Short Takes

From the same CGI jockies who excreted Python comes another king-sized critter anxious to gorge itself on human value meals. An international prison known as New Alcatraz (the flick's original title) has been built in Antarctica to intern the world's most unsavory folk. Yet beneath the facility, engineering crews are drilling thousands of feet into the ground for no apparent purpose other than to rupture an underground cave that's preserved a long extinct species of 80-foot reptilian rage. Ultra P-whipped paleontologist Robert Trenton (Dean Cain) and his screeching wife (Elizabeth Lackey) are flown in by the U.S. military in what quickly proves a futile attempt to make nice with the beastie who, by their arrival, has munched all but a half-dozen of the prison staff. This means the riotously sniveling warden (Craig Wasson) must turn to wily inmates like Russki hatin' Yuri Brescov (Mark Sheppard) if anyone's to escape with their lives. From then on it's typical "Gotta get from Point A to Point B without becoming snake chow" plotage that's capped by a particularly ridiculous final reel when the big fella decides to rack up some frequent flyer miles. No breasts. 25 corpses. Jet fighter attack. Gratuitous Matrix whip-pan. Critter cam. CGI shenanigans. Gratuitous retinal scan. Comely IRA babe (Amanda Reyne) snarls, "I'd have lesbian sex with your dead grandmother before I'd even CONSIDER the likes of you!" Rent It.

2001, 95 minutes, Fullframe, Trailers.