Customer Reviews

Pterodactyl

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This made for SCIFI Channel thriller is quite entertaining for movies of its ilk. The special effects are pretty cool and the cast gamely engages in some ridiculous dialogue and action, but hey this is a giant dinosaur movie---who wants art? Cameron Daddo plays a paleontologist who is taking some of his students on an expedition on the Turkish/Armenian border. Amy Sloan plays Kate, his graduate student and would be lover. Also in the area is a special ops force out to take custody of a rebel leader. Of course as the movie progresses, the two parties of people converge to battle the army of pterodactyls, released by an earthquake in a volcano. There's lots of blood and guts as the nasty birdies engage in their predatory feeding, and lots of tense who's gonna get it scenes? While hardly a work of classic stature, PTERODACTYL provided the thrills and action I like in this kind of distracting movie.

An American scientist and his students are in Turkey to look for fossils on a mountain. They are warned by the government that there are dangerous men in the wilds but they decide to go ahead. Enter an American military team looking for a renegade and you have the rest of the cast. Unfortunately, a recent earthquake has unearthed some pterodactyl eggs that then hatched. The are around the mountain is now the feeding ground for large numbers of these flying predators.

First one group and then the other runs afoul of the hungry beasts. As their numbers dwindle, it becomes obvious that the only way any of them are getting away safely is to try and eliminate the beasts. But is scientific knowledge and some minor military hardware enough to take on creatures that have survived the way these have? Well, they have no choice but to try.

I really did not expect a lot of this movie so I was surprised. We see the creatures almost from the start and we see a lot of them. If you add up the screen time for each individual creature it would probably be five times the length of the movie. The effects are pretty good although some of the injuries are rather campy. The characters are somewhat standard for this type of film but a few twists are added to keep them from being stale. All in all this one was pretty good. Check it out.

When you pick up a movie to watch and on the back cover is a pterodactyl chasing a white SUV and on the front is a dinosaur eye and a reptile hatching from an egg, you kind of have to know what to expect here. Yes, there are some cheesy special effects, but the pterodactyls are actually done pretty well. Sure, there is some weak acting, but then there is some pretty sincere acting too. There is plenty of gore, probably more than necessary but hey..I could forgive that. The film delivers in what it tries to do. Gore, thin plot, action and a romance. Oh, and the possibility of a sequel...that's important. Then there is Angie. I kind of hoped Angie would survive the film just because I thought she might just be dumb enough to. How could you not love Angie? She was beautiful, obnoxious and completely in love with herself. There is even a scene where she looks into a mirror and says: "I love you." And then I wondered why she became pterodactyl food. Well, duh. I was tempted to give this one 4 stars just because it was exactly what I expected it to be when I picked it up. The only reason it didn't get 4 is because I kept figuring out what was going to happen next a couple minutes before it happened. It was almost like a time warp where I came up with ideas and the film replicated them...hmmm, this could be a film in itself. A couple things: What was Angie thinking when she takes her clothes off in the wilds of a foreign country to go for a swim in an unknown and unexplored pool of water. Forget the pterodactyl circling overhead, what about snakes and leaches and a hundred other things that could be lurking. Not to mention the male students who get to ogle her in her underwear. What about the trained soldiers when killers from the sky came swooping down on them? Nobody ever learned how to duck? What were those two in the cabin thinking? They should have just hung a sign on the door: Pterodactyl Diner Now Open for Lunch. And of course, that rope crossing anchored by a sheep. Talk about an idea right out of the mind of a screenwriter! No one in real life would think of something like that and if they did think of it, no one in real life would actually suggest trying it. Did that soldier really think about the possibilities when he went out there to use the rope crossing? Finally, there was Coolio. He might be worth an extra star by himself. Without much to work with he gives a pretty decent performance. Caneron Daddo, Amy Sloan and Mircea Monroe make this watchable. All in all, this is a pretty typical Sci-Fi channel movie, better than most, not as good as some, but overall pretty entertaining if you're not looking for a serious dramatic sci-fi movie. Worth a viewing.

