- Directed by Tim Cox
- Written by Tim Cox, Brook Durham, and Sean Keller
- Starring
- Vincent Ventresca
- Summer Glau
- Tom Skerritt
- Cole Williams
- Leila Arcieri
The SciFi Channel has been producing and commissioning creature features for so long that they’ve got it down to, well, a science. That doesn’t mean that any given example will be any good; science does not equal art. This example of a SciFi Original movie, though, takes a bold step beyond all the interchangeable rodents, snakes, sharks, crocodilians, and of course dinosaurs that dominate the subgenre. After all, how many movies there are to be wrung from the concept of a rampaging revived mammoth?
Initially, the mammoth starts off as just about any intact mammoth has to these days: Frozen in a block of (remarkably clear and flawless) ice. At least the mammoth itself is worse for wear, missing lots of skin and even chunks of muscle. Not only does this help the mammoth look more like real-world examples of deepfrozen pachyderms, but it sure cuts down on the processing power needed to render shaggy hair when the inevitable CG resuscitation comes along. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“I wonder how much this would go for on eBay?”
The mammoth is the charge and the career focus of Frank Abernathy (Vincent Ventresca), a long tall academic nebbish who could nevertheless whup Ross Gellar’s ass. At present, the mammmoth is being prepped for exhibition, still encased in its block of ice, in the university museum in Blackwater, Louisiana (as doubled by Castel Film Studios, Romania, which surprisingly do a good job of NOT looking like Castel Film Studios). Frank has reputedly been studying and scanning the titular hairy beastie for five years now, but he’s only just — ONLY JUST — discovered a small hard blip on one of his X-rays, right up against the mammoth’s skin. Right there in the museum (behind the “exhibit coming soon” curtains, naturally), he drills in and sucks the anomalous item out, at which point there’s a computer generated “wave” effect that knocks him back and dissipates upward through the roof of the museum. The object looks like a blue jellybean, and Frank puts it in a stoppered tube for later study.
But the signal wave travels out into space where it reaches — a flying saucer! And the flying saucer launches a probe in response. And this is where the movie solidly signals to the audience the proper attitude one should have to appreciate all that is to come: The probe is a metallic sphere, with a plasma-powered Jacob’s Ladder on top. And as it speeds toward the earth through the Asteroid Belt, the opening credits are shown as huge letters on various asteroids. This is a movie which is going to be upfront about its corniness (which is not the same thing as camp, though I don’t want to stop and explain). You would think that any movie about a rampaging mammoth in Everytown USA would naturally have to acknowledge its corniness, but if you do think so, you obviously haven’t watched enough SciFi Originals.
Now that we’ve established the bad scientific investigational procedures, let’s establish the iffy interpersonal dynamics! Frank is — wait for it — a single parent who’s bad about giving equal time to his family. This is such a hoary old cliche (as is the phrase “hoary old cliche,” but if I acknowledge it, then it’s ironic, right?) that I was almost willing to give the movie props for at least not making him a divorcee who will spend half the movie bickering with his ex for whom he still holds a torch. No, he’s single by reason of death, and the one child of his marriage, a girl named Jack (Summer Glau) is on this day trying to celebrate her sixteenth birthday in the absence of her absent-minded father. (Looking over Glau’s recent credits — she was 25 when this was made — I have to ask, When do we officially crown her the Female Michael J. Fox?) She does have the support of her boyfriend Squirrelly (Cole Williams), and her grandfather Simon (Tom Skerritt). The former is a slightly clumsy, slightly rambunctious goof with his heart in the right place; the latter is a levelheaded and phlegmatic theatre owner and sci-fi aficionado who has indoctrinated his daughter into the culture of B-movies. I like him already.
“Hey, watch it! I’m ticklish!”
Okay, let’s see: bad scientific investigative procedures, iffy interpersonal dynamics… Oh, I know! Disbelief-challenging inciting incident! Overhead, a flaming meteor which the audience knows to be the alien probe streaks over city (slowest meteor-streaking I’ve ever seen), disrupting electricity, automotive engines and cell service, and it crashes right into the museum — right into the mammoth, in fact. Some CGI goo slithers out of the probe into the mammoth carcass, and suddenly –
No, not just a rampaging mammoth. A rampaging zombie mammoth! It immediately kills a security guard, sucks his lifeforce or something out with its trunk, and then disappears. Not like *poof*, but like nobody who arrives at the museum sees it anywhere two minutes later. Soon Frank, who had just been trying to go home, is back looking at the shambles along with gravelly Sheriff Marion Morrison (Charles Carroll) — and if you don’t get the joke of the name, I’m ashamed of you — and his two braindead deputies who sound like their life’s ambition is to someday work for Boss Hogg. Frank immediately assumes that the mammoth was “vaporized,” and he and the sheriff are each trying to take over the investigation of the odd metallic ball in the middle of the floor… when the Men-in-Black show up.
