Pterodactyl (2005)

Overall Rating:
I really wanted to give this movie a high-rating. It was just so entertaining and bad! But sadly, a lack of Big Ol’ Naked Boobies and Profanation drags Pterodactyl’s score down to a 3.5. If you aren’t in the mood for boobies or swears though, this movie gets some of our highest ratings in the straight-up “action” categories and is therefore highly recommended.

Why We Rented It:
Deep in the heart of the Turkish forest lies Mt. Ararat, a dormant volcano that holds within itself a deadly and prehistoric secret that has been asleep for millions of years…until now. Not knowing the threat that awaits them, two separate expeditions make their way into the heart of the forest and closer to the volcano. Captain Bergen (Coolio) leads his military special ops unit on a manhunt for a dangerous terrorist, while Professor Lovecraft (Cameron Daddo) and his team of scientists search for clues to the past when they make a dangerous discovery – hatching Pterodactyl eggs! Faced with the threat of the flesh-eating predators, both groups come to the realization that they must rely on one another if they plan on making it out of the forest alive! With non-stop action and explosive graphics, PTERODACTYL will make your fear take flight!

Our Synopsis:
You know you’ve got a good bad action movie on your hands if a man is torn in half within the first 5 minutes. It was also quite enjoyable to see that Professor Lovecraft’s (I don’t even want to bother making fun of his bad name) “team of scientists” is just a bunch of his undergrad kids who are basically going on an extra-credit field trip. The story is a classic: man goes on expedition, woman wants to do man, man meets dinos he’d rather do, man tries to find dinos and study them/do them, team gets eaten, woman gets captured by dinos, man decides he’d rather do woman, man saves woman and we are left assuming he does her. The End!

• Big Ol’ Naked Boobies:

Oh soooo close! The naked boobies were within grasp, but plucked away at the last second for no good reason. What was that big boobied girl thinking anyway? Swimming in a bra and panties, very dangerous! Those things can weigh you down and you’ll almost certainly drown. A ½ star for nice cleavage (and nice lookin’ boobies) but I can’t reward this with a full star since there were no bare boobies.

• Profanation:

Nothing really stands out in retrospect. I remember one “Damn!” that made me laugh, but the few swears were generally not funny or memorable. I expected more from you Showtime!

• Ninjocity:

You’ve gotta love it when our hero, Loveshack, gets to kick a Pterodactyl in the head multiple times. Oh and we certainly shan’t forget good ol’ Coolio hitting that Armenia guy in the back of the head to knock him out. Coolio’s army buddies also get in on the fun, including the dude who slits the throat of another Armenian guy. Loveshack’s lover girl gets some good stick whacks into a baby Pterodactyl too. So even though the ninjocity was fairly limited (due to the fact that they were mostly fighting Pterodactyls) this movie still gets a decent rating in ninjocity.

• Cannonry:

Wow, this movie had a whole lot more cannonry than I expected. I figured comin’ in that they’d mostly be running from the Pterodactyls and figuring out ways to get them to fly into traps and what not. But they sure did surprise me! Talk about tricky with the C4 inside of the Armenian guy! I never saw that one coming! How the hell did that Armenian guy get C4 inside him anyway? And don’t forget the smallest rocket launcher ever invented, complete with “lock-on” helmet. That lock-on helmet was the most impractical army weapon I’ve ever seen; what kind of stupid thing makes you wear it constantly for something to stay locked-on? And I haven’t even mentioned all the military machine guns, the Professor’s mysterious pistol he whips out from God knows where, a dude shooting a gun while upside down and climbing across a gorge on a rope, or the unlimited ammo they have with no reload time. Cannonry for this movie gets our highest rating, 5 stars!

• Other Factors:

Of course the fact that this is a movie made by Showtime immediately gives it great bad action movie street cred. I thought this fact would almost certainly mean that there would be nudity, but alas I was foiled! However the almost-nudity did result in one of the strangest and funniest lines in the movie. So the almost-naked girl, after just being attacked by the pterodactyl, runs into the woods and collides with some guy. She’s spouting some gibberish about pterodactyls and the guy is all the time just staring at her chest. She finally notices this and shoves him away and says, “don’t look at my butt!” What!? He was clearly looking at her boobies; I won’t even try to understand that one.

That scene also reminds me of something funny about the pterodactyl attack on that boobied-girl. One of my fellow bad action movie-watchers asked how many times they could keep showing the same footage of the girl struggling under the water against the giant plastic pterodactyl claw. The answer is 3, 3 times.

And, before I forget, the absolute best line in the movie was delivered by Coolio. After the Armenian dude gets snatched up by the pterodactyls, Coolio delivers his classic, soon-to-be-memorized-by-millions line, “Judgement By Dinosaur.” Absolutely terrible.

This film made me start to wonder about pterodactyls too. Could a pterodactyl really climb up a rock wall? And even if it could, why would it want to? Why would the pterodactyls suddenly have a taste for man-flesh? There is plenty of easy-to-catch livestock in the area (as evidenced by the end of the movie).

I think at one point we are supposed to realize that Coolio has Alzheimer’s, because he starts to consistently refer to the main girl by her father’s name, “Bulldog.” It’s sad really.

Overall Plot Line:

The plot line, originally sketchy in its own right, became even more so as the movie progressed. It was rather interesting that the whole ‘why are there Pterodactyls?’ question was never even really addressed. I guess they’re just leaving it up to your own imagination. Oh wait, the back cover says they Pterodactyls have been “asleep for millions of years.” Right…cause animals, especially dinosaurs, just do that. Another interesting thing to wonder about is why Coolio is looking for this terrorist guy. Actually the only way you’d even know he’s a terrorist is because the back cover tells you that too. Didn’t seem like the terrorist was doing anything wrong, he was just doin’ a girl who didn’t want to do him, but that happens all the time really. And the army, no matter how crazy, doesn’t just send in a squadron to some foreign country to kill some terrorist because that terrorist killed 6 men that Coolio trained.

My main gripe with the plot is why don’t they just stay in the freakin’ forest? They are never once attacked when they’re treakin’ through the forest. It’s only when they decide to cross the same clearing 4-5 times that the pterodactyls start swooping in and killing of their party. I also like that the main characters completely forget about the nerd kid they left in that house. They don’t know that he’s dead, he could be alive and well for all they know and they just left him there.

And, last but not least, I’ve got to mention the scene that Craiye called the “worst idea I’ve ever seen.” This is, of course, the sheep/rope trick. Now the idea itself is not the worst thing Craiye had ever seen. The worst idea Craiye has ever seen was when the guy climbed over on the rope to the woman and then they both climbed back over one behind the other. Why did that guy even bother to climb over? Why didn’t the dumb woman just climb over the rope when they got the rope over there? Unbelievable.

Other items this film contains:

-Unlimited Ammo Code!

-No Reload Code!

-Guys with worse foreign accents than Shannon Elizabeth in American Pie (see the first Armenian/Turkish guy they run into in town)

-Terrorists who are really bad shots (including the guy who gets Coolio on the ground and misses from point blank range)