Attack of the Sabretooth backdrop
Attack of the Sabretooth poster

ATTACK OF THE SABRETOOTH

2005 HMDB
July 14, 2005

In the Fiji islands, the greedy and unscrupulous owner of the Valalola Resort Primal Park invites investors and guests for an opening party of his compound composed of hotel and zoo aiming to find partners for his discoveries. When a bunch of college smalltime thieves puts a virus in the security system to participate in a scavenger hunt, the greatest attractions of the zoo - sabretoothes from the prehistoric age developed from DNA found in fossils - escape, killing the hosts and guards for fun.

Directors

George T. Miller

Cast

Robert Carradine, Nicholas Bell, Brian Wimmer, Stacy Haiduk, Susanne Sutchy, Cleopatra Coleman, Bonnie Piesse, Natalie Avital, Natani Talemaitoga, Paula Dakini
Horror Azione

REVIEWS (1)

RG

Roberto Giacomelli

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On a private island in Fiji, billionaire Niles is building the "Primal Park", a large zoo where saber-toothed tigers, recreated in the lab through complex cloning experiments, are kept in captivity. During the ceremony dedicated to the presentation of the park to the financiers, a guard's error will cause the tigers to be free to move outside the cages. The entire park staff, the financiers, and a group of teenagers on a reward stay will find themselves in great danger! Imagine a "Jurassic Park" without prehistoric reptiles, put in their place two saber-toothed tigers and half-recreated with questionable digital effects; imagine a group of actors on the verge of decency, flat direction, and wedding video photography; imagine a slow pace and redundant action that mimics in more points the aforementioned "Jurassic Park": all this is "Primal Park – The Terror Zoo", a TV production that Sony distributes in the home video market. There is a precedent for this film, another TV production, "Sabretooth", retitled in Italy "Wild – Attack on the Mountains" which, despite the classic TV construction and all the limits that resulted from it, managed to entertain and be at least watchable. With "Primal Park", which shares with "Wild" the subject writer and screenwriter, it descends into the lowest category of imitation products, made with a couple of dollars and objectively with embarrassing results. The idea of making a horror version of "Jurassic Park" (which already has considerable horror potential) could also be cute and, if well treated, give life to a fun work; unfortunately, "Primal Park" falls into all the possible mistakes that a product of this kind could have fallen into, starting with a disastrous screenplay that alternates slow rhythms and repetitive sequences with ridiculous ideas that seem written with the intention of parodying Spielberg's film (the park guards who one by one enter the tiger's cage, unarmed and alone, to be immediately slaughtered, is really a bad idea as well as little plausible), not to mention then the embarrassing dialogues that seem copied from a third-rate comic. And what about the special effects that are not special at all? The tigers, when seen in close-up or behind the bushes, are made with ugly stuffed animals, when they come into action, however, are in computer graphics that, although not bad, are certainly not up to the perfect effect-environment integration that has been achieved today. Forget some elements of the scenery inexplicably made in a very fake digital. Actors dogs that do their best to give a minimum of credibility to their characters, failing miserably, and a direction for nothing incisive of George Miller, who has nothing to do with the more noble homonymous author of "Mad Max", but has limited himself in his career to directing small films for TV and some semi-blockbusters like "The NeverEnding Story 2" and "Robinson Crusoe". Some splatter effects here and there, but nothing could save "Primal Park – The Terror Zoo" from the circle of bad home video products. Highly discouraged!