Excuse me, “People-in-Black.” Agent Whitaker (Marcus Lyle Brown) is male, but Agent Powers (Leila Arcieri) is emphatically not. You don’t need me even to tell you much about how they behave: they flash their National Reconnaissance Office badges and immediately take over, talking ominously. Meanwhile, Frank has finally made it home, but Jack won’t speak to him after he ruined her birthday, and later she sneaks out with Squirrelly to a rave-ish party in the woods. Which means that it’s a perfect environment for — a mammoth attack!
Don’t blame the mammoth. It was extinct long before color-correction was invented!
Actually, some other stuff happens first — the deputies follow some mysterious pit-like tracks in the woods and die off-screen, Frank and his father argue over responsibilities and “being a weenie,” the Individuals-in-Black show up on Frank’s doorstep and ask mammoth-related questions… But the the first real visible encounter with Mammoth McShaggy is in the park, where partying teenagers get stepped on and stuff. And we’re going to notice from here on out that this isn’t just any zombie mammoth; it’s a zombie ninja mammoth. Established during the encounter with the deputies is the thunderous impact of the mammoth’s feet that one can hear coming from a distance (that reminds me of some other movie about prehistoric animals brought into the modern world, I just can’t remember what). However, when it wants to, it can sneak up behind people better than a cat wearing slippers.
And it’s not just a zombie ninja mammoth, either. It’s a zombie ninja slasher mammoth, and for the rest of the movie it will exhibit the ability of Offscreen TeleportationTM so beloved of franchise serial killers. Attempts to explain its behavior — that the alien probe came in response to the blue jellybean which is a beacon — peter out before getting to the important question, “So why is it doing what it’s doing?” All I know is that it shows up in the woods, and then at Frank’s house (before Frank can even get back) without, apparently, traversing the distance between.
Oh, and just in case a rampaging zombie ninja slasher mammoth isn’t enough jeopardy for you, Agent Powers (who, alas, lost Agent Whitaker in a mammoth attack) reveals the obligatory countdown: According to government protocols, if she can’t singlehandedly (or with local help) neutralize the alien-possessed pachyderm in the next nine hours, the whole town is going to be nuked. Call me a nitpicky critic of government, but I kind of want to believe that there are gradations of appropriate response in the spectrum between “two solitary agents with phasers set on stun” and “annihilation, extra-crispy.”
Could this be the end for Thing??
The movie gets sillier and sillier; Dad Simon is revealed to be a UFO nut, and thus mistakes a Singing Gorilla-Gram killed by the mammoth for an invading alien corpse. There’s a long scene revealing that we also have to deal with a possessed hand, once attached to the local medical examiner — except that the hand was possessed by these same aliens some thirty years ago, so what possible connection it could have to an alien beacon frozen with a mammoth 40,000 years ago… Gaah. It makes no sense, but the flick’s main redeeming feature is that it breezes so quickly through its pitfalls and perils that it’s hard to stop and voice logical objections.
…Until the final act. Once the protagonists — Agent Powers, Frank, Jack, Squirrelly, Simon, and Sheriff Morrison — get together and decide on a plan to freeze the rampaging zombie ninja slasher mammoth with liquid nitrogen at the old plant on the edge of town, the narrative grinds almost to a halt, as delaying scene after delaying scene are thrown on the screen to extend the time until the closing credits. Frank has a heart-to-heart with his daughter that involves him confessing things like “Since your mother died, I’ve been hiding,” and “I’ve been overprotective.” (By the way, I see very little evidence of that last sin. Unless not wanting your sixteen-year-old daughter to sneak out after dark without permission to some loud unpoliced party in the woods is now considered “overprotective,” in which case, sign me up.) Then there’s a long sequence in which one of the cars driving out to the chemical plant needs to stop for gas. And there are some random sightings of the mammoth, who just shows up wherever the script assigns it to be. I think it’s emblematic of this problem that there’s really no plan to draw the mammoth to the plant; it’s just assumed that it’ll show up. (Frank does do something or other with the jelly bean — pokes it with a pin — but there’s been absolutely no discussion of the mammoth still chasing down the probe, nor any indication that its behavior follows that pattern.)
Oh, and Agent Powers gradually shucks clothes, first losing her suit jacket, and then for the final scramble around the plant stripping down to a bad-ass black tank top. That’s per regulations for these movies, you know.
“Boy, what I wouldn’t give for one of those pointy sticks right now…”
I was okay with the movie making not a lick of sense as long as it amused in the moment, but the final third makes great strides in negating the goodwill of the first two-thirds’ good-natured corniness. By the time the ending drew around, I wasn’t in any mood to be forgiving, and thus the climax that manages to ape those of both Star Trek 2 AND The Empire Strikes Back at the same time simply annoyed me. There may well be a Mammoth 2 in the future to amortize the costs of digitally modeling the beastie (though they couldn’t have spent THAT much); it certainly won’t come about by the clamoring of fans.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 12
- breasts: 0
- explosions: 1
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
