Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

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If you’re in the mood for a campy ‘so bad, it’s good’ kind of movie, look no further than Tammy and the T-Rex, a goofy abomination of a movie that seems to be gleefully aware of how ridiculous it is. Denise Richards (Starship Troopers) stars as a high schooler whose boyfriend, played by Paul Walker (Fast and the Furious), is left for dead by a jealous ex, only to be finished off by a mad scientist (Weekend at Bernie’s Terry Kiser) who transplants Walker’s brain into an animatronic T-Rex. Yes, Tammy and the T-Rex becomes a love story between a girl and a mechanical dinosaur, as Richards tries to find a new body for her boyfriend before the scientist can recapture him.

Part of the fun of this movie is how seriously Richards plays her part, shedding tears for, sleeping with, and even riding her robot dinosaur lover. At the other end of the spectrum, Kiser and his hench people (including Children of the Corn‘s John Franklin) are suitably over-the-top. Theo Forsett puts them to shame as Richards’ stereotype-embracing gay best friend. The budget-value dinosaur effects bring additional comic charm, as do a handful of cartoonishly gory death scenes when the T-Rex exacts revenge on the bullies who killed him.

Tammy and the T-Rex is gloriously absurd, gloriously direct-to-video, and genuinely funny at times. My favorite scene is when the T-Rex waits outside while Richards and Forsett hunt for a fresh new body at the morgue. They drag different corpses to the window to see if the T-Rex likes any of them. Most of the bodies get a thumbs down, but for a moment, both Richards and the dinosaur consider a hot young blonde.

Directed and co-written by Stewart Raffill (Ice Pirates, Mac and Me).