Dine ’n Dash Dinosaur

The ink blot-sized coastal town of Beaver Mills is located in Alaska, due north of the Arctic Circle. This suggests they have the coldest beer on Earth. It also means the sun doesn’t set for the summer solstice (sorry, vampires). And that means the ice caps are melting, releasing the Jurassic contents therein.

A flying lizard dragon known as the Wyvern (dumb name) thaws out and is expectedly peckish. Time for some take out — a fisherman, the town doctor, a redneck… It’s okay to eat junk food every once in a while — just remember to floss.

Once the town’s screaming citizens find out they’re on the Wyvern’s fresh sheet, it’s time to change their soiled britches and make a plan to kill the beast, which has been killing/eating everyone out in the woods, on the highway, and hiding in laughably ironic restaurants.

Someone discovers the Wyvern has laid eggs in the woods and the plan is to use them as bait to murder the all-you-can-eat monster. A showdown between a diesel truck outfitted with Wyvern omelettes and the mad-flapping creature ends in the end of all things prehistoric and 18-wheels.

Wyvern (2009), part of the Man-Eater series, has all the formulaic elements required for a sub-budget SyFy™ Channel time-waster: cliched characters with guns going off left and right, collateral damage and a poorly designed/digitally rendered monster that looks more suited to a video game from 1985 than a TV screen. And while there’s a couple of good gore scenes (bye-bye, arm, head, leg), this thing belongs back in the freezer.

20,000 Fathoms of Fun

Atomic bomb tests in the Arctic Circle defrosts a gigantic reptile creature-o-saurus (official name: Rhedosaurus). This monster is nearly 100-feet long, walks on all fours, has buzz-saw sharp things on his back, is several stories tall, and judging by his diet — shark, octopus, lighthouse, diving bell, roller coaster tracks, humans — is not a picky eater.

Hibernating in ice for 100 million years, the thawed beast travels towards Manhattan, stopping off in Nova Scotia to eat a lighthouse as though it were a sugar cookie. Once in the city, Rhedosaurus wanders Times Square and takes a hole to the neck via a good ’ol United States Army bazooka. (Way to treat tourists, New York.)

Red’s blood emits a virulent germ that contaminates the very streets where people used to live, litter, and now die. Rhedosaurus scorecard: 180 dead, 1,500 injured, $3,000,000 in collateral damage. Scientists determine that if a radioactive isotope can be fired into the monster’s open neck hickey, that might stop him from racking up more kill points.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) is THE monster movie that inspired Godzilla (1954), coming out a full year before Japan copied the hell out of us. Good thing Godzilla was so cool, or else we’d be armed with more than an isotope, if you catch my drift.

Blubbering: The Horror of Whales

Even though it’s universally considered to be an American literature classic, the 1851 Herman Melville novel Moby Dick (or The Whale) was in fact the first “nature strikes back” horror story.

You had the maniacal, revenge-seeking Captain Ahab, the original slasher (except he wielded a harpoon and not a hockey mask and a machete), relentlessly pursing Moby Dick (a name used by more than one male porn star), a gigantic whale that wrecked Ahab’s Sea-doo™ and bit the crazy captain’s leg clean off. (Reports are sketchy as to whether it was his right or left leg. Maybe it was both.)

Just like Victor Frankenstein psychotically tracking his creationist monster through the Black Sea and meeting up in the Arctic Circle for the ultimate pay-per-view, both stories did not conclude well for Ahab and Victor.

So the timeless horror classic is headed for the Imax™ screen in the form of In The Heart of the Sea (releasing December 11, 2015), a movie telling the story that inspired Moby Dick and features Thor (Chris Hemsworth) himself, trading in his Mjölnir (or “hammer”) for a whaler’s harpoon. Not really a spoiler, we kinda already know how this is gonna end up – humans will be recycled as whale poo.

Here’s the plot: “In 1820, crewmen aboard the New England vessel Essex face a harrowing battle for survival when a whale of mammoth size and strength attacks with force, crippling their ship and leaving them adrift in the ocean. Pushed to their limits and facing storms, starvation, panic and despair, the survivors must resort to the unthinkable to stay alive.”

One can only imagine what the “resorting to the unthinkable” stuff is to stay alive. If it’s anything like Free Willy 3: Packed In Spring Water, I think we all know the gory conclusion.