Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)
The Mad Scientist Circus
Then there’s Terry Kiser, who clearly understood the assignment better than anyone else in the movie.
Kiser plays the mad scientist orchestrating the whole brain-in-a-dinosaur operation, and he goes full camp villain from the moment he appears. He chews scenery like a man who once spent two entire movies convincingly playing a corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s and decided, “You know what? This time I’m going big.”
And honestly? It works.
He’s one of the only actors in the film maintaining a consistent cartoon tone. Everyone else seems to be acting in completely different genres:
- Denise Richards is doing tragic melodrama
- Paul Walker is doing teen romance
- the bullies are doing low-rent Karate Kid villainy
But Kiser knows he’s in a ridiculous mad-scientist movie and leans all the way in.
Basically, everyone else is in Teen Drama With Dinosaurs while he’s starring in “Mad Scientist and the Robo-Dinosaur.”
The World’s Weirdest Lab Staff
His laboratory staff also feels like it wandered in from four different movies.
He’s assisted by:
- a computer nerd technician who operates the dinosaur
- a muscle-bound goon whose job appears to be “generic henchman who occasionally commits crimes”
- and a lab assistant who interpreted professional attire as “lab coat worn over nightclub wardrobe.”
That assistant is played by Ellen Dubin, who here is saddled with what might be the most aggressively revealing outfit ever worn in a research facility.
The entire aesthetic feels like the production design philosophy was:
“What do we have lying around today?”
The Pizza-to-the-Skull Moment
The lab scenes perfectly capture the film’s tonal chaos.
At one point the henchman casually tosses a half-eaten slice of pizza into Paul Walker’s sawed-off skull shortly after being nauseated by the brain surgery.
Which raises several questions:
- If the surgery made you sick… why is the skull now a trash can?
- Who thought this moment would be funny?
- Why does the movie swing between horror and slapstick every 20 seconds?
The answer seems to be:
No one ever decided what tone this movie should have.
The Lion Attack That Starts the Whole Movie
We should also talk about how Michael—played by Paul Walker—ends up in that coma in the first place.
Because it might be the most insane inciting incident in any teen movie.
Michael is being bullied by local jerks who decide to chase him with their cars.
Where?
Into an animal conservation park.
Because the natural escalation of teenage bullying is apparently vehicular pursuit through a wildlife preserve.
The park contains lions, cheetahs, and panthers.
Michael runs.
And then he is full-on mauled by a lion.
Not metaphorically mauled.
The movie actually shows him being attacked by a lion.
Which raises an obvious question:
Where did this movie get the money for real big cats?
Because the lion footage is genuinely elaborate for a movie that otherwise looks like it was filmed in a community college parking lot.
Clearly the producers decided:
“Spend the money on the lions.”
The Dinosaur Problem
Unfortunately that spectacle only makes the dinosaur look worse.
Once Michael’s brain is transplanted we meet the film’s star attraction:
An animatronic T-Rex that looks like it escaped from a condemned Chuck E. Cheese.
The dinosaur has human hands sticking out of rubber sleeves, performing feats of dexterity that would impress a pickpocket.
It’s less Jurassic Park and more:
Jurassic Community Theater.
Stewart Raffill: The “Wait… He Directed That?” Factor
The film was directed by Stewart Raffill, which is surprising because Raffill also directed the fairly enjoyable cult sci-fi film The Philadelphia Experiment.
But he also directed Mac and Me, the infamous E.T. knockoff immortalized by Paul Rudd repeatedly trolling Conan O’Brien with the same wheelchair-cliff clip on Conan’s show.
Watching Tammy and the T-Rex, you can see the connective tissue.
Raffill clearly has experience directing rubber creatures.
The Sound Design Disaster
But maybe the most shocking technical flaw is the sound recording.
There’s a party scene early in the film where extras are dancing.
Music is playing.
Except the filmmakers seem to have simply dropped the music under the footage with no ambient mixing.
So the dancers aren’t talking.
And because the dialogue was recorded live on set, you can hear everything:
- shoes scraping
- clothes rustling
- bodies shuffling
It sounds like a high school play where the sound system broke.