I brought this DVD from Amazon.us last year. I have just got round to watching it while on a break from work.
Well I really enjoyed the film, the effects were a bit naff at times but all in all they were good and real life most of the time. There is a bit of blood and guts shown when the Pterodactyls attack, but otherwise the film has a good storyline to it.
The storyline is based on Professor Lovecraft (Cameron Daddo) taking a team of students on an expedition to a dormant volcano where they come across Pterodactyl eggs which have hatched. In other areas of the dormant volcano there are a team of military special ops headed by Captain Bergen (Coolio) hunting down a dangerous terrorist. So not to spoil the storyline it ends up with them all getting together to fight and destroy the Pterodactyls or do they!!!! This is a must buy if you are a fan of movies like Jurassic Park, Godzilla and King Kong.

awsome computer graphics for a B-Movie. Fairly good acting. Interesting Twists.
In Turkey, a group of scientists go searching for fossils and find living dinodsaurs and must team up with a local Special Forces Unit in order to find a way to stop the flying beasts before they destroy the world.
so check it out B-Movie lovers.

So I'm at my friends and we see a copy of this movie on his table. Apparently his neighbor rented or bought it, and was lending it to him. Moments later, I was laughing so hard I was in tears, as this is "horror" movie, is so f--king bad its good. The plot is simple, 3 college kids, their teacher and his "friend" go exploring in some forest in Turkey. Unfortunatley for them the forest is A) Camp ground for a bunch of terrorists B) US Special forces, led by some rapper, are raiding the area and C) Prehistoric dinosaurs are flying around murdering anyone they see. Thus most of the cast is murdered in comically stupid ways, by poorly animated dinosaurs. I don't want to give any spoilers but lets just say you will be rewinding several times saying "OMG that did NOT just happen hahahahahahaha".

I had to give this movie 1 star because its labeled a horror movie and it is 100% not scary. Relabel it a comedy and I will give it 5 stars.

Obviously you don't go into a viewing of Showtime's 2005 production of "Pterodactyl", expecting Academy Award winning performances or a first rate script even if you are a fan of this type of film. However since a film doesn't necessarily have to have these qualities to be entertaining I found myself pleasantly surprised by this made for television effort starring Australian ex pat actor Cameron Daddo. Being a big dinosaur fan since childhood I've always enjoyed any films where dinosaurs feature in the story so I was eager to get a hold of a copy of this film. Despite its very obvious shortcomings in terms of dialogue and character development I found the film's main strength lay in the superb creatures, ie the Pterodactyl(s) of the title that were for the most part first rate. The idea of long extinct dinosaurs and other related reptiles suddenly being awakened in the present day and creating havoc among modern man is not a new one and has been used in countless films over the decades but what we have in "Pterodactyl", is nevertheless a fast moving action story that doesn't waste too much time on setting the scene before the creatures appear and begin their trail of death and destruction. What really amazed me in "Pterodactyl", were its very gory special effects that really left nothing to the imagination and certainly would not be for the squeamish. While it could in no way compare to the dinosaur epics created by Steven Spielberg I have to give this film its due in that even with its much smaller budget the savage flying pterodactyls created here in vivid CGI really lifted the film above its ordinary script and largely stock characters.

Being a creature feature fan, I started watching this movie with low expectations, and they were pretty much met.

Firstly, the script. As to be expected, it's atrocious. The dialogue sounds like it was written by a 15-year-old sci-fi fanboy. Giving the characters the surnames of prominent sci-fi writers (Lovecraft, Bradbury, Zelazny etc) was just plain lame. Many of the lines will have you either cringing or shaking your head in bewilderment.

Secondly: the direction. Mark L. Lester's career probably peaked with "Commando." It was an enjoyably trashy Arnie vehicle, but "Pterodactyl" is just plain static. The first 25 minutes are rather snooze-inducing. After that, the pterodactyls start attacking and it's on for young and old. Some of the action scenes are OK, but could have been vastly improved with more moving camera shots or even some handheld "Private Ryan"-type shots.

Thirdly: the CGI. It was about what you'd expect from a movie with a budget this low: sub-"Jurassic Park", of course, but no worse than the CGI you see in some $70 million Hollywood "blockbusters." Most of it merely looked like cut scenes from a good-quality computer game.

Fourthly: the acting. Saddled with a horrible script, the leads gave it 100%, but some of the supporting actors (like the blonde who played the whiny Paris Hilton clone) really need to invest in some more acting classes.

Fifthly: the DVD. The film's picture and sound quality are perfectly fine, but the "Making of Pterodactyl" featurette is really just dull unedited B-roll footage, showing the actors gamely try to drum up enthusiasm for their cardboard cutout characters. When asked what drew him to the project, Cameron Daddo says bluntly, "The need to work." Then he laughs and gives the interviewer his "real" answer, but it's obvious his first reply was his more honest one.

