Jurassic Prey (USA, 2013)

The plans of Jackie (Danielle Donahue), a woman who wants to rip-off her bank director ex-husband, and three losers — Andy (Jeff Kirkendall), ringleader Sparks (Robert Dennis), and Ed (James Carolus) — who decide to rob the same bank, derail when that trio's stalled car results in them commandeering both Jackie and her car. The four take refuge at a secluded, pond-side house where, unbeknownst to them, a dinosaur, freed by the blasting at a local quarry, is making lunch out of anyone that crosses its path...

Another mystery DVD, this time bought for too much money — €1,50 (roughly €1.60) from a German equivalent of Dollar Tree known as Euro Shop where, once upon a time, everything cost €1, but, as with Dollar Tree, thanks to the capitalistic forces fattening their pockets by milking the excuse of "inflation", prices for poorly made knock-offs and unhealthy fake food (and crappy DVDs) have risen. 

 

DVDs from Euro Shop, of course, like those of Dollar Tree, are often the equivalent of tossing your cash out the window, as the films are seldom worth saving. Our last Euro Shop DVD, for example, was of the Mexican slice o' shit that is Fallen Angel (2010),* which we deemed worthy of receiving special mention as The Turd of the Year on our Ten "Best" of 2022; Jurassic Prey — the title given in the film itself is Meateater — probably won't receive that honor come the end of 2023, if only because it is obviously a no-budget film and is intentionally bad. (Unlike Fallen Angel, which obviously had a budget and is unintentionally a turd sandwich.)

* To be completely honest, occasional treasures can be found at Euro Shop — both Strigoi (2009), which made it to our Ten "Best" of 2022 as a good movie, and the great late-career Barbara Steele film The Butterfly Room (2012), were also found there.

 

Trailer to

Jurassic Prey:

Way back in 2008, here at a wasted life we wrote of Rolfe Kanefsky's shot-on-video, direct-to-DVD movie Corpses (2004), that the movie "sort of feels like a group of actors and their neighbors got together one weekend, smoked a lot of pot and then suddenly decided to make a horror film just for the hell of it. OK, they obviously also decided to spend both a bit more time on the plot and filming as well as more money on the props, effects and locations, but then, as actors (of sorts) they should have higher expectations when doing this sort of thing [...]." 

 

Words that also describe Jurassic Prey to a T, except that, by way of comparison, Jurassic Prey makes Corpses look like an A-level, big-budget production, and the direction of the director of Jurassic Prey, the highly productive no-budget auteur Mark Polonia, makes the direction of the highly productive no-budget auteur Rolfe Kanefsky, well, look positively professional, if not of masterful auteur grandiosity. As directors, Kanefsky is probably closer to Jim Wynorski (see Camel Spiders [2011], Dinocroc vs. Supergator [2010] and Vampirella [1996]) and Fred Olen Ray (see: Venomous [2008] and BioHazard [1985]), one could say, while Mark Polonia is probably closer to one of a wasted life's favorite intentionally bad directors, the German "outsider" filmmaker Jochen Taubert (see: Ich pisse auf deinen Kadaver [1999], Exhibitionisten Attacke [2000], Pudelmützen Rambos [2004] and Zombie Reanimation [2009]).

That said, we find Taubert's unprofessional, extremely terrible films entertaining and funny, while we found Polonia's more-polished and not-quite-as-unprofessional but extremely terrible film, Jurassic Prey, mildly funny but relatively unnoteworthy. Why? Well, despite Tauben and Polonia's shared penchant for using friends and unprofessionals, the acting in Polonia's movie never reaches the deep abysses of the acting found in Tauben's films. 

Likewise, as stupid as the plot and filmic execution is in Jurassic Prey, neither aspect achieves the otherworldly WTF dreadfulness of that found in any given Tauben movie. Particularly noticeable is the difference in plot development: Polonia's is linear and traditional, whereas Tauben's is usually WTF and surreally all over the place. To that, while Polonia does use an odd practical effect — in Jurassic Prey, for example, the wonderfully laughable deadly dino and the blood-smeared manikin head — his overuse of mega-cheap CGI special effects or red-liquid on leaves just isn't as much fun as Taubin's liberal use (in the films we've seen to date) of utterly terrible and ridiculously hilarious practical effects.

Lastly, while it is undeniably pleasant to watch Jurassic Prey's undeniably attractive, acting-talent-challenged final girl Jackie (Polonia regular Danielle Donahue, the strongest thespian of the flick) do a scene in which she prances around outside in a black frilly bra, the obvious American prudery in practice (i.e., the undergarments) prevents the interlude from achieving any of the exploitive sleaziness it attempts to pay homage to and robs the film some needed spice. (For the sake of gender equality in exploitation, Polonia and American prudery also torpedo the chance of male full frontal — something the European Taubin has no problem with — during an early interlude in which the incompetent cops, Cutler [Steve Diasperra] and Forest [Todd Carpenter] shoot some guy [Frank Humes] for keeping a man [Richard Rawson] as dog.*)

* The scene really has nothing to do with the rest of the movie and is purely filler; at best, it that conveys that either Polonia or his screenwriter John Oak Dalton, probably both, obviously believe that one should die if one has a fetish.

In short, Taubin is the worse of the two filmmakers, but has way bigger balls: his films are so unredeemingly terrible that they (at least the ones we have watched) become almost transcendent, and thus better than the singular film of Polonia that we have now seen. Polonia, on the other hand, obviously shares the same admirable creative drive to produce and make, but has gonads of a slightly different caliber: the result, as experienced in Jurassic Prey, is an entertaining if inconsequential example of not-too-extreme, no-budget, DIY filmmaking. Fans of this kind of "bad movie" will find Jurassic Prey diverting and laughable, particularly if watched in a group and under the influence, but will at best end up admiring the filmmaker and cast's gumption and drive more than the movie itself.

People who expect a "real" movie, however, are going to hate this intermittently fun slab of intentional shite. (And it is.) You know who you are and what you like, so choose accordingly. We, for sure, would be willing to watch another Polonia shit-fest in the hope that it might be entertainingly worse... Of course, however, we would never watch another Polonia movie without the certainty  that enough beer and/or weed is at hand.