I doubt anyone reading this is really so young as to not remember, but Jurassic Park was a really big deal in the early ‘90s. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure if I’ve seen Spielberg’s 1993 film of science run amok in cloned dinosaur format all the way through, at least in a single sitting, though I definitely remember seeing some of it. And I do definitely remember being of an age to be actively aware of the zeitgeist. And also I’ve seen Westworld (1973) a few times, and it’s basically the same concept just with robotic old-timey people run amok rather than cloned dinosaurs because apparently Michael Crichton didn’t have that many ideas. Anyway, yeah, the ‘zeitgeist’ thing; dinosaurs were big again. I’m pretty sure dinosaurs have always been popular, at least since society was willing to accept that they were a thing, especially with children, hence there being a whopping thirteen Land Before Time sequels (so there you go, the Great Valley wasn’t a metaphor, I guess). Following Jurassic Park however there was inevitably a boom in films with dinosaurs in order to try and cash in, or indeed in the advent of Jurassic Park because it had a long hype train leading up to its release for people to capitalise on (the Cormans managed to get their entry into the field, Carnosaur (1993), out the gate some three weeks prior to JP). To this end, we have Tammy and the T-Rex.

All-American teen Tammy (Denise Richards) is a cheerleader, though the specifics of that isn’t all that important. She’s got herself one of them new boyfriends, Michael (Paul Walker), who’s like on the school football team, but again that’s not all that important in the scheme of things. He’s putting the moves on her and all that, but she don’t spread for no roses; not because she doesn’t want to, but because her ex, Billy (George Pilgrim), is a delinquent psychopath and possibly an adult man because he doesn’t pass for a teenager even by the standard set by the rest of the cast who legally isn’t allowed in the school’s forecourt but goes anyway because he’s such a rebel, you guys. He’s been taking the split well, as you might guess. Anyway, local bitches Wendy and Michelle (Shevonne Durkin and Michele Maika, respectively) spot Michael sneaking into Tammy’s bedroom for some canoodling while driving past her place and immediately report in to Billy, who does the reasonable thing of breaking violently into Tammy’s house, capturing Michael, driving him to the safari park, and throwing him to the lions. I think we can all relate to this scenario so far. Elsewhere, the possibly nefarious Dr Wachenstein (Terry Kiser) has made a robotic dinosaur for… I don’t know, reasons, probably? Alas, as it stands, it requires being hooked up to a big computer, but if only he had a human brain to put in it, why, he could defeat the concept of death and create immortality. In the form of a robot dinosaur. It's like a license to print money. As luck would have it, the hospital freshly has someone in a coma as a result of their face being eaten by a lion. Michael isn’t entirely pleased at waking up all robot dinosaur-y; how will he and Tammy go all the way now?

So the backstory of this thing’s existence is that some dude had custody of an animatronic dinosaur for a couple of weeks before it had to be shipped off to a theme park in, like, Texas or something, and decided that he wanted to make a movie with it during that time. So he hired himself an actually known if not really respected director (Stuart Raffill is best remembered for some films that skew somewhere between ‘cult favourite’ and ‘punchline’, including The Philadelphia Experiment and The Ice Pirates (both 1984) and Mac and Me (1988)), and then tasked him with whipping up a project in like two weeks just in time for the star prop to arrive and essentially start shooting right away. As such, it’d seem that this thing’s journey from pre-production to post clocked in at something like two months.

Consider that the original uncut print manages to misspell ‘Tammy’ in the credits. And not just once, it does it every time! Both the opening and closing titles! That’s the quality of production we’re talking here.†

While the no doubt costly dinosaur had already been made, the film itself was to be made on a tight $1m. As such, you get your cast of then unknowns and minor character actors; the big name, with the ‘and’ credit and everything, is the guy who played the eponymous Bernie in Weekend at Bernie’s (1989). Yeah. Do you know who that is off the top of your head? It’s Terry Kiser! A household name if ever there was one, right? Though in honesty it’s perhaps a shame that his best-known role is as a corpse as, given actual stuff to do here, he’s throws himself into it with a gloriously appropriate hammy gusto as the mad scientist type. Indeed, the films revels in campy excess. From its high school love story played deathly straight even after the brain switching thing to its science-run-amok plot played for maximum hamminess, everything is done to the nines. The extent to which this was intentional seems to vary wildly depending on whose reminiscence of the thing’s production you’re listening to, but honestly Raffill’s claim that it was decided to play the whole thing for comedy early on seems more plausible than Pilgrim’s claim that this was all decided late in the day while shooting when the actors couldn’t take it seriously which he makes in a rather self-aggrandising interview considering his lack of career, not least because Raffill made this sort of film before and seemed acutely aware of the limitations that were in play in the film’s production. Being funny helps hide a multitude of sins when it comes to low budget schlock; the key difference here is that Tammy is unquestionably meant to be funny. At the same time, the whole affair has an air of sincerity to it, with its incongruous mix of earnest teen romance, bad taste comedy and over-the-top gore.

Yes, part of what makes this thing special, is that it’s peppered with some graphic violence, at least in its uncut form, as people get a mauling at pretty much everything except the hands of the dinosaur, resulting in bits of offal splattering about the place. Not a joke. Such was the nature of the production that they got real guts from the butcher’s rather than doing anything effectsy. The financiers were apparently not pleased, having wanted something more family friendly as part of the aforementioned capitalising on Jurassic Park, hence there being an edited version floating about the place which rather awkwardly cuts around said gore, though it weirdly leaves most of the dirtier jokes and a mildly racy striptease intact.

It’s all very bizarre and naturally very cheap. The dinosaur, suffice to say, while technically pretty swanky for such a low rent film, is still pretty limited in its functionality, resulting in some wonderfully silly looking effects when they have to show the dinosaur doing much more than just moving its head or waggling its extremities. The scenes where it has ostensibly to do finer motor movements which take the form of an obvious gloved arm popping up and doing whatever’s required stick in mind in particular. However, it’s all done in a manner that gives this sense that everyone’s ultimately just having fun with the production. As well they should, I guess, given the lack of much in the way of, say, money or time or presumed likelihood of anyone actually seeing the end result (Raffill alludes to the sort of set up of this kind of production often being as some kind of tax scam; a comment which brings to mind things like the infamous unreleased by design 1994 Fantastic Four film… though I guess the scam of that one wasn’t tax based in nature). Though with that in mind, it’s the end result probably shouldn’t come together, yet it somehow manages to work, offering a melange of campy qualities while projecting a sense of sincerity in its baffling story and genuine affection on the part of its motley cast and crew that many intentionally ‘bad’ movies tend to lack.

† It also gives the film’s title as ‘Tanny [sic] and the Teenage T-Tex’. The title by which the film is better known was apparently a product of the edited release print.