Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Albert Band and Charles Band
• Written by Mark Goldstein and Greg Suddeth
• Starring
  • Brett Cullen
  • Colleen Morris
  • Samantha Mills
  • Austin O’Brien
  • Tony Longo
• Produced by Charles Band

It’s not surprising that this movie, released as the first title from the Moonbeam Entertainment label, also became its unofficial flagship. 1993 was the year of Jurassic Park, and dinosaurs were hot hot hot. And it just so happened that child actor Austin O’Brien also appeared in The Last Action Hero that same year, making his face on the video cover much more recognizable. (O’Brien seems to have had a much better career than most child actors who’ve appeared in Moonbeam features, spending his teen years on the TV show Promised Land (1996-1999).)

It’s also one of the “Bandiest” Charles Band films ever. From its miniature creatures to its crew of behind-the-scenes regulars (David Irwin on special effects, Band’s brother Richard providing music, and of course Alberto Bartoli as cinematographer) to Band himself co-directing with his father, it’s almost stunning that the “original idea” for this movie actually ISN’T credited to Charles Band, but to Peter Von Sholly (who also gets a co-producer credit).

Thanks to some judiciously-used stock footage, we can almost believe that the movie begins in some equatorial jungle, with a cadre of native bearers reminiscent of the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). But Rico Sarno (Stephen Lee) is no Indiana Jones: He’s overweight, snarky, whiny, dismissive, selfish. You’ll be relieved to know that, yes, this is the bad guy. On the verge of being led to a sacred ruin – the Cave of El Culebra – his main guide, Jefe (Peter Mark Vasquez), turns him back, because he doesn’t want this rude lardball despoiling their historic treasures.

By night, though, Sarno returns and finds a cave decorated in stone carvings and hanging with icicles, in the center of which is a rough ice “nest” containing five large eggs the size of cantaloupes. As explained by Jefe, who has returned to head Sarno off, the eggs were given to his ancestors’ ancestors by the gods of the mountains, and are sacred to his people. Sarno, thinking only of dollar signs, clubs Jefe and makes off with the frozen eggs.

Elvis isn’t just dead, he’s extinct!

Meanwhile, we’re introduced to American raisin farmer Frank Taylor (Brett Cullin), his teenaged daughter Monica (Samantha Mills), and his pubescent son Jerry (Austin O’Brien). The family is still dealing with the loss of their mother and wife two years ago, though the pain has subsided to a dull ache (prompting Jerry to ask Dad things like, “Do you ever think about Mom?”, entirely for the audience’s benefit). Frank is something of the all-American suburbanite farmer, the kind who wears a white tee under an untucked plaid shirt, and lives in a terrific farmhouse that he shouldn’t be able to afford. The kids are characterized thusly: Jerry is an Elvis aficionado, and Monica is a standard-issue teenaged bitch with delusions of martyrdom, the kind who says, “Gah! Can’t I ever get any privacy?” and such. (Want to see the failure of women’s lib? If a male teen were portrayed as being similarly antisocial, rebellious and self-centered, the whole movie would be about how he gets a kick in the ass that turns his head around straight. But according to Hollywood, no such character arc is required for an analogous female character, because, one must assume, “that’s the way girls are.” You’ve come a long way, baby. I guess.) Oh, and there’s also the dog, Ruby, who recently had a litter of pups given away and thus is just brimming with maternal instincts in need of an outlet.

Frank also finds the occasional fossil on his property, which is how our two plotlines intersect: Frank takes his latest specimens into town to the museum, where curatorial assistant Vicki (Colleen Morris) flirts up a storm as they discuss price. It’s right then that Sarno gets back from his south-of-the-border trip with the eggs in a cooler – a cooler identical to the one the Taylors brought their lunch in.

Once back home, Ruby carts the cooler into the house and down into the basement, where she unpacks the eggs and snuggles up to them. (Maternal instinct or not, why would a dog think to incubate eggs?) As they thaw, the eggs grow – a necessity to convince us that the cable-controlled puppets we’re about to see came from those shells – and with a wee bit of cracking, Ruby is suddenly surrogate mother to five miniature dinosaurs: a T-rex, a stegosaurus, a brachiosaurus, a chasmosaurus (kudos to whoever made the decision to branch a little further afield than the expected triceratops), and a pterosaur (which, I am duty-bound to point out, isn’t technically a dinosaur).

“Okay, ONE of these smells like bacon…”

And yes, the dinos are pretty well done from a technical standpoint. They’re all well-articulated cable puppets (the pterosaur’s flying sequences and some other brief bits are accomplished through stop-motion animation) complete with swishing tails and blinking eyes; and if they look a little rubbery, well, decades of dinosaur flicks have conditioned us to expect dinosaurs to look rubbery, right?

Sarno, meanwhile, has discovered the cooler mixup, and is even more abusive to Vicki than normally. He tracks the cooler to the Taylor home, but since Frank still knows nothing about the cooler mixup or the eggs, he has no idea what Sarno is talking about when he demands the return of “his babies” and kicks him off the property.

Once Jerry and then Monica discover their new tenants comes the most painful part of the movie: Naming them. Jerry instantly dubs the T-rex “Elvis” because, you know, he’s The King. Between the two of them, they settle on “Paula” for the brachiosaurus, “Bon Jovi” for the stegosaurus, “Hammer” for the chasmosaurus, and “Madonna” for the pterosaur. It’s like a Who’s Who of Who’s Not.

