Cynical Cinema

The same way I have a soft spot for ridiculously bad musical acts like Poison, I also have a soft spot for really terrible movies, like those that star Steven Seagal, and those that involve prehistoric animals terrorizing cities. So on Tuesday, I left two Rogers Video cashiers crestfallen when I rented the movie they wanted to watch that night - Mammoth! You see, there is a comet that crashes into the Earth. And it re-animates a mammoth who resides in the Museum of Natural History. This prehistoric wooly beast then takes out it’s thousands of years of anger on the poor, unsuspecting small town in which the museum is located. This is a concept right up there with the classics of the last few years, among them Megalodon, Sabretooth, and Pterodactyl.

But wait - there’s more! Not only is there a mammoth on the loose, goring people with it’s tusks and stomping them in their cars, but it is being controlled by…aliens! AND, there is a severed hand that also becomes re-animated. Terrific stuff. The one complaint I have about the film is that there is just not enough mammoth. There are some great scenes where you can see just part of the creature, since animating a whole mammoth would have been too expensive, but there is not enough stomping and goring. Too much actual story. Mammoth is great and it stars Tom Skerritt. What more could you want? A fine film, but not yet in the league of Pterodactyl.