TAMMY AND THE T-REX (1994)

Studio:      Vinegar Syndrome
Director:    Stewart Raffill
Writer:      Stewart Raffill, Gary Brockette
Producer:  Diane Raffill
Stars:     Denise Richards, Paul Walker, George Pilgrim, Theo Forsett, Ellen Dubin, J. Jay Saunders, John Edmondson, John Franklin, Sean Whalen, Terry Kiser

Review Score:

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Summary:

A teenage love triangle encounters a crazy complication when a mad scientist puts a dead boy’s brain inside the body of a mechanical dinosaur.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Outside their high school, teenager Tammy introduces her new boyfriend Michael to her gay best friend Byron. Still obsessed with Tammy, Tammy’s abusive ex-boyfriend Billy starts a fight with Michael that has to be broken up by sheriff’s deputies Norville and Neville.

In his warehouse laboratory, Dr. Gunter Wachenstein oversees activation of his mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex creation. Gunter is joined by his nurse and lover Helga, strongman Karl, and disgruntled technical assistant Bobby.

Tammy invites Michael to her house. When they spy Michael sneaking into Tammy’s bedroom window, Billy’s girlfriends Wendy and Michelle decide to alert Billy. Tammy and Michael make out.

Billy and his gang storm into Tammy’s house. Michael escapes with Billy in pursuit. Billy captures Michael, takes him to a wild animal park, and abandons him to be mauled by a lion.

Tammy and Byron rush to Linda Vista Community Hospital where Michael lies in a coma. Michael’s drunk uncle Bob sleeps in a corner of Michael’s room. Billy shows up with his toadie Weasel and gets into a brief physical fight with Tammy.

Seeking a human subject to supply a brain for the T-Rex, Gunter and Helga infiltrate the hospital. Gunter and Helga rig Michael’s heart rate monitor to fake his death. Once Tammy and Byron fall unconscious from shock, Gunter and Helga steal Michael’s body.

Back at his lab, Gunter cuts out Michael’s brain and implants it in the T-Rex. Michael takes over control of the dinosaur’s body. After Gunter and Helga leave, Michael bites off Bobby’s head and crushes Karl under his foot.

Michael scares away an elderly gambler at a payphone outside. Michael uses the T-Rex’s tiny hands to call Tammy, but can only leave a message of grunts and growls.

Tammy storms out of a backyard party when Billy arrives with his gang. At the edge of the yard, Michael tears out Weasel’s intestines. Michael then bites and hoists Wendy by her ankle while she has sex in a convertible with Billy. Billy tries to flee, but Michael bites off Billy’s head in front of partygoers. Panic ensues as Michael continues rampaging. However, Michael spares Byron when he recognizes him as Tammy’s friend.

Sheriff Black, who is Byron’s father, investigates the crime scene with deputies Norville and Neville. Byron confirms that a dinosaur attacked the party. Meanwhile, Gunter and Helga discover the bodies at their lab and begin stalking Tammy to find their T-Rex.

Michael goes to Tammy’s house. Tammy screams and passes out when she sees the dinosaur. Michael takes Tammy to a barn out back. After she recovers, Michael mimes through several clues to communicate to Tammy that his brain is inside the dinosaur.

Having heard their daughter’s scream only to discover her bedroom empty, Tammy’s parents summon Sheriff Black to the house. Tammy pretends she doesn’t know what happened, but privately tells Byron that the T-Rex is Michael.

Tammy and Byron plot to steal back Michael’s body at his funeral. However, they find Michael’s corpse infested with maggots. Gunter and Helga assault the two teens, but Tammy and Byron manage to capture the other couple.

With Gunter and Helga held hostage, Tammy and Byron drive to the morgue in a truck carrying Michael. Before Tammy and Byron can find a new body for Michael, Gunter and Helga break free and flag down the deputies. Tammy and Byron escape with Michael.

Following a police pursuit that ends in an orchard, Tammy and Byron eventually regroup with Michael in Tammy’s barn. Sheriff Black arrives with the state police. Gunter and Helga show up to retrieve their dinosaur. Sheriff Black allows the scientists to try tranquilizing the T-Rex, but Michael merely gores Gunter. The cops open fire and gun down the T-Rex in front of everyone.

