Hey, during the big dinosaur craze of the nineties, owning your own dinosaur was something almost every kid dreamt of. Owning your own miniature dinosaurs was just the icing on the cake that Charles Band and Full Moon pinpointed with accuracy. Sure “Prehysteria!” is one of almost two dozen films in the Full Moon library about miniatures of some kind, but “Prehysteria!” succeeds in being a novel family film. Granted, it’s cheesy as all hell, but in the context of the nineties, it gives kids their ideal fantasy: Owning and befriending their own pet dinosaurs. Dinosaurs with their own sweet personalities, to boot!
Frank is a widower who spends most of his days with his two kids mourning his dead wife and bringing his dinosaur artifacts to the local museum for sale comes across a scheming archaeologist named Rico who has just discovered a new species of Dinosaur in Central America. After stealing them and bringing them back to the country, a mix up involving a cooler allows the new species to accidentally stow away with the family, while Rico is left angrily looking for them, hoping to bank off of their rarity. The new species is a series of miniature and docile dinosaurs, all of whom obviously win the hearts of the family and become their pets and allies. Meanwhile Rico is out to steal back his dinosaurs, and the family look for ways to outwit the criminals while keeping their friends safe.
Meanwhile there’s a lot for fans of Full Moon’s typical eccentricities to chew on here. The T-Rex is inevitably named Elvis and begins to dance to rock music at one point, the son Jerry is obsessed with Elvis even though he listens to rock music from someone who almost sounds like the artists (obviously for copyright reasons), daughter Monica and her high pitched squeal walk around in short and tight clothing like it’s a Nabacov novel (fuck the dinosaurs, if I had a friend whose sister looked like Samantha Mills, I’d visit him every day just to be around her), she names the pterodactyl Madonna (okay, that’s an apt nickname), and dad Frank is hit on for most of the picture by hot bustey heroine Vicki who divides her time between trying to saving the dinosaurs and trying to bed Frank.
You also have to love Tony Longo and Stