Director: Steve Lawson
Writer: Steve Lawson
Stars: Julian Boote, Adam Collins, Helen Crevel
You have to frankly applaud anybody who tries to make a dinosaur movie on a budget of half a takeaway pizza and a couple of postage stamps. So the writer / director Steve Lawson – a familiar figure in the world of contemporary British horror thanks to his similarly shoestring productions The Silencer and Nocturnal Activity – deserves considerable kudos for having the sheer chutzpah to take on the task with his 2015 film KillerSaurus. It’s just a shame it’s not all that good.
Kayleigh Ma (Helen Crevel) is a geneticist who was part of a team working on a top secret project which has been axed after some kind of fatal incident. Her pushy journalist boyfriend (Kenton Hall), motivated more by the prospect of a good story than concern about her repeated nightmares, encourages her to go and visit the old laboratory – or, to be more precise, warehouse – and look up her former boss Professor Peterson (Stephen Dolton). Gradually the truth becomes clear: they have managed to use ‘laser printing’ to create a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is now locked up behind a flimsy shutter in the basement. What’s more, the arms developer nitwits who financed the project are on their way, intent on forcing Peterson into creating a half man, half dinosaur hybrid; supposedly the first in a new breed of super-soldiers.
In all fairness, the fact that this is rubbish isn’t really Lawson’s fault: there’s absolutely no way he could have been expected to make something half decent with the extremely meager funds available. To put it into context, think of the difference between Jurassic Park and Carnosaur, then multiply it several times and that’s just about the difference between Carnosaur and KillerSaurus. This is most evident in the titular creature itself, which is realized using what looks like a plastic children’s toy and a lot of dry ice, but also in the limited sets and even more limited cast, just about all of whom have that over-emphatic style that’s familiar for semi-professional actors. Although it’s hardly a rollicking affair it’s never exactly boring thanks to the curt seventy five minutes running time; and it’s actually assembled with some skill by Lawson and his team.