Afterward however, Tammy retrieves Michael’s brain and hooks it up to devices in her bedroom that allow him to live inanimately. Tammy pours alcohol in a bowl containing the brain and performs an erotic striptease through the camera Michael uses for sight.

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Review:

“Tammy and the T-Rex” used to be the kind of cult curiosity that late night legends were made of. For years, the 1994 comedy-horror movie, which was shot with the intention of producing a raucous R-rated romp, existed only as a pared-down PG-13 VHS tape. Practically birthed directly into obscurity, “Tammy and the T-Rex” came out on the cusp of a pop culture shift that had increasingly little use for the slapdash style of home video hijinks that once made Roger Corman and Charles Band rich. “Tammy” thus became a bit of a mythical movie mostly known only among underground fans of forgotten fringe films.

“Ignored” might be a better word. “Overlooked” would be even kinder. It’s iffy to classify “Tammy and the T-Rex” as “forgotten” since so few people remember it in the first place.

That changed in 2019 when Vinegar Syndrome smelled a golden opportunity to put another notch on its B-movie bedpost. The restorers of scarlet cinematic rarities put “Tammy” back together, took it on a theatrical tour, and unleashed it on Blu-ray and streaming so it could be rediscovered by the masses. Or at least rediscovered by “so bad, it’s good” maniacs hopelessly hooked on the gloriously gonzo premise.

Well before “Starship Troopers” and “Wild Things,” a fresh-off-the-boat Denise Richards stars as the titular teenager. You know what you’re in for from the starting bell when Tammy provocatively prances around her high school gym to an aerobic cheerleading routine while a novelty session rock song plays underneath opening credits. “I’m a T-Rex on the loose … I’m gonna cook your goose.” In struts an equally unknown Paul Walker, obviously pre-“Fast and the Furious” fame, straight from football practice sporting a midriff-baring cutoff sweatshirt.

Yeah, the copyright date says 1994, but virtually everything about the movie screams 1984. I mean that in the most flattering way possible for films that naturally flaunt retro ridiculousness without having to lift a finger.

Since we’re dropping notable names, it should be mentioned that “Tammy and the T-Rex” boasts one of the most eclectic lineups of niche movie all-stars and “before they were famous” faces you can possibly unearth. Grab your game cards and get ready to play a lightning round of “Where Do I Know Them From?”

Covering cameos first, Efren Ramirez (Pedro from “Napoleon Dynamite) appears for half a minute as a pizza delivery boy. “Without a Trace’s” Poppy Montgomery pops in for even less screentime as ‘Party Girl #1.’ Roger Lodge, the longtime host of TV’s “Blind Date” gets a few lines in his single scene as a doctor. Even if his name doesn’t ring a bell, you’ll recognize Sean Whalen as a gang leader’s goofy lickspittle. And Buck Flower, Hollywood’s former go-to guy for homeless vagrants, plays one of two bumbling deputies instead of another alcoholic bum for a change.

Genre film fans will remember John Franklin as Isaac from “Children of the Corn.” Franklin plays a crusty lab assistant operating the computer console for a mad scientist. That mad scientist is none other than Terry Kiser, colloquially known as ‘the dead guy’ from “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

See, Tammy’s abusive ex-boyfriend Billy seethes with jealous rage over her new beau Michael (Paul Walker). Billy exacts revenge in a really weird way by abducting Michael, abandoning him in a wild animal park questionably located near suburbia, and leaving him to be mauled by a lion. (It’s an unexpectedly pleasant shock to see a stuntman wrestling with a dangerous animal at this tier of indie filmmaking.)

Michael ends up in a coma. He isn’t hospitalized long however. Under the unconscious eyes of Michael’s drunk uncle, the deranged doctor fakes Michael’s death, saws open his skull, and implants the boy’s stolen brain inside a mechanical dinosaur. Dr. Wachenstein’s muddled motivations for creating this crazy creature never completely crystallize. No matter. Michael remains fully determined to make his way back to Tammy. Never mind that his brain now resides inside a metal and rubber T-Rex from a Poor Man’s version of ‘Jurassic World: The Ride.’