There isn't much swearing in the film, but there's a fair amount of gore, although it's pretty cartoonish and fake-looking. *Spoiler warning.* One character gets carried away by a pterodactyl and spends practically the rest of the movie having his innards eaten by baby pterodactyls, yet he REMAINS ALIVE. The movie keeps cutting back to him, showing his open chest as a mess of bloody, pulsing organs, yet he keeps moaning and flailing when the average human being would be long gone. Ludicrous. Reminded me of that character in the first Austin Powers movie who gets dumped into a fiery pit but improbably survives multiple attempts to kill him. ("I'm still alive, but I'm very badly burned!") Several bodies get sliced in half by swooping pterodactyls, but the effect is as unconvincing as the zombie-cut-in-half gag in the Spierig brothers' "Undead." It almost looks like both films used exactly the same visual FX creator.

Overall, "Pterodactyl" fails in the "so bad it's good department." But it's watchable ... just barely. Its redeeming features? A reasonably fast pace (once it kicks into gear) and some unintentional laughs. Grab some beers and enjoy if you like dodgy creature features. Others should steer clear.

Give this director another creature movie to direct please. I
was ready to be entertained but this creature movie blew me
away with the great CGI, gore and action. The birds are predators and are hungry...and we get to see what we want to see and not just quick edits thats leaves the audience dizzy.
Descent acting, good monsters and a story....get your popcorn
ready monster fans as you wont fall asleep on this one.

Let's get a few things straight. This movie has Coolio as its starring actor. The main protagonist (not played by Coolio) is named "Professor Lovecraft." And there are pterodactyls.

Pterodactyl is two movies put together. One movie involves aforementioned Professor Lovecraft and his students. You see Lovecraft is not the posthumously recognized writer of horror legend; he is a paleontologist looking for dinosaur bones of a...well come on, you must have guessed what he's after. There's no mystery as to whether or not these pterodactyls actually exist -- the titular beasts attack hunters in a field, tearing them in half. In this regard it's like every bad horror movie ever made, complete with the geek, the slut, etc. It's I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Jurassic Park.

The movie then shifts perspective to soldiers tracking down some bad guys in a forest. Pterodactyl aspires to be like Predator; the soundtrack is reminiscent of that film, the soldiers tell stupid jokes, and Coolio leads a crack team of badasses who we know are there to die heroically but futilely in the face of terrible beasts. The pterodactyls even "see" like the Predator did, with a "pterodactyl cam" complete with red tinged vision. Pterodactyl wants to be an action hero movie when it grows up.

Back to the hapless students. Kate (Amy Sloan, a Canadian pretending she has an American accent) is a graduate student in love with aforementioned Michael Lovecraft (Cameron Daddo, an Australian pretending he has an American accent). After the misanthropic geek Willis (Steve Braun) makes a pit stop, he discovers the spoor of pterodactyls. The hottie blonde bimbo (Mircea Monroe) actually looks at herself in the mirror and mouths "I love you." Then, for reasons that can only be explained by movie logic, she strips off her clothes and dives into a nearby lake. And we all know what happens when the hot chick goes skinny dipping...

The best acting comes from the Sloan, who shifts from mimicking funny accents to a serious pass at her professor (making the term "Lovecraft" take on a whole new meaning). Sloan's scenes with Daddo are actually good, but Daddo struggles to keep up. Once that romantic tension is ratcheted up the movie actually gets interesting. For a few minutes anyway.

There are some decent action scenes, interspersed with too-bright-red gore and inconsistent physics. The best conflict is when Coolio, wearing a target-tracking helmet, runs out into the open, guns blazing, to provide target locks for a heat-seeking pterodactyl rocket launcher. Why would these troops carry such a weapon? Just in case they encounter pterodactyls, of course.

Pterodactyl actually does its research, although it got the date wrong for a supposedly buried pterodactyl coming to life in 1895 (it was 1856). But then, there's quite a bit of history around the claim - including the fact that it's a known hoax: [...]

And that sums up Pterodactyl too. It hits all the right notes. The monsters attack from nowhere, grab people, and haul them off to a fate worse than death just like in Aliens. They can behead people with the flick of a claw, like in Predator. And an idiot scientist natters on about keeping the discovery to himself and how "they're just animals" until at least half of his wayward students become pterodactyl chow, like Jurassic Park. But it just doesn't all jell. The movie feels like vignettes from someone who's seen too many action horror movies.

But it does conclude with a sheep used as a grappling hook, so it gets an additional star for that alone.