Mini Review
Day 05: Free Space!
Carnosaur (1993)
The ‘Free Space!’ prompts are generally the most difficult to choose a film for, anything goes really and I thought why not go with a film featuring dinosaurs? Carnosaur (1993) was released around the same time as Jurassic Park (1993) and it was no competition, where Jurassic Park had a huge budget and well known talents, this one had a very small budget and is as campy as they come. Perhaps in terms of being hilarious it does beat out Jurassic Park, there aren’t many films where you see a human giving birth to a dinosaur.
The plot revolves around chickens, a bio-engineering company, a commune and dinosaurs. It is a tad convoluted between the company and their experiments, the experiments getting out, a diseased being released, others that get caught up in the mess and then what is actually going on and why there are dinosaurs running around. With a film like this, the plot isn’t all that important, it is extremely silly from the get go. Not surprising the script differed greatly from the book by John Brosnan, even with what they had to work with the dinosaurs mostly look like hand puppets and there really is no way to take it seriously.
For as campy and as silly as the film turned out to be, it is ridiculously fun and there are quite a number of unintentional laugh out loud moments. Surprisingly there are some solid performances, Diane Ladd provides some great scenes as does Raphael Sbarge and at times it does seem like maybe they could be in the wrong film and that is not a bad thing. There is a lot of fun to be had with this one, make it a double feature with Tammy and the T-Rex (1994) and laugh the night away!
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Mini Review
Day 06: Slashers!
Killer Workout (1987)
Day 06 for Junesploitation is about ‘Slashers!’ and there are plenty to choose from, however for someone like me who has seen their fair share of films from the genre it wasn’t easy to find something I had not seen before. During my research I did find one that looked like it could be a fun time with Killer Workout (1987), a horror film set around aerobics, that has to be kind of ridiculous right? After having seen the film, yes, yes it is indeed! From the awesome synth soundtrack, to the fashion, the hair and some twists and turns, Killer Workout was the right choice.
After a tanning bed accident several years ago, the sister of the victim Ronda (Marcia Kerr) runs a workout place, however all is not well with an unknown killer targeting the clients and soon the bodies start piling up and the business is at risk and there are numerous suspects. The killer uses a giant safety pin as their weapon of choice, not sure there is another film where there is death by pin! It is extremely silly and also unique, one cannot take any of this seriously in any way. The kills happen between long scenes of aerobics classes, a good excuse to show off lots of positions and body parts. The plot almost takes a back seat to the aerobics scenes, they tend to go on a little too long.
As ridiculous as the film is it does suffer from extended scenes of people working out and dragging in some points, the actual investigation into the murders is way too relaxed and surely after one murder the place would be shut down, but it doesn’t even with more bodies piling up. The twist is both expected but perhaps even more ridiculous than the actual film, the motivations may kind of make sense but in 2022 it doesn’t feel very genuine. Killer Workout is a bit of a mess, it is entertaining and has way more laughs than intended.
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Reviews written by Marcella Papandrea
Please check out FThisMovie.net, with many thanks to the crew for the concept of Junesploitation and some excellent prompts for 2022!
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