What’s not to love about a movie made from this kind of madness? Unfortunately plenty, at least when it comes to dated jokes that have aged like dirty diapers in 25 years of harsh sunlight.

Tammy has a gay best friend who could only be more flamboyant if he were played by Harvey Fierstein in drag. When his eyes widened with a little lust while two guys fought by grabbing each other’s junk, I passed off poor taste with an eye roll. By the time he later shows up at a crime scene and one deputy remarks to the other, “if you drop anything, don’t bend over,” I’d graduated to audibly sighing, “yeesh.”

I was going to score “Tammy and the T-Rex” in the green because so much of it is enjoyably kooky kitsch. Then another gay joke where a cop stops himself from blurting the F-word slur made me think, “maybe there’s a little too much of that in here to keep shrugging off.” Even if you’re willing to forgive these awkward attempts at humor as a mere side effect of the time the movie comes from (a strange Sambo-like doll sits on Tammy’s bed too), the fact that these jokes aim for such elementary school low blows should be insulting enough in their own right.

I might be more inclined to overlook offensive gags if they were just crude instead of rude. But when an adult glibly infers a teenage girl had sex with a prehistoric animal by remarking, “I can tell by the way she is walking,” nervous discomfort is a far more likely reaction than irreverent laughter.

Excluding that content, “Tammy and the T-Rex” has many moments of well-crafted comedy. Pay particular attention to the dialogue timing and accompanying body language of each actor in a scene where three cops interview a rampage survivor, for example.

Sheriff: “Can you tell me what went on here?”
Victim: “It was… It was…”
Deputy #1: (shaking his head to the side) “They’re in shock sheriff, you’re gonna have to slap it out of ‘em.”
Sheriff: (dismissively) “Would you go get the ambulance driver?”
Deputy #2: “Want me to slap the girl for you, sheriff?”
Sheriff: (incredulous deadpan) “No.”

Instincts could compel you to scoff at a scene where the T-Rex uses a payphone to call Denise Richards. Except it’s such a dopily ingenious dig at the dinosaur’s notoriously tiny hands, you’d be the bigger dummy for not snickering in good humor.

Contrary to what director Stewart Raffill may maintain, “Tammy and the T-Rex” plays as a comedy, but not expressly as camp. The movie was written in one week and filmed in two because that was all the time a financier had available to do something with an animatronic dinosaur he somehow came into possession of. (The behind-the-scenes story of how the film quickly came about is almost as madcap as the fictional plot.) The whiplash between tones from a production pulled together this bizarrely gives a camp quality organically, which is of course a better way to get it than overtly trying to create that aesthetic.

Even though fists and swung bats land four feet away from their targets in fight sequences, staging still isn’t all that sloppy about it. Sure, the crew didn’t do second takes when clearly they should have. But with a tongue in its cheek like “Tammy and the T-Rex” has, how can you not be ironically charmed by mirthful moments like Paul Walker affectionately kissing a condom he anticipates using with Denise Richards later?

Oh, the restored gore delivers all the comical carnage any flashback splatter fan could ask for too. The T-Rex bites the heads off a couple of guys, disembowels a couple more, and turns two partygoers into spurting toothpaste tubes of blood by crushing them under a car. John Carl Buechler provides special makeup effects, so you know you’re in good hands on that front.

There aren’t a lot of “lost” movies from the eighties still out there to be found. (I know “Tammy and the T-Rex” is from 1994, but again, it doesn’t even seem that modern.) Most films in this vein are overly familiar, either because they were constant cable TV staples or always in your eye when you went to the video rental store. So when a lesser-known oddity comes along to capture both the look and the feel of nutty nostalgia, it’s a special event for B-movie fans to cherishingly sip like a fine wine. Besides, where else can you see a dinosaur interrupt backyard party sex as well as Denise Richards doing a lingerie striptease for Paul Walker’s disembodied brain?

Review Score: 70

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