1994
The existence of the movie Tammy and the T-Rex, starring Denise Richards and Paul Walker, seems like one of those pieces of internet lore that everyone on the cool message boards already knew about (and didn’t tell me), but the YouTube video only has 11,000 views when it should have at least 11 million, so I’m considering it a Forgotten Classic for our purposes.
Directed by Mac & Me‘s Stewart Raffil, who should get some kind of bizarre-movie lifetime achievement award for these two titles alone, Tammy and the T-Rex stars a pre-breast implants Denise Richards and a be-bellyshirted Paul Walker in those heady days of 1994. It has a plot that I could try to explain, but I think I’d rather just copy the trailer narration word for word, because this is like dada-ist poetry:
Everything in Tammy’s life is just great. But when you’re young and in love, life can get VERY complicated.
(*cut to shot of Paul Walker eating a rose*) [Note: It is never explained why Paul Walker is eating a rose]
ESPECIALLY when it involves an INSANELY JEALOUS creep.
(*cut to a fight, including the line “DO it, Billy! Do it!”, which belongs in every film*)
Late night phone calls. Sneaking around in your own house. Your boyfriend getting dumped in a wild animal park. And a crazy doctor… who turns out to be a MAD SCIENTIST.
…with an insane invention, that only needs a brain.
But THIS Tyrannosaurus Rex just wants to be a PARTY ANIMAL.
This narration should be in a museum.
Even when you TELL THE TRUTH, nobody believes you anymore.
Mad Scientist screaming: I WILL GIVE YOU IMMORTALITY!
Not if TAMMY has anything to say about it!
So, from what I can piece together – and the plot requires a surprising amount of piecing together for a trailer that’s 90 percent didactic narration – Tammy is dating this handsome, free-spirited idiot played by Paul Walker, who’s so inept that when she gives him a rose he thinks it’s food. But he’s romantic and innocent and doomed, like some combination of Forrest Gump and the Noble Savage, and Tammy falls hard for him. Enter Tammy’s jealous ex, who kidnaps Paul Walker and literally throws him to the lions at a wild animal park, where he’s found barely clinging to life and taken to a mad scientist who has built a robotic T-Rex that just needs a human brain to make it a cyborg. The scientist puts Paul Walker’s brain inside a robotic T-Rex, setting up a climactic battle for control between Tammy, the girl who loves the boy that the T-Rex was, and the mad scientist who created the cyborg party animal that he has become.
I would give almost everything I own to have been in a room with the guy who explained that idea to another guy who then wrote the first guy a check.
-Thanks to Michael at 5SF for the tip.
[apparently BadassDigest covered this the other day too]
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Bernie Lomax!
First thing I noticed.
Downside of being a robotic T-Rex, no dinosaur bones.
Putting a a vapid teenager’s brain into a dinosaur? Freaky Friday did it better.
Ha!
The mid 90′s were a wonderful time to be alive. Tammy & the T-Rex was released one year before Theodore Rex
And “Dinosaurs” was on TV! (well, maybe in re-runs)
“Not the mama!”
“Everybody: Walker Dinosaur.” – Tammy introducing her boyfriend to the family.
You are the goddamn best. The best!
Pay close attention at 1:24 and you can see the T-Rex flip the mad scientist the bird.
I didn’t even think that was possible for a Tyrannosaurus, but I stand corrected!
We’re lucky this was just a movie, because Paul Walker couldn’t drive a car with those little T-Rex arms.
Imperial Entertainment strikes again! They made one of my favorite Cyberpunk movies of all time, _Nemesis_ (Avoid the Nemesis sequels though) and they also made this? Now I want to track down a copy, looks like pure fun.
Poor Rex Walker, all his Hypercolors are useless now!
Did he put them in the dryer?
Denise Richards pre-boobjob still had pretty awesome boobs.
Let’s not forget this is Bernie Lomax giving Lance Harbor dinosaur immortality. Holy shit! What a difference five years can make in someone’s film career!
This fucking thing is amazing. The best $7,000 ever spent.
I feel saddened and ashamed that I didn’t know about this.
No way that’s a robotic dinosaur. Ten to one it’s just Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman in a dinosaur costume.
The cop at 1:30 has the exact same voice as Fake Bret. I kept expecting him to describe squirrel shading techniques.
1990′s Paul Walker<1980's Keanu Reeves
1980′s Keanu Reeves<1980's Keifer Sutherland
But for the 8 seconds, when I’m in the dinosaur body; I’m free.
Definition of cruelty: Putting the brain of a teenaged boy in a body which is tall enough to see in Young Denise Richards’s bedroom window, but has arms so short he can’t reach his dick.
Also, why does the insanely jealous creep have an unconvincing Australian accent?
This movie proves once again that adding a slim black choker to a hot girl makes her even hotter. But enough about her gay Kwanzaa driver, how about that necklace!
The thing I’m left wondering, is who was the intended audience? Was this a kids’ movie? A porno? I am so confused.
Paul Walker was just being more upfront about what Homer considers his “secret shame” [img.photobucket.com]
Also, I know the mad scientist is Bernie, but my shitty movie love as a child chooses to remember him as Uncle Max in “Side Out” and Creepy Hairy Mole-having Bad Guy in “Mannequin 2: On the Move” opposite Kristy Swanson and Herman’s Head
Oh Jesus Bryon! You dun gon n stold anuva T-rex?
Oh to be a drugged out deranged hollywood exec in the early 90′s…
Pass the fucking popcorn, I’m settling in.
Ah yes, and no ’90s movie would be complete without the Sassy Black Gay Sidekick.
This is the most important archeological find in the history of cinema!
Cockodile Dundee’s plan was to jazz-spin Walker into submission.
At 1:26, that T-Rex is totally flipping the bird. I can’t handle the awesome.
If a T-Rex only has 2 fingers, I wonder how they picked which one was the bird?
37 comments in and still no Mark Wahlberg references? Do I have to get us started?
I hope not, I’ve got nothing.
A friend and I rented this way back in 1994 when it came out and while it was only rated PG-13 on the box and tape I remember distinctly scenes of extreme, comically over-the-top gore on the tape we watched, such as a car full of teenagers getting squashed under the T-Rex stomping on it and a geyser of blood spraying out the broken windows. The video store had this movie in the Family section too.
Anyway, from what I can tell it’s only ever been released rated PG-13 on home video (I don’t think it ever played theatrically), and I found a copy for sale at a small town video store selling off their stock this past summer and re-watched it for the first time since that original viewing. But to my surprise all these really gory scenes were nowhere in the movie, but not such that I had imagined them, but that anytime there was supposed to be a scene I remembered it just cut from right before that action to the next shot or scene, as if sloppily censored. As if it was originally an R-rated movie but they cut it down to market it to “kids”, even though it’s still far from a kids movie.
And from my research online no one knows of an R-rated version ever being released or existing…But I’m sure I saw it and didn’t just imagine it all or fill in the blanks as a young kid… At least I didn’t imagine Denise Richards’ babeness in this movie.
“Is that really you in there? Oh God, what have they done to you?!” priceless. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.
Young Denise Richards, good lord. She was the pinnacle. Then she had to go and get mixed up with Charlie goddamn Sheen. Sad. This trailer, though, is magical. The very apotheosis of ’90s direct-to-video movie trailers.
/KISSES FINGERS