Editorials
We Are So Ready for a Super Violent ‘Dinosaurs Attack!’ Movie
This may very well be the most insanely cool movie *never* made.
In the wake of Jurassic World‘s massive box office success back in 2015, my one big hope was that the film would lead to a Hollywood studio acquiring and giving the green light to a movie I’ve been waiting my whole life for: a feature film adaptation of the Topps trading card line, Dinosaurs Attack!.
It still hasn’t happened yet. But I’m not giving up hope.
Created by Gary Gerani and released in 1988, Dinosaurs Attack! was inspired by the Mars Attacks! line of the early ’60s – somewhat ironically, Tim Burton was planning on making a Dinosaurs Attack! movie back in the ’90s, but ultimately left it behind to make Mars Attacks! instead. But I digress.
Throughout 55 base cards and 11 stickers, the line told the story of dinosaurs transported through time to the present day, all thanks to a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong. Each card told part of the story, tracking the prehistoric beasts’ path of destruction across literally the entire world.
The most notable thing about the Dinosaurs Attack! cards, and what made them so awesome to me as a kid, was that they were INCREDIBLY violent, pulling absolutely no punches in the gore department. On one card, a grandma blasts the eyeball of a giant reptile clean off with a shotgun, while another depicts an open-mouthed T-Rex devouring the human passengers on a roller coaster.
Blood, guts, and pure insanity was the name of the game here.
The final cards saw the remaining dinosaurs ripped apart as the time travel effect is reversed after the lead scientist sacrifices himself to the six-eyed ‘Supreme Monstrosity’ – a massive, Devil-like dinosaur that fans often refer to as ‘Dinosaur Satan.’
From there, survivors of the brutal attacks begin to rebuild the world, left in a state of post-apocalyptic ruin.
Looking back on the cards, one thing is immediately clear: the Dinosaurs Attack! line was, and still is, just BEGGING to be turned into a movie. As Gerani himself once noted, “The scenario was designed for a movie, with strong main characters, juicy set pieces, a mystery structure, and an apocalyptic finale. The card images are like storyboards. [Scientist] Elias Thorne is a great role for an actor, and the dinosaurs can be outrageous and literally larger-than-life, given the anomalies of time-warping.”
“I recently reminded Topps that, with the astonishing success of Jurassic World, the time is right to set this project up,” Gerani noted on social media back in 2015. “I submitted a proposal and treatment for the big movie version, which they are now shopping around. Are you listening, Warner Bros?“
With giant monster movies on the rise – Kong: Skull Island smashed up the big screen this year, with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Rampage, Pacific Rim Uprising and Godzilla: King of the Monsters all on the horizon – now would seem to be the perfect time for a Dinosaurs Attack! movie, which would also tap into the nostalgia that’s currently driving people into their local theaters perhaps more than ever before. It’d require a big budget and a big risk from a major studio, but a gory, “R” rated giant monster movie may be precisely the escapism we need right now.
For now, the exceedingly (and wonderfully) cruel Pterosaur attack scene from Jurassic World gives us the best idea of what a Dinosaurs Attack! film could be like. The scene, the most terrifying in the entire movie, pretty well captured the pure insanity of Gerani’s cards, even if it was nowhere near as visually graphic as that ’80s artwork was.
Now just imagine that scene… with blood, guts and 100x the mayhem!
Yes. Please.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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