Film Review: ATTACK of the SABRETOOTH (2005)

Someone recently asked me why I review these types of films '" straight to cable/t.v. or DVD films, because generally speaking, most of them are horrible to mediocre at best. They are designed to barely register as entertainment but if they simply entertain (despite the meager budget, subpar SFX, and borderline bad acting) then maybe an audience can find a way to be entertained, at least for the ninety minute running time. I sometimes come across a few that defy the odds but this film Attack of the Sabretooth (2005) is not one of them.

I was interested in the film's premise as it was a knock off of Jurassic Park with a philanderer trying to raise money for the island theme park that will showcase the extinct and deadly sabretooth tiger. On the day of a huge event for potential investors a group of college students infiltrate the island to get some items for a scavenger hunt and in so doing accidently let the three tigers in captivity lose.

The film has two things going for it '" one is the amazing idea to set the film on an island and second the presence of Robert Carradine. Too bad both are wasted. I was all set to sit back and watch some island local in the film. I'm so over the low budget films that take place in the woods, take place in a cabin (house) in the woods, or takes place all in one location, so when I heard that this film's location was an island I got my hopes up just a little. I'm always impressed with Carradine because it is so easy for him to flip flop between genres and can easily play off any other actor (which by the way he does very well in this film) but he only has interactions with two other actors in this film and never becomes an integral part of the film itself. He plays a competing philanderer.

Now that you know the good -- or better yet mediocre, here's the rest. The film makes no use of the location limiting much of the film to three deaths in the exact same area of woods (all at different points in the film), even more scenes in a security office (another horrible location), and the rest in a bunch of corridors that all look the same no matter how they are redressed. I could say that the CGI was at least passable but the production does a horrible service to the film with the addition of a mutated sabretooth that just looks atrocious in addition to several deaths that look horrible with the CGI or were filmed off screen.

If these films can't at least cater to the audience that they are aimed at then they shouldn't be made. The typical viewer of these films (and I do include myself) should be entertained with a story (that although may not be too original) should at least go the distance in terms of horror (and if not horror then gore) and deaths that we haven't seen done a million times before. The film should let genre vets like Carradine chew the scenery (like Samuel L. Jackson does in all his films) and have fun and when they die (which they always do) we should cheer them on and be impressed (think Jon Voight in Anaconda or Jackson in Deep Blue Sea). If the film can't do one or more of these then what good is it really?