Sometimes, there are just not enough words.
If you were not already familiar with Tammy and the T-Rex, don’t be too hard on yourself. Released in the wake of Jurassic Park’s success, it’s a VHS obscurity from 1994 starring a young Paul Walker as a high schooler who has his brain removed by Bernie from Weekend at Bernie’s (Terry Kiser) and put into the body of an animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex, which then proceeds to romance teenage Denise Richards. Oh, and it’s directed by the guy who made Mac and Me and Mannequin 2: On the Move. It’s as bewildering a comedy as I’ve ever seen.
Making it even more bewildering is that it was originally shot as an R-rated horror comedy, including a bunch of bloody violence and gore, and that’s the version that just made its premiere at the Cinepocalypse genre festival in Chicago. What this means is that what would be released as a dopey comedy for kids essentially alienates that audience with R-rated bloodshed that would best appeal to gorehounds who are unlikely to give a dopey comedy like this a chance in the first place. What is left is a movie for no one.
Well, maybe not no one. This has cult movie written all over it, and while it failed to find its audience the first time around, this new “gore cut” (as it’s being called) is sure to become the stuff of legend once it receives its scheduled Blu-ray release later this year. Based on the audience response at Cinepocalypse, it may be the new cult sensation along the lines of Troll 2 and Miami Connection. It’s a real discovery.
For those who remember the movie from the ‘90s, the “gore cut” is very similar to the version you saw on VHS. It’s got more cursing and more sexual content, but what really differentiates it, not surprisingly, the splattery violence. Heads are bitten off, people are disemboweled, skulls are crushed, bodies are flattened, all with the kind of gory excess that recalls the splatstick comedies of Peter Jackson rather than the realism of Tom Savini. It’s completely out of place in a film that really can’t support it, but has now become part of what makes Tammy and the T-Rex such an odd, singular experience. There’s nothing else like it, particularly in its R-rated “gore cut” form.
Some of the movie’s laughs are intentional, usually when it leans into its own stupidity and stages a sight gag like a dinosaur using a pay phone or using its tiny T-Rex arms to play charades. More often, though, the laughs come at the expense of the movie’s bizarre ridiculousness. Denise Richards’ insanely committed performance is one of the biggest sources of comedy, because she, unlike, say, Terry Kiser, doesn’t always appear to be fully aware of what movie she’s in. The disconnect between the material she’s playing and how hard she’s struggling to emote is incredible.
Between Danzig’s Verotika and now Tammy and the T-Rex, this year’s Cinepocalypse has played what might be the two biggest cult movie finds of the year. Tammy is the kind of movie you sit and watch scratching your head as to how it even exists while at the same time thanking the Movie Gods that it does. It has to be the most violent stupid comedy ever made and it’s never less than 100% entertaining. The movie isn’t “good” on any objective level, but that doesn’t matter because it’s also fucking great.
