So this is how it begins.

I’ve never been a frequent writer on account of the fact I never got the point. “What makes you think you can critically analyse someone else’s work when you’ve never done it?”, “who gives a shit what I have to say?” or “do you give a shit about what you have to say?” Age old questions that have racked much cleverer and more interesting minds than mine. My answer to those questions is “fuck it”. Nothing more eloquent or intellectual than that. The words that form the basis of this piece are there for anyone to see who cares to, but they are more of a way of expressing myself and sharing my passion for film, cinema and everything that comes with that. Will it be solely restricted to that? Well, I live a relatively mundane lifestyle to most. I’m sure people who’ve stumbled across this blog will be here mainly because of my horror proclivities. That leads me to assume no-one reading this will give too much of a toss about how Burnley FC performed at the weekend or how much I enjoyed taking my dog, Pedro, for a Sunday ramble…

So how did this ramble/blog/smattering of ideas come to be. I recently waded back into the Swamp of the platform formally known as Twitter; X. I’ve been a long time observer from the periphery, careful to not get sucked into the whirlpool of shit, aggression, hatred and bile that seems to pore out of the right wing leaning populace. That is, until I discovered the horror community.

Again as a perennial outsider, I have always struggled to find “my people” as my fiancé puts it. I’ve never been “laddy” enough to be comfortable within the football community. I’ve never been athletic enough to be a proper sportsman and take on all that comes with that. I struggle with reading long books (the irony is not lost on me with subjecting you to reading this) due to undiagnosed but working on it, ADHD. However, being at the window looking into the horror community over the years, it’s clear you couldn’t find a more welcoming, open and accepting group (generally!) than the horror community.

Since the COVID lockdown, I’ve invested more and more time into horror films, books, audiobooks, podcasts, blogs and any other form of media I could gobble up and I felt the presence of the community influencing my way of life. I’ve tried to be more understanding, educate myself and assimilate the culture and general feel of “my people”. Compassion, support, love, brotherhood, sisterhood, community, forgiveness, acceptance. These are the words that spring to mind when thinking of what I see in my adopted corner of the internet. Basically anything a good person would want to be; right?

This is what I feel, fundamentally horror gives us. It’s that reflection of the ugliest parts of our society. We all know the tropes/genres and the cracked mirror they hold up to us as society at large. The big part that I take from the horrifying films and media I consume is how we can combat those real life demons, ghouls and parasites. We don’t all have to be Father Carris and find our faith at the opportune time or Elen Ripley and become a total badass on command. Even just taking daily steps to improve ourselves and just show a little more kindness and tolerance is a move in the right direction.

Anywhooo, that was a lot of words about myself and horror away from the motivating factor to begin writing today. It’s not that I don’t want to write about VHS that I got at the weekend or discuss the most recent episode of Stacie Ponder’s unbelievably fun Final Girl Podcast. I’ve been possessed. Possessed by something that until a few days ago I’d never heard of. It’s gripped my daily thoughts. It’s nestled itself into my subconscious and creeps up on me when I least expect it. It doesn’t quite have me rotating my head 360’ like an owl, or projectile vomiting green scum from my stomach but it has fucking lived in my head rent free.

I have been possessed by the entity called Theodore Rex.

Some of you may be familiar with this particular ungodly entity and some of you may not so I will start off at a base level and work my way up. Theodore “Teddy” Rex is the lead character in the 1995 film Theodore Rex. Until late last week, I had never encountered, seen or heard of this mythical beast. It was mentioned in passing on the fabulous “The Horror Show” podcast. Normally I wouldn’t typically search for a kids film off the back of a throwaway comment on a podcast but the name captivated me. Is this some kind of spin off of the mad 1986 horror film Rawhead Rex?

No. No it is not.

I search Google for the film. I lock onto the post. My eyes turn from confusion to bewilderment to fascination and then lust. I must have this film and I must watch it.

I search around for the film. No DVD copies, no streams available. The only option I can find is a bundle of children’s VHS at £24.95 + postage. I hover over the buy now button but stop. This is insanity. You can’t spend £25 on a VHS for an insane looking film you discovered 2 minutes ago.

I take to Twitter (the only time you’ll ever hear me refer to it as X is at the beginning of this blog or as the final breath leaves my mortal lungs) and within moments one of my kind, friendly and amazing moots (as a slightly older than being down with the kids man, I believe this means mututal’s) suggests trying YouTube. Praise be to “Thing 1 & Thing 2 The Media Maniacs” for their 480p video, enjoyed 51,979 times aside from mine since it’s 14^th February 2021 upload. A very romantic or depressing moment for them I’m sure.

Now before I get into it, let me make it abundantly clear I had zero expectations of this film. Look at that fucking poster. You know it’s going to be dogshit. Part of the fun of crowbarring my way into the horror community has been watching the shit B movies and then listening to the podcasts tearing them to shreds. It always comes from a place of love and that was what I hoped to bring to this.

However, sadly, that cannot be the case. This was the most INSANE 90 minutes of my life and I want to detail it for you. This film cost $33.5m. In 1995. And you can see it. Once you’ve moved past the utterly bizarre opening of a dinosaur having a butterfly land on it’s nose before sneezing (never to be explained or elaborated on) we cut to 1996 Teddy, waking up in full Dickensian night cap. Exterior shots akin to Joel Schuemacers campy and ostentatious Batman sets show where some of the budget was spent.

