Our third movie in 7 Dollar Popcorn's 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents The 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Extravaganza: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem is another Sci Fi Original, Raptor Island.A movie about raptors...on an island. Pretty straight forward.
It starts of with a plane. A plane that looks like it's a model on a string and I love this already. There's a storm, and the engine blows. And it explodes.
Fast forward 40 years. Lorenzo Lamas in part of an elite military group (naturally) trying to retrieve a missing soldier. Apparently, this soldier was on a UN ship. You can tell it's a UN ship because it says UN in bold red letters on the hull. Just like all UN ships, right?
The ship was attacked by a group of evil Russians, who appear to have taken a hostage. They head for a nearby island where Lamas and the gang give chase. It's not any old island though, this is Raptor Island, baby! You know what that means? That's right, dinosaur attacks! Evil Russians go back to destroy Lamas' boat? Raptor attack! This means that everyone running through the woods though is blissfully unaware of the danger, the only ones who know about the raptors are dead! That's reality! You don't have to be afraid of the raptor you see...well, here...let's talk about velociraptors...
"Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous Period. You get your first look at this "six foot turkey" as you enter a clearing. He moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing his head. And you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like T-Rex, he'll lose you if you don't move. But no, not Velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that's when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two 'raptors you didn't even know were there. Because Velociraptor's a pack hunter, you see, he uses coordinated attack patterns and he is out in force today. And he slashes at you with this... a six-inch retractable claw, like a razor, on the the middle toe. He doesn't bother to bite your jugular like a lion, say... no no. He slashes at you here... or here... or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines. The point is... you are alive when they start to eat you. So you know... try to show a little respect."
Thanks for the assist Dr Grant. You and your science can go back to Jurassic Park now, I don't think either of you will be required here again. These raptors are kind of slow. And dumb. Besides, who needs science when you have automatic weapons...and a grenade launcher.
After a gunfight in the woods that kills almost all of the evil Russians and frees the hostage (who was apparently some sort of CIA spook), Lamas and the gang encounter a pack of raptors. And get into a gun fight with them. Naturally, the raptors don't have guns, so the troops do manage to kill one. The one who killed their team member no less. Sweet, sweet raptor killin revenge. However, their boat is destroyed, so they can't leave the island for at 20 hours.
20 hours to track down the leader of the evil Russians, and 20 hours to survive the raptors. And 20 hours to survive the volcano. Did I mention the volcano? Right. There's a volcano. Let's run this down. They are on an island with an evil Russian, a plane that apparently spilled nuclear materials into the ground(remember WAY back at the beginning?), mutating the animals, hence the raptors, and a fucking volcano, and no way off the island! Holy run on sentence, Batman, what the heck are Lamas and the gang going to do??
They're going to go hide in a cave like any one of us would! I know what you're thinking, a cave? A fucking cave? Lorenzo Lamas can't hide in a cave! Damn right, he left to go find fresh water, leaving the gang to fend for themselves in this empty old cave. It is empty, right? Did anyone bother to make sure the cave was empty? Nope, and just their luck, it's the cave where all the raptors live! Out at the watering hole, Lamas learns something new...there's more than raptors on Raptor Island...there's a T fucking Rex too! And he likes to eat raptors.
At this point the movie is half over. The story is pretty much done, but the movie is only halfway. It's all running and shooting at dinosaurs from here. The hope is to create a diversion by blowing up the raptor cave/volcano so that they can make it to the beach for, what they hope will be, the copter pick up.
Everything about this movie is terrible. The effects? Awful. We're talking bad cgi, and model planes on strings. Ed Wood would be proud. The acting? Lorenzo Lamas, remember? You've seen what a great actor he is. The script? Yeah...no. The story? What story? I should hate this movie, but dammit, it's so much fun. Think about it, less than 5 minutes in and we already had our first slow motion death. At this point, you know this is going to be good. I'll admit that I can be awfully hard on a lot of movies. I'm not afraid to say that a movie is terrible. Just because it's bad doesn't mean it can't be fun. And fun is what matters, right? Right! Lets go with 6 muddy bodies and clean headset out of 10.
