Three Laughs: Tammy and the T-rex

 
So, I'm going to start detailing trashy films that would be hard to give stars to. Basically, these are the movies that would get ★ or ★★★★★ here. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these, has a special place in my heart.

Tammy and the T-rex (USA, 1994)
Director: Stewart Raffill

This is a really goofy teenaged romantic comedy where Denise Richards and Paul Walker (both before they really got famous) play lovebirds, where Romeo gets his brain fused into an animatronic Tyrannosaur. Just because. The film was reportedly scrambled together when the filmmakers got free access to a good dinosaur puppet that used to be a amusement park sideshow in Eastern Europe.

The film has been available for years as a VHS hacked to pieces. The original film had some really bloody gore parts, which were removed in order to market this to Jurassic Park -starved audiences. Vinegar Syndrome has since reinstated the missing bits. But it's still really weird to think, which audiences was this really aimed at? The director Stewart Raffill is also known from the horrendous E.T.-ripoff Mac and Me.

I think it has a sense of weirdness on the level of Troma, where it throws everything but the kitchen sink at you in order to get cheap laughs. The difference is that with a Troma film you know exactly what you get, whereas this film is all over the place, taste-wise, and thus more unpredictable (and funny!).

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Paul Walker's character is inexplicably killed by taking him to a safari park to be mauled by lions. As the entire film was shot within 25 minutes from Raffill's house, one has to wonder, is he living in a Roar-like house filled with man-eating lions?
2. The cheapest laugh of the film comes when The Mad Doctor Wachenstein (Terry Kiser) pokes around with Walker's dead body and his brain. He gets a visible rise (ahem) out of him. Shame to let such a well-endowed body go to waste.
3. The gore effects are always fun, with the T-rex getting rid of most of the villains in 10 minutes or so. But the real fun is with T-rex's tiny front legs. Thus, it's silly fun to see him talk on the telephone or filp the bird with those adorable hands. But yeah, the third laugh is for T-rex ripping someone's head off with guts galore.