The bad dinosaurs: 14 regrettable works of dino-themed entertainment

Primal Rage, Atari’s contribution to the mid-’90s flood of Mortal Kombat wannabes, had all the makings of a campy classic. Its premise is ridiculous in the best ways, involving all-powerful dinosaurs (and two giant apes) that awaken in the core of a post-apocalyptic Earth—or “Urth,” as it’s been renamed—and emerge to fight for land and the adoration of humanity’s scattered remains. The stop-motion dino-on-dino violence is charmingly awkward, as if Ray Harryhausen developed a game about giant monsters beating each other to death. But all of that potential was funneled into a repellently stiff fighting game where unleashing your dino’s coolest moves—fire-spitting, bites to the jugular, etc.—is nearly impossible, especially if you’re trying to mix them into attack combinations. What good is a teleporting dinosaur sorceress if you can only pull off her magic 10 percent of the time? Primal Rage is built to induce a primal rage-quit. [Matt Gerardi]

On the other end of the “Let’s just shoehorn dinosaurs into trendy video games” spectrum was Radical Rex, an amalgamation of ’90s pop-culture fads that stars a skateboarding cartoon T. rex. The horrors start on the title screen, where the reptilian hero mugs for the camera and spouts words that meet a mid-’90s marketing executive’s definition of “cool,” all while Rex’s embarrassing pseudo-hip-hop theme song plays. Players who forge past that dire intro find a game that’s little more than an uninspired spin on Sonic The Hedgehog, complete with aspirations to Sonic’s impatience and ’tude. Therein lies the worst thing about Radical Rex: He’s not even radical in any sense of the word. He’s an inept attempt to cash in on the ’90s “mascots with an edge” craze, a cutesy character who smiles and makes silly faces for the camera. How do you screw up something so hackneyed as “edge”? At least give the lizard a pair of sunglasses or something. [Matt Gerardi]

The plot of Tammy And The T-Rex sounds fake: A comatose teen named Michael (Paul Walker) has his brain implanted into a robotic T. rex, who then goes on to seek revenge against the high school jerks who put him into a coma to begin with—not to mention the evil Dr. Wachenstein, who put Michael’s brain in the robo rex. Michael’s goal is to reunite with his girlfriend, Tammy (Denise Richards), who ultimately rescues the brain and goes in search of a new body. While the young leads of Tammy would go on to bigger and better things, the same can’t be said for Terry Kiser, whose mad scientist character orchestrates the most useless transplant in cinematic medical history. Kiser’s greatest role was already behind him, for he had already played the title role in Weekend At Bernie’s. [Molly Eichel]

Don Was is a Grammy-winning producer known for his work with Bonnie Raitt (1989’s Nick Of Time) and for directing the Brian Wilson documentary I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times. He earned just as much respect for his ’80s band Was (Not Was), which dabbled in everything from disco funk to new wave rock. Unfortunately, for all of its talent, the band is remembered most for a goofy but misunderstood sub-Flintstones romp, “Walk The Dinosaur.” Musically, the single, which was originally released in 1987 and became a top-10 hit in ’89, sands down the experimental edges of Was (Not Was) into radio-ready soul funk. Meanwhile, the “Walk The Dinosaur” video—which features women in skimpy cavegirl outfits prancing around and doing a dance descended from the Bangles’ “Walk Like An Egyptian”—is prehistoric cheese. This aesthetic and sonic dumbing-down is pernicious, undermining a serious premise. The song is “about nuclear Armageddon,” guitarist , adding, “It became a dance because of the video. They connected it with the girls in the little Pebbles and Bam-Bam outfits. All the sudden it became, like, ‘do the mashed potato’ or ‘the twist.’” Why ponder the potential destruction of the human race when a fluffy dance shtick is so much more palatable? [Annie Zaleski]

In a sad attempt to capitalize on the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Adventures In Dinosaur City follows a trio of teens who are sucked into their favorite TV show, which happens to be populated by talking dinosaurs. (The trailer even throws some shade at its half-shelled competitor.) It’s as corny and insane as you’d expect from a knockoff TMNT wannabe, pitting the teens and some dinosaur freedom fighters against a “Mr. Big” and his cavemen minions, the “Rockies.” Like a number of other entries on this list, the film embraces every desperate, corporate notion of ’90s “cool,” with wacky sidekicks, weird sexual innuendo, and inane catchphrases. (“Gimme claw!”) It just lacked logic and quality, with some of the worst animatronic and puppetry work this side of Theodore Rex. [Kevin Johnson]

Life in prehistoric times—“one zillion B.C.,” to be precise—was apparently kind of rough, according to the slapstick Ringo Starr comedy Caveman. The insects were the size of people’s heads, language mostly consisted of grunts and snarls, and goofy-looking rubber dinosaurs were everywhere, waiting to eat people. But Starr’s character, an ambitious up-and-coming Neanderthal named Atouk, pulls a Clan Of The Cave Bear routine and starts to learn things no one else knows—how to use fire, how to make music, and especially how to get the world’s chubbiest T. rex stoned off its reptilian ass by cramming its gullet full of prehistoric marijuana. Fortunately, the Tyrannosaurus gets the spins and falls off a cliff before it can get the munchies and make caveman life even more dangerous. The dino stop-motion in Caveman isn’t bad for such a cheap-looking movie, but the dinos themselves, with their buggy eyes and silly expressions, look like they’re high even when they haven’t been noshing on bud. [Tasha Robinson]

In an Inventory of , We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story was called out for an unsettling scene in which the villain Professor Screweyes is consumed by a pack of crows. It’s frightening, but it’s also the only memorable moment in We’re Back!, which is a loose hodgepodge of goofy ideas that begins at a low point: A T. rex eats space cereal that makes him super-smart and gives him the voice of John Goodman. The story only grows less grounded from there, with a musical number in the middle of a parade, extended prop comedy from a clown voiced by Martin Short, and a strange Great Gazoo-style sprite buzzing around the scene. This is also the film that reportedly soured John Malkovich on Hollywood entirely—he was set to voice Screweyes and left over creative difference with the animators, and since then he’s bashed the project unreservedly on the rare occasions he deigns to talk about it at all. [Les Chappell]