And when does Dad find out? Right about the time that the dinosaurs learn to operate a doorlatch, let themselves into the kitchen, and trash the joint. Frank shows some remarkable mental acuity as he connects the dots from Sarno to the cooler to the midget dinosaurs, and there follows the ethical heart of the movie: As Sarno is (to the best of their knowledge) the legitimate possessor of the dinosaurs, should they give them back, even though he’s a moneygrubbing weasel who will only exhibit and exploit them to fatten his coffers? (Of course, we the audience know that Sarno’s basis of ownership is spurious, but we can’t very well expect the Taylors to deliberate from information they don’t possess, can we?)

PLUMP. JUICY. FINGERS.

While this is all going on, Sarno’s been busy lessening his moral authority even further; suspicious to the point of paranoia, he’s fixated on Vicki as being the one who engineered his loss, and crosses the line from “verbally abusive” to “downright scary” with her, to the point that she has to club him with a rock to get her car keys and escape. And then she shows up on the Taylors’ doorstep, because she, um, had nowhere else to turn. Because the cute assistant to a museum curator would know absolutely no one except a raisin farmer. (Yet another anti-feminist subtext here: When Vicki shows up and then tries to leave, Frank makes her stay for her own protection – by taking her car keys. Despite the fact that she just had a very traumatic experience with Sarno pulling the very same gag, she’s okay with it here. Is the message that women should consent to being commanded and controlled by men, so long as it’s the right men? Or am I just thinking way too much about all of this?)

Vicki’s joy at meeting the mini-dinos is lessened only by Monica’s new and more pungent attitude (over and above her baseline ‘tude), since she senses a possible competitor for the memory of dear old mother. And you kinda have to see where she’s coming from. At the museum gift shop, Frank was tongue-tied and awkward when talking to Vicki; now, after having taken command of her safety and keeping her at the house overnight (this is a children’s video, so he slept on the couch), he’s now comfortable walking around in front of her in his boxers.

Vicki puts her time into constructing a greenhouse environment for the dinosaurs. But such a stable environment isn’t in the cards, as Sarno returns with two rent-a-thugs, Ritchie (Stuart Fratkin) and Louis (Tony Longo), who are given far too much screentime to establish that, yeah, the pair of them are about as smart as a smoked oyster. Together the three of them hold the family at bay long enough to stuff all of the dinosaurs into crates; then, finding out that Ruby is like a mother to them, they swipe the dog too. And what the hey, they take Vicki too as the terrarium expert.

Painted hussies of a feather stick together.

And Frank responds by… doing absolutely nothing. Well, making some lunch, but other than that he seems resigned to sitting around and picking raisins. Look, I understand that he was on that “respecting ownership rights” side in the debate earlier, but Sarno’s crossed the line egregiously by entering the Taylor home with guns and abducting Vicki and Ruby. Time to stand up and grow some gonads, Frank!

And he does, almost-sorta. Sarno announces in the paper that he’s got an earth-shaking discovery to present to the press on the steps of the museum, so Frank packs up the kids for a trip into town. With Vicki at his side, Sarno treats the press just as contemptuously as he has everyone else he’s interacted with, and unveils a gilded cage full of… Ruby! Vicki’s switched out the dinosaurs when he wasn’t looking, and now Sarno’s the laughingstock. Oh, and Frank also socks him in the jaw. Then the kindly janitor (Tom Williams) who pulled the switch with Vicki helps the reunited family trundle the dinosaurs from their hiding place in the back into the pickup truck, and they drive off into the happily-ever-after of the reassembled nuclear family. The end.

The reason I made a point of detailing the plot right to the end is that it’s that ending which is the least satisfying part of the movie, a sour note that is left to linger. Because, really, what’s been resolved? Frank has manhandled Sarno before; Sarno just came back with guns and thugs, and a gleam in his eye that meant he could have easily crossed the line into cold-blooded murder. What’s to prevent Sarno from following Frank directly home and taking the dinos by force again? He’s not dead, or even incarcerated. he’s got a sore jaw, and a better reason than ever for revenge. At the very least, we should have seen Sarno suddenly confronted by a Central American posse and running for his life.

The unimpressive denouement aside, there are some other unsettling rough spots. One is that Stephen Lee plays the part of Sarno perhaps too believably – instead of just being a wicked but bumbling antagonist, Sarno often comes across as being seriously obsessive and more than a little dangerous, a weighty villain for lighthearted children’s fare. And I’ve yet to figure out why Monica’s boyfriend. Brain-Dead Danny (Gill Gayle) – that’s not my opinion, that’s his name – is given a fare chunk of screentime before fading out of the movie without having contributed in any way.

“I’m warning you! I’m a cartoonishly evil movie villain — don’t make me prove it!”

Despite those complaints, I have to admit that I’ve come to like this movie (or at least accommodate it) more than I did the first time I watched it. Maybe it’s the fact that, in the intervening dozen years, I’ve had children of my own and thus can assess it more from the perspective of its target audience. Or maybe thousands of hours of exposure to unambitious cinema have dulled the edge of my sense of quality. I’m kind of afraid to explore which of those options is closer to the truth.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 0
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • Brett Cullen (Frank Taylor) played “Deral” in the DS9 episode “Meridian”
  • Stephen Lee (Rico Sarno) played “Chorgan” in the TNG episode “The Vengeance Factor,” and “Bartender” in the first half of the two-part TNG episode “Gambit”