad that being said said I kind of like this movie I know I've been [ __ ] on it this entire video but it's all in good fun it's just one of those movies you can watch to get a good laugh out of it if you're into that type of movie trust me there's a lot to have fun with here of course not Everyone likes these kinds of movies and prefer something more serious and better produced and if you're one of those people I'd say this one can definitely be avoided but if you want to watch it I'll do my best to provide you guys all of the available places where you can watch it yourself since it seems whatever physical media that was made for this movie has been long forgotten but I'm glad this movie has been preserved even if it is bad from what I can gather from my research on palonia Films the brothers have never been pushed back by negative reviews of their movies and they're well aware of how their movies are and they have no shame for it making movies like this is clearly a passion project of theirs and to this day Mark continues to make movies and with how much technology and equipment and the market for those two things have progressed in the in the last 20 or so years it's made production for palonia movies a lot better than they were back in the day that doesn't necessarily mean they're good in themselves but the quality is slightly better and of course it's always nice to see people continue their passion even after all this time later in fact sorians would actually get a sequel a whole 29 years later and it was released earlier this year what's even cooler about this is that sorians 2 was directed by both Mark palonia and Anthony palonia which is Mark son who's been helping his dad out with film making projects for years and has even directed his own movie which is called Zilla foot the rest of his directing career has been alongside his father on movies like hell on the Shelf house Squatch and of course sorians 2 it's just so cool to see Mark's passion for film making being passed down to the Next Generation and it feels good to know that we've still got more of these movies coming I'll definitely try to get to sorians 2 when I can just looking at the trailer I can tell this film is going to be an amazing experience thank you all so much for watching and Merry Christmas oh yeah I forgot it's it's Christmas this is a Christmas video you could totally tell because it's it's it's totally Christmas themed yeah uh so uh yeah Merry Christmas bye

Channel: Dino Diego

Views: 22,167

Keywords: The Worst Dinosaur Movie You've Never Heard Of, saurians, bad dinosaur movie, dinosaur, lost media, dinosaur horror movie, cloverfield, paranormal activity, dinosaur activity, dinosaur chronicles, new, funny, worst, worst movie, review, retrospective, the worst dinosaur movie, bad movie, mark polonia, polonia brothers, polonia movies, jurassic shark, jurassic prey, jurassic world, jurassic park, dino diego, saurians 2, paleomedia, john polonia, monster movies, bad

Id: I1E4xIIhbTI

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023