BURIED TREASURES: TAMMY AND THE T-REX (1994)

Once again, our dear friend DJ XL5, fearing no cinematic lemons, presents us with a review for another forgettable classic; TAMMY AND THE T-REX.

When it comes to dinosaurs in the seventh art, there is a wild variety of species to capture our cinema-lover's hearts, offering a wide spectrum of emotions. There are assuredly some excellent movies featuring prehistoric creatures, like the original KING KONG (1933) or Spielberg's JURASSIC PARK (1993). Then we have our load of well-intended but mediocre dinosaur films, like 1974's THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT. And of course, countless bad dinosaur flix litters the projection rooms of film history, some of them defying any preconception of quality or taste or pain, such as THE LEGEND OF DINOSAURS & MONSTER BIRDS (1977), ADVENTURES IN DINOSAUR CITY (1991) and THEODORE REX (1995).

Today however, let’s discuss one of the most joyful and jubilant nonsense ever seen by your humble servant… TAMMY AND THE T-REX (1994), a odd teenage comedy of the nineties which recounts the embarrassing adventures of cheerleader Tammy (Denise Richards in her first feature film), whose boyfriend (a very young Paul Walker) has his brain implanted in the body of an animatronic T-Rex, created by a mad scientist played with gleeful abandon by an over-the-top Terry Kiser. First distributed under the title TEENAGE T-REX, I heard many times that the film was deemed too gory and sexy for the mainstream Blockbuster-style video stores, and was recut and re-released under the title TAMMY AND THE T-REX and thus converted into a family movie by simply cutting 6 minutes, sometimes right in the middle of a scene, and most of the time interrupting the music in the process. Thank God, the good people at Vinegar Syndrome restored in glorious 2 K both the 82 and 88-minute versions.

There exists so many things that are fundamentally wrong with this film, starting with the gallery of characters. From a possessive over-neurotic and wildly psychotic ex-boyfriend, to an afro-centric gay comedy-relief named Byron Black and his father, an Afro-American policeman going by the name of Sheriff Black. From a couple of inept, racist and homophobic white policeman, to a mad scientist whose plan isn't too terribly clear, and a trio of dimwitted assistants totally disconnected from reality. We also meet several parents who all are extremely clueless as to what their role as parents can be. And then there is Denise Richards as Tammy, who suddenly decides to find a new cadaver to place her lover’s brain in and, of course, the hilarious dinosaur whose motivations aren’t clear from scene to scene.

Denise Richards as Tammy er...riding her boyfriend in TAMMY AND THE T-REX.

Add to that some unbelievable latex gore scenes, a strange and noisy sex scene, the questionable maturity of most dialogues, the weird sexual innuendos, an eccentric pizza eating moment, a hilarious rose eating incident, an awkward corpse selection episode, a car and truck chase at 40 km/h, and then, there’s the dinosaur who really steals most of the film… So many memorable scenes actually rush to my mind, like when the teenage dinosaur picks up a hand mirror to realize he’s actually something resembling an automated T-Rex, or when he tries to call his girlfriend and then tries to get the change back from the pay phone, or his carnage at a suburban pool party or when he plays charade to help his girlfriend find out who he really is under this scaly epidermous.

A tender moment in TAMMY AND THE T-REX

The robot dinosaur is obviously built on a flat platform. One of the fun factors is realizing all the trouble the team went into to more-or-less hide the standing platform. Sometimes, it’s covered with dirt, hay or branches, but more often, the dinosaur is seen standing behind a tree, some rocks, some haystacks, or a truck. But the real magic happens when the dinosaur moves. Most of the times, he is filmed from waist up, to obviously hide the bottom section, but occasionally, CGI ''magic'' is used to make this creature walk, and it reaches something inside of me that touches me in places most films haven’t before of since did. The epilogue might either leave you breathless, or most likely leave you more clueless than any open-end movie.Talking about the film, Raffill said that he had a week to write it, as he had just found out that he could have that robotic dinosaur in a very short time. ''When you make films like that, they’re group endeavors. In this case, we have a dinosaur head for two weeks, so what are we going to do? So you just smoke a lot of pot and try and figure it out!''

Hiding behind a car his tell-tale platform, the T-Rex in ''action''.

Bear in mind, this direct-to-video production was directed by Stewart Raffill, who one might also remember as the director of the forgettable THE ICE PIRATES (1984), the flammable THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT (1984), the unbelievable MAC AND ME (1988) , the inconceivable MANNEQUIN: ON THE MOVE (1991) and the inexplicable STANDING OVATION (2010). Defying the evolution theory, Raffill is going from bad to worst as his career progresses! The whole affair is so weird, so eternally entertaining and yet, so amazingly dumb. Dumb beyond any comprehension, that is. Humankind will always remains a mystery to me.


The French-dubbed version adds supplementary mystics to this enigma. It’s renamed DINOSAURE AU COEUR TENDRE which translates to DINOSAUR WITH A TENDER HEART. A well worth seeking VHS – and yes, it happens to be the longer uncensored and pseudo sexy version.

The French VHS release of TAMMY & THE T-REX