One place it 100% wasn’t spent is the puppetry suit of Teddy Rex. Jim Henson’s Dinosaurs if you ordered it from Temu. I have a great respect for practical effects and the hard work that goes into it but this just isn’t right. In the same year you could have seen Muppet Treasure Island, a personal favourite, and you would see a higher calibre of puppet and puppets that can lip sync their lines correctly…

Another area the budget got spent up is our lead, the well-loved Whoopi Goldberg. From the first time she flashes her usually warm and captivating presence on screen, it’s clear that she would sooner be bathing with electric eels than be within 50 miles of this set. When I went down the Wikipedia wormhole of this film afterwards, it became apparent that Whoopi tried to back out of this role by reneging on her verbal consent to appear. The production team filed a lawsuit that was quickly settled out of court with Goldberg agreeing to appear in the film for an extra $2m… clearly a huge passion project for Whoopi.

Goldberg, like most sections of this film, is abruptly plonked in the middle of an action scene that doesn’t really make any sense and seems to bear very little relevance to the actual plot. Plot used in the loosest possible sense here. I may have missed it but I got no clear indication of how/why dinosaurs and humans are co-existing in this futuristic closed set. As a kid, I wouldn’t have given a shit and at the age of 33, I still don’t really give a shit. It would have been nice to have some kind of understanding but we move. I try to look at this with childlike wonder, as opposed to a bemused adulthood fever dream.

We move unevenly through a pretty nonsensical plot where some guy has decided he wants to create a new ice age and start his own utopian planet on the wreckages of what remains. Throughout that we have various pit stops at a dinosaur nightclub, a dinosaur autopsy and a high speed chase in a car purposefully built for Teddy to house his tail in. A joke is made about the volume of these he goes through. Like all the jokes in this film, it fails to land.

I don’t think there’s really much point in discussing any of the other key plot points because, they basically don’t exist. Obviously Teddy and Whoopi foil the villain whilst running through the usual tropes of a buddy comedy action film. This is where my morbid fascination and bemusement comes in. This seems to be a children’s film. It’s categorised so on Wikipedia, it’s marketing seems to fit that and quite a lot of elements of the film do too. However, it also has a burlesque style scene in the dinosaur club that shows dinosaurs lusting after the singing brachiosaurus. There is an autopsy of a dinosaur that we previously see face down, dead as a dodo, in a stream. We see casual racism in a scene where Teddy tries on different outfits to go undercover overlayed by a subsequent scene that introduces the only Asian character in the film who is a ninja (no further explanation really provided). We see Teddy launch into a fairly aggressive verbal confrontation, that looks fraught with possibility of a hard F or even C, with one of his colleagues at the police station over the issuing of a new car. A child is locked in a cage with a random chimpanzee that he ends up adopting at the conclusion of the film (again no real explanation provided). We also have a few fleeting suggestions of dinosaur and human interbreeding.

This is all wrapped up in a tone that shifts between zany family comedy, gritty police procedural, sci-fi convolution and general cocaine fuelled madness. Like the appraisal of a lot of critics at the time, this film is an absolute mess. It makes no sense. I can’t believe a production company took on this script.

I may have painted a picture of something that should be a must watch and should be shown in midnight screenings with people dressing up as their favourite characters from the film, shouting out the hilarious lines like “he needs a big gun because he’s a big….guy” but sadly this isn’t the case. When you think that this films main target was children, compare it against similar films that were released in 1996. The amazing Matilda, the brilliant but bonkers James and the Giant Peach, the Glenn Close 101 Dalmatian’s adaptation and even the gothic musical of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. All problematic in their own ways, as we can look at from our 2025 thrones of improved social realisation and consciousness. However they still all have redeemable features; be it great performances, memorable songs or distinct animation and feel.

There is nothing of value here. No real laughs. No suspenseful action. No hint of any positive life lessons you can take from this film to shape your worldview going forwards. Not even would I suggest this as a morbid watch along. This is garbage. The most expensively assembled pile of garbage ever when it was cannoned into VHS bargain bins in 96 as a direct to video flop. $33.5m that probably should have been burnt to at least generate some warmth for some poor soul.

I’m filled with a mixture of pride, happiness and self loathing for having written over 2,000 words about this film. It kind of feels fitting that my first attempt at writing in 10 years plus, is about this monstrosity of a film. I want to try and write about horror and there’s some definite parallels here. It was a deeply unsettling watch. I have thought about it a lot since I watched it, though definitely not in the way the filmmakers hoped. It has however lit something inside of me.

As the film’s shonky and hastily crammed-in ending fades and we pan out to the end of the film, we’re left with a message and a sense of hope. Could Disney maybe buy the rights? They own pretty much everything else and I’m sure we’d flock in numbers to watch a spin off where Whoopi and Teddy continue their adventures through the seedy underbelly of the crime ridden world we only scratched the surface of. The ending of Theodore Rex certainly hints at a potential team up again. Alas, I think it’s unlikely. However, I really hope that myself and you, the reader, can team up again too. I hope I won’t be possessed to write many more blogs on films as shit as this but who knows.

Now though, I can continue my life having exorcised the spirit of this film from the sick part of my brain that needed to consume this. To quote the great Theodore ‘Teddy’ Rex…

SEE YA