DINOSAUR VALLEY GIRLS

(1996)


Notes: E.I. Independent Cinema and Frontline Entertainment Inc. 94 minutes.
[Many ambivalent thanks to Deborah R. Painter for supplying me with this godawful film.]

Tony Markham: Jeff Rector
Hea-Thor: Denise Ames
Dr. Benjamin Michaels: William Marshall (Blacula, The King of Cartoons on Pee-Wee's Playhouse)
Daphne Adrian: Griffen Drew
Ur-So: Ed Fury
Ro-Kell: Karen Black
Sensei: Harrison Ray
Audrey Benedict: Elizabeth Landau
Mak-Muff: Bo Roberts

Written and Directed: Donald F. Glut (author of The Empire Strikes Back)
Producer: Kevin M. Glover
Associate Producer: Melodee M. Spevack
Executive Producer: Daniel J. Mullen
Music: Thomas Morse.


Summary: Shakespeare's "O brave new world" lines are intoned over smoky credits interspersed with live salamander and clay dino clips. Tony Markham, a martial arts movie star addicted to cigarettes, is oppressed by women, especially his girlfriend Daphne, wanting small parts in his Feet of Fury films and by dreams and visions of a cavewoman calling to him. Sensei, his trainer, asks, "Were you one of those kids that [sic] dreamed about being a paleontologist when he grew up?" "I didn't even see Jurassic Park 'til it came out on video." Tony is advised to face his problems [?].

Audrey Benedict, a Hollywood correspondent on television, wants to interview Tony, and they illogically go to a dinosaur museum where Tony experiences deja vu and knows intuitively that an allosaur had a lightning bolt design on its head. The curator, Dr. Michaels, and his assistant, Karen Forrester, show him pictures drawn on rock slabs from less than a million years ago, and Michaels theorizes about a dinosaur valley where creatures of different times and places converged. Given a magic talisman, Tony says, "I wish I could be with her," and is transported to a land of clay pterodons and dinosaurs.

Several cavemen are carrying their kill back to their cave and the leader Big-Mak dislikes Tony after eating his cigarette. An allosaur scares off the cavemen, but Big-Mak retrieves Tony's amulet. Tony trips into the woman of his dreams in time to see the allosaur undo her top and knock her unconscious. Tony takes her behind rocks, tries to use his cell-phone, and learns her name is Hea-Thor. She says "For sure" occasionally.

While the male tribe's leader worships a crude picture of Ro-Kell and other cavemen mill about in their cave, Tony meets the female tribe which because of the male brutality has splintered off into a "prehistoric sorority house," comprised of Tam-Mee, Bar-Bee, Deb-Bee, Bam-Bee, and so forth. The song "Wild Thing" accompanies this scene. Initially the leader, Ro-Kell, is hostile, but Hea-Thor indicates her attraction to Tony.

The cavewomen serve Tony food, but he asks, "Where's the beef?" and hopes they dance like in the movies. As they begin to "boogie," Hea-Thor takes Tony into her room and is taught "kiss." A dinosaur yawn you one of those kids that [sic] dreamed abouseems to be the commentary on the ensuing sex.

Tony's smoking disgusts Hea-Thor and the women, and he shaves with a rock. We go into a video: "Jurassic Punk" -- a tribute to the allosaur, featuring dancing cavewomen.

Tony tries to teach the women combat, but when the cavemen attack and carry off the women, he constructs bombs out of oil. He and Hea-Thor arrive as the women are successfully fending off the men, but Ro-Kell and Ur-So serve as the model of love and lust for all then except Big-Mak who is still hostile.

An allosaur attack gives Tony the opportunity to quote the most famous and tired of action movie clichés. He uses bombs and the allosaur finally runs off, but Big-Mak attacks Tony. Grabbing the amulet from the caveman's necklace, Tony wishes himself back to the present, where the museum friends are seeing his image in one of the slab drawings. He appears, asks for matches and artillery, gets the former, and uses his last wish (the first we've heard of a talisman limitation) to return.

Finishing the fight, he earns the respect of Big-Mak. Back in modern times, Tony has disappeared and Daphne has landed the lead in the next martial arts movie. And in Dinosaur Valley, we see a happy love cave, hear that "O brave new world" bit again, and hear a roar.


Commentary: I may be wrong in thinking that this concept could have worked. "Ro-Kell" initially sounds like "Raquel," so that a caveman worships a stick picture of her is a nice in-joke. But the "Val" notion consists of nothing more than the cavewoman names and the occasional arbitrary "for sure."

Otherwise, attempted humor or irony goes no further than pointless and tired quotations from action movies and advertisements, and a "Yorick" reference made by a caveman with a skull in his hand. As for the characters, there aren't any. The "dinosaurs" appear mostly as transition clips. The allosaur is colorful but cartoony.

Did Tony kick the smoking habit? Was I supposed to register his world-weariness to which cave-living is a soothing escape? Am I supposed to want this too? Was I supposed to be charmed, a la Caveman with Ringo? These films are rotting my brain -- I can't even tell anymore.


Dinofilms
Dino-Source