The illusion of filmmaking collapses completely.
The Funeral Scene (Which Is Completely Unhinged)
Michael’s funeral may be the most bizarre sequence in the entire movie.
His drunk uncle delivers a rambling graveside eulogy so emotional it makes everyone cry.
Including the dinosaur.
Yes.
Because Michael—now a T-Rex—has come to attend his own funeral, hiding behind nearby trees.
The idea that a dinosaur could discreetly attend a funeral might be the movie’s boldest leap of logic.
The Morgue Shopping Scene
Then Tammy decides the solution to the dinosaur problem is…
shopping for a new body at the morgue.
They literally bring Dino-Michael to a morgue and present cadavers for approval.
Like a department store fitting room.
Michael gives each one thumbs up or thumbs down with his little rubber dinosaur hand.
It’s less science fiction and more:
Build-A-Boyfriend Workshop.
Buck Flower Enters the Movie
Eventually the police get involved, bringing in Buck Flower, remembered by many fans from They Live.
Here he plays a baffled local cop trying to understand why teenagers are driving around with a dinosaur.
At one point he delivers the immortal line:
“There’s that crazy doctor and that lanky bitch again.”
The Dinosaur Chase
Things escalate further when the heroes flee in a box truck with a dinosaur head sticking out of the roof.
This leads to a police chase.
During which Denise Richards ends up riding the dinosaur at high speed, which may qualify for a Filmjitsu stunt award.
The Gore
The gore effects follow a very simple formula:
- Dinosaur bites someone
- Victim holds fake entrails
- Entrails fall out
That’s basically the effect.
But then the de-skulled Michael prosthetic is actually pretty impressive.
Once again:
Total inconsistency.
The Ending
The final scene may be the most insane capper imaginable.
Michael’s brain has been removed from the dinosaur and placed in an electrified petri dish connected to a video camera.
Tammy begins by pouring alcohol over the brain apparatus.
Then she performs a PG-rated strip tease for the brain.
Paul Walker’s voice reacts enthusiastically from the dish.
As the excitement builds…
The brain begins sparking and short-circuiting in apparent ecstasy.
So the film ends with a woman seducing a disembodied brain until the equipment overloads.
The Only Way to Summarize It
Which reminds me of the last line in Don’t Look Up, when Leonardo DiCaprio says:
“We really did have it all, didn’t we?”
Yes, Leo.
Yes we did.
Because Tammy and the T-Rex really did have it all.
Howard the Duck (1986)
1. Willard Huyck and Lucasfilm Origins
Along with his wife Gloria Katz, writer and director Willard Huyck had a pretty impressive résumé before Howard the Duck waddled into theaters. The two collaborated with George Lucas on American Graffiti and later helped write Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They were even brought in as script consultants during the early development of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.
In other words, these were not amateurs. These were Lucasfilm insiders.
And yet, when most people hear the name Willard Huyck today, they don’t think of American Graffiti or Temple of Doom.
They think of Howard the Duck.
And oh mama… what a glorious, bewildering mess of a misfire.
2. The Premise and Comic Origins
Released in 1986 and produced by George Lucas, Howard the Duck attempted the nearly impossible: turning a weird, satirical Marvel comic about a cigar-smoking anthropomorphic duck into a big-budget Hollywood movie.
The character had been created by Steve Gerber in the 1970s as a kind of absurdist social commentary — imagine Mad Magazine filtered through a Marvel comic.
Hollywood’s version is… something else entirely.
3. The Performers Behind Howard
The film stars a combination of performer Ed Gale, who physically played Howard inside an elaborate animatronic duck suit, and Broadway actor Chip Zien, who provided the voice.
Howard begins the movie living a very ordinary life on “Duckworld,” reading Playduck magazine and watching duck television before he’s suddenly sucked through space and deposited in the glamorous cultural hub of… Cleveland, Ohio.
4. The Human Cast
There he meets Beverly Switzler, a struggling rock singer played by Lea Thompson, and her friend Phil Blumburtt, played by a young, wildly enthusiastic Tim Robbins, who seems to be performing in an entirely different movie from everyone else. Paul Guilfoyle, best known as Jim Brass on CSI, shows up – WITH HAIR – as, what else, a detective!
5. The Plot Escalates Into Madness
The plot, if we can call it that, kicks into motion when scientists led by Jeffrey Jones discover that Howard’s arrival wasn’t an accident. A laser experiment has opened a portal to another dimension, and something far worse than a sarcastic duck is on its way to Earth.
Before you can say “What the Duck,” Jones is possessed by something called the Dark Overlord of the Universe, a demonic space entity who spends the third act shooting animated lightning bolts while screaming like he’s auditioning for Ghostbusters 3.
Meanwhile, Howard is trying to romance Beverly.
6. The… Romantic Problem
And let’s be honest here for a moment.
Have you seen Lea Thompson in this movie?
She spends half the film in lingerie, the camera practically worships her every time she walks into frame, and the movie repeatedly hints that she and Howard might actually hook up.
So all those pearl-clutchers who complained about bestiality in a children’s movie?
Well… they might have had a point.
7. Tonal Confusion
The tonal confusion is one of the film’s strangest elements. One minute it’s a goofy family sci-fi adventure, the next minute it’s making duck-anatomy jokes or staging what looks suspiciously like a romantic scene between a human woman and a three-foot-tall extraterrestrial waterfowl.
Who exactly this movie was made for remains one of cinema’s great mysteries.
8. Box Office Disaster
Despite Lucasfilm’s involvement and a budget somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 million dollars — a significant sum in the mid-80s — the movie bombed spectacularly at the box office and was absolutely savaged by critics.
It became one of the most famous flops of the decade and even won several Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture.
9. The Animatronic Nightmare
The animatronic Howard costume was notoriously difficult to operate, constantly breaking down on set. Feathers fell off, the mechanics jammed, and scenes often had to be reshot because the duck simply wouldn’t move properly.
The result is a character that’s oddly lifeless despite an enormous amount of engineering.
10. Ed Gale’s Career
And speaking of Howard himself, the performer inside the suit — Ed Gale — actually went on to have a long career playing small characters and creatures in Hollywood.
Genre fans may know him best as the physical performer behind Chucky in the original Child’s Play films while Brad Dourif provided the voice.
11. The Uncomfortable Real-Life Trivia
Unfortunately, Gale’s later life became controversial after he admitted during an online sting operation to communicating inappropriately with individuals he believed were minors.
Adding to the uncomfortable trivia pile, Jeffrey Jones — who plays the possessed scientist — is also a registered sex offender following a 2002 conviction related to child pornography.
So yes, somehow this already bizarre duck movie also features two actors with deeply troubling real-life histories, which is not exactly the kind of trivia you expect to uncover while researching a goofy 80s sci-fi comedy.
12. Why I Still Enjoy It
And yet.
Despite all of this — the bizarre tone, the sexual weirdness, the mechanical duck, the demonic space monsters, the Cleveland rock-band subplot, and the fact that nobody involved seems to be making the same movie — I remain a fan of this gloriously madcap box-office dud.
Maybe it’s my weakness for cinematic cheese.
Maybe it’s Lea Thompson in her underwear.
Maybe it’s Tim Robbins bouncing around like a caffeinated golden retriever.
Or maybe it’s the early Industrial Light & Magic effects trying very hard to hold together a movie that probably shouldn’t exist.
Is Howard the Duck bad?
Oh, absolutely.
But is it weirdly entertaining?
Also yes.
13. Why Cleveland?
One of the strangest creative decisions in Howard the Duck is the choice of setting.
Out of every possible city on Earth where an interdimensional alien duck could land — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago — the movie picks Cleveland, Ohio.
And apparently that wasn’t a joke.
Director Willard Huyck reportedly chose Cleveland because it had the kind of gritty, blue-collar industrial look the filmmakers wanted. The steel mills, smokestacks, and riverfront factories gave the movie a slightly grimy, working-class atmosphere that contrasted with the absurdity of a talking duck wandering around.
But there’s also a bit of comic logic to it.
The original comics by Steve Gerber were very much about the absurdity of everyday American life. Dropping Howard into a city that felt ordinary and overlooked actually fit the character better than some glamorous metropolis.
Still, when you watch the movie today, it’s hard not to laugh at the idea that the center of a cosmic alien invasion is… Cleveland.
Somewhere in Ohio there’s probably a tourism board that’s still wondering what they did to deserve that.
14. The Surprisingly Good Score
One thing that often gets overlooked when people talk about Howard the Duck is the musical score.
The film was scored by legendary composer John Barry, the man responsible for many of the classic James Bond themes as well as scores like Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves.
Barry approached the movie completely straight.
Instead of writing goofy comedy music, he composed a sweeping orchestral score that treats the story like a genuine science-fiction adventure. At times it even echoes the style he used for the Bond films — bold brass, lush strings, and big heroic themes.
The result is a strange but fascinating mismatch.
On screen you’ve got a three-foot animatronic duck arguing with people in Cleveland.
But the music sounds like it belongs to a sweeping interstellar epic.
In some ways that score is doing heroic work — trying very hard to convince the audience they’re watching a serious movie.
And honestly, it’s one of the best things in the entire film.
15. The Accidental Birth of Pixar
One of the strangest ripple effects of Howard the Duck might actually involve the creation of Pixar.
At the time the movie was made, George Lucas had just completed construction on Skywalker Ranch, an enormous production facility that reportedly cost somewhere around $50 million.
Lucas had been spending heavily on infrastructure for Lucasfilm, including a brand-new computer graphics division dedicated to developing cutting-edge digital imagery.
Then Howard the Duck came out in 1986 and… bombed.
Hard.
At the same time, Lucas was also going through an expensive divorce, and the combination of financial pressures meant he suddenly needed to raise cash quickly.
That’s when Steve Jobs entered the story.
Jobs had just left Apple and was looking for interesting technology investments. Lucas decided to sell off the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, and Jobs bought the entire unit in 1986 for about $10 million, plus another $5 million in funding.
That group eventually became Pixar.
Yes — the same Pixar that would go on to make:
- Toy Story
- Finding Nemo
- The Incredibles
- Wall-E
So while Howard the Duck didn’t technically create Pixar, the financial pressures surrounding that period absolutely helped push Lucas to sell the division.
Why Is This Movie So Sexual?
This is the big one.
For a movie based on a Marvel comic and produced by Lucasfilm, the amount of sexual material is astonishing.
Examples:
- Beverly nearly sleeps with Howard, whose feather’s rise
- Sexy stuff happening in the sauna Howard ends up working in
- The unemployment lady whose butt he almost bites
- a bathtub scene with duck breasts at the start of the film
- a Playduck magazine gag
- A condom in Howard’s wallet
It feels like the filmmakers were trying to replicate the adult satire of the original comic, but the execution lands in an incredibly awkward middle ground between PG adventure and raunchy comedy.
Which leads to the eternal question:
Who was this movie actually for?
Kids were baffled by the adult jokes.
Adults were baffled by the talking duck.
Cherry Bomb songs
The Cherry Bomb songs include:
- “Hunger City”
- “Howard the Duck”
- “Don’t Turn Away”
One thing I’ll give this movie: the Cherry Bomb songs are legitimately catchy. They’re exactly the kind of mid-80s rock you’d expect to hear blasting out of a smoky Cleveland bar. Lea Thompson doesn’t actually sing most of them — the vocals were provided by Holly Robinson, who’d later become Holly Robinson Peete (she’d later become well known for the TV show 21 Jump Street). — but Thompson absolutely commits to the performance.
There’s a little nuance, though:
- Thompson did contribute some vocals and rehearsed the songs extensively.
- The band on screen was largely a real group of musicians assembled for the film.
- The songs were written and produced with help from Thomas Dolby, the synth-pop artist best known for “She Blinded Me with Science.”
George Lucas’s wife at the time reportedly hated the Cherry Bomb scenes and thought they slowed the movie down — but Lucas insisted on keeping them because he liked the music.
Which raises the eternal Howard the Duck question:
Is this a sci-fi movie… or a rock-band movie that occasionally features an alien duck?
Tim Robbins in a Marvel Movie… Sort Of
Tim Robbins plays Phil Blumburtt.
A few years later he’d win an Oscar for Mystic River and star in films like:
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Jacob’s Ladder
- Bull Durham
- The Player
But here he’s basically doing slapstick scientist comedy while a duck fights space demons.
The Dark Overlord Is From a Different Movie
When the villain finally appears, the film abruptly turns into something closer to Ghostbusters or Evil Dead.
It’s such a tonal shift that the movie almost becomes entertaining by accident.
The Special Effects Problem
The film arrived during an awkward transitional era for visual effects.
CGI wasn’t ready yet.
Animatronics were pushed beyond their limits.
The result is a character that looks impressively complicated but strangely lifeless. That said… I kind of love it and I actually prefer it to the version that showed up in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
And the visual effects were positively amazing. With Ghostbusters paving the way for animated lightning and explosions, Howard the Duck took it too another level and even double-down on some awesome-looking stop-motion creature effects.
Great Quotes
While this movie is understandably off-putting for some, I find it enormously quotable. Some of my favorite lines include:
“If you can’t take the heat… GEEEEEEYYYEEETTTTT OUTTA THAT KITCHEN.”
“I think I did too much toot.”
“Space Rabies!”
“He musta ate the chili!”
“Sounds like a bunch a bull-pucky to me!”
“It’s CLOSING TIME!”
Alien from L.A. — Filmjitsu Stat Sheet
Title:Alien from L.A.Year: 1988 Director: Albert Pyun Studio: Cannon Films Budget: under $1 million (typical Cannon bargain-bin production) Runtime: ~87 minutes Genre: Sci-fi adventure / fantasy Star: Kathy Ireland
Basic premise:
A shy, awkward Los Angeles woman named Wanda Saknussemm travels to Africa searching for her missing archaeologist father… and accidentally discovers a hidden civilization inside the Earth descended from Atlantis.
Yes. That’s the movie.
It’s basically “Journey to the Center of the Earth meets The Wizard of Oz meets Cannon Films.”
Both Tammy and the T-RexandAlien from L.A. are products of the same larger ecosystem of Roger Corman-style low-budget exploitation filmmaking, and both movies ended up in the orbit of Corman’s distribution empire in the late 80s and 90s.
Why This Movie Exists
Before we get too deep into Alien from L.A., it’s worth talking a little about the man behind it, director Albert Pyun.
Pyun was one of the great cult figures of late-80s and 90s B-movie filmmaking. Born in Hawaii, he got his start working in the film industry as a teenager, doing odd jobs for productions shooting on the islands before eventually moving into editing and low-budget directing. He had a reputation for being able to work incredibly fast and stretch tiny budgets into feature films that at least looked bigger than they really were — a skill that made him very attractive to studios like Cannon Films, which specialized in inexpensive genre movies.
His breakout success came in 1989 with Cyborg, a post-apocalyptic action movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme that was shot in just a few weeks and went on to become a cult hit on home video. Pyun spent much of his career working in the sci-fi and action genres, directing movies like Nemesis, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Captain America in 1990 — yes, there was a Captain America movie before the Marvel Cinematic Universe — and dozens of other low-budget action and fantasy films.
Alien from L.A., released in 1988, fits right into that wheelhouse: a strange, ambitious sci-fi adventure made on a shoestring budget but packed with big ideas, underground civilizations, and the film debut of supermodel Kathy Ireland.
Pyun remained active in independent filmmaking for decades and built a loyal cult following among fans of B-movie sci-fi and action cinema before passing away in 2022.
The film was basically a production deal gamble
Director Albert Pyun agreed to finish another troubled Cannon production (Journey to the Center of the Earth) for free — but only if the studio would fund Alien from L.A. for under $1 million.
Cannon agreed.
So the movie exists because Pyun negotiated it as a side project payment.
That is peak Cannon Films energy.
Kathy Ireland was cast from a photo
Pyun saw a photo of Kathy Ireland and cast her immediately without a screen test.
At the time she was one of the most famous supermodels in the world.
This was her first major movie role.
She later admitted:
“No one was more surprised than I was.”
The character was changed after she was cast
Originally the role was supposed to be a flirtatious Madonna-type character, but it was rewritten into a clumsy nerdy girl before filming began.
Hence the legendary “glasses + awkward voice” performance.
The movie was filmed in South African mines
Most of the “underground world” was filmed in real gold mines and mining dumps in South Africa and Namibia, which created those strange rocky landscapes.
So the weird brown wasteland look?
That’s actual mining waste piles.
It’s secretly a Jules Verne movie
The story loosely borrows from:
📖 Journey to the Center of the Earth
Even the heroine’s name Saknussemm comes from the novel.
It became famous thanks to Mystery Science Theater
The movie later became a fan-favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mostly because of Kathy Ireland’s famously high-pitched voice performance.
Weird Things You Can Mention
These are great quick laughs during the review.
- The underground civilization somehow has British, Australian, and Swedish accents even though they supposedly lived underground for thousands of years.
- There’s an underground mud wrestling arena.
- The movie tries to make one of the world’s most famous supermodels look unattractive by giving her glasses and frumpy clothes.
- The music reportedly contains a cue that sounds suspiciously like “Yoda’s Theme.”
QUESTIONS FOR MIKE
These are designed to spark discussion.
Opening question
“Mike, had you ever seen Alien from L.A. before, or was this your first trip to the underground civilization of Atlantis beneath Los Angeles?”
The Kathy Ireland question
“What did you think of Kathy Ireland as a lead? Because this movie is trying to convince us that one of the most famous supermodels on Earth is an awkward nerd nobody notices.”
The voice question (guaranteed laughs)
“Mike… we have to talk about the voice. Was that a creative choice? A studio note? Or just the sound of someone trying to act while standing inside a helium balloon?”
The Cannon Films question
“This is a Cannon Films production — the same studio that gave us everything from Masters of the Universe to Superman IV. Does this feel like peak Cannon chaos to you?”
The world-building question
“Did you find the underground world interesting at all? Because the movie clearly wants to be this big fantasy adventure, but it also looks like a community theater production of Mad Max.”
The MST3K question
“You can totally see why Mystery Science Theater 3000 picked this one. Do you think this movie works better as a comedy experience with friends than as an actual film?”
The closer question
“So Mike… between the two movies you had to pair with Tammy and the T-Rex — this and Alien from L.A. — which one do you think was the bigger cinematic punishment?”
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Bottom Five Mad Scientists
Dr. Alex Hesse – Junior (1994)
Instead of doing proper trials, he just goes straight to human testing on himself, resulting in the most uncomfortable pregnancy comedy ever filmed. It’s a bizarre combination of medical experimentation and sitcom logic.
Dr. Goldfoot — Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)
If you want one absurd comedy pick, this is a fun one. Vincent Price as a scientist creating bikini-clad female robots to manipulate wealthy men. A total lunatic.
Dr. Moreau — The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
A classic mad-scientist type: isolated genius, god complex, grotesque hybrid experiments, total moral collapse. In the 1996 version, Moreau has created the Beast Folk in an attempt to forge a “perfect” species, which is exactly the kind of sentence that should get someone’s lab funding revoked forever.
Dr. Seth Brundle – The Fly (1986)
Tests teleportation on himself before fixing the bug problem. When a housefly slips into the chamber, his DNA begins fusing with it at the molecular level, turning a scientific breakthrough into one of cinema’s most revolting cautionary tales about impatience and ego.
Dr. Susan McAlester – Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Genetically enhances shark brains… and acts surprised when they become smarter than humans. Her Alzheimer’s research turns a remote ocean lab into an all-you-can-eat buffet for three hyper-intelligent mako sharks that quickly start outthinking the entire staff.