Sabretooth


release year: 2002
genre: giant animal horror
viewing setting: home DVD, 5/18/03

synopsis: A genetic experiment in the form of a prehistoric sabretooth tiger escapes into some mountains and menaces some campers.

impressions: Well, it was entertaining. I can't fault it for that. I guess the first question you have to ask here is why a sabretooth tiger??? I mean, of all the things you could DNA-clone for your experiments...anyway, I bet it was because no other video title featured a murderous sabretooth tiger. But I digress. The movie flowed along pretty well, with some good attacks. It looked like they used real animals as well as CGI, so sometimes it looked inconsistent. As for the humans, well...one thing about the females in this movie: they were all HOT! That says something, I guess. Now for some gripes: stupid characters/plot. Examples: world's dumbest janitor, hunter accepting people who will slow him down when it's been stressed that time is of the essence, scientist-woman who is as stupid as she is heartless, characters who do NOTHING when they catch said scientist-woman lying to them which jeopardizes their lives, inability of characters to recognize big predator nearby, how far from base-camp do you really need to go to take a dump?, knife-fight BS against the cat. Now for some more praise: there were a lot of funny little touches, including: 2 completely pointless moron brothers, a small lion meant to fake out the human characters, crack against women who have cats, Crocodile Dundee reference, guy losing glasses then finding them as the sabretooth is sitting right next to him, Raiders reference, girl with tight t-shirt that says "Bad Kitty", guy who puts out pointless bear traps ends up getting caught in one.

body count: 10

acting: David Keith was the hunter. John Rhys-Davies (Sallah from Indiana Jones) was the financer behind the DNA experiments. I never heard of the rest of the cast, but they all did convincing jobs in their roles.

final word: Worth seeing, but it's definitely a genre movie.

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