By Geno McGahee
“I want to see a monster.” – Clarence (Jim Dunk)
I am a huge fan of stop motion animation. It was very prevalent in the eighties and we didn’t mind. There was no CGI, so they just got these figures and moved them slightly, frame by frame, to give the illusion they were moving. So, the TYRANNOSAURUS REX episode of the Ray Bradbury Theater immediately appealed to me. It was walk down memory lane because it concerned an artist that specialized in stop motion animation. Unfortunately, that is about the only good thing about this episode.
Clarence (Jim Dunk) is a filmmaker with a serious attitude problem and ego. He is making a monster movie and he wants the audience to be terrified. He hires Terwilliger (Cris Campion) after seeing his work with some dinosaurs and his usage of stop motion animation. He offers him very little money, but Terwilliger takes the job for the experience. The experience turns sour when Clarence keeps demanding changes to everything he’s done. He wants the T-Rex to be terrifying, demanding bigger teeth and scarier eyes. The T-Rex keeps getting changed up and it’s never good enough and the complaints from Clarence are nonstop. It leads Terwilliger to do something out of frustration.
On the forehead of Clarence is this disgusting growth. It just looks like a big piece of flesh-colored clay stuck to his forehead. Terwilliger makes a T-Rex with the same growth and makes him fat, just like Clarence, but when the filmmaker sees it, he rejoices. “Now that’s scary!” It soon hits him though that the T-Rex is based on him and he flips, but gets convinced that it is a tribute to him, not an insult.
At the showing of the film, the crowd is in extreme fear…of a Claymation T-Rex that looks like Barney…but OK, whatever. Clarence is pleased and when he leaves, he is approached by a huge group of fans, asking for an autograph. He begins roaring like a dinosaur…for some reason over and over again, at least ending this tale on an amusing note.
Tyrannosaurus Rex is almost unwatchable. If you’re a child of the 80s you’ll find some joy in the flashback to the stop motion animation, but other than that, there isn’t much to this. I don’t get the point of this tale at all. Maybe Ray Bradbury was high when he wrote this one or was getting a BJ at the time. Who knows? Whatever the case, this was not his best work.
Rating: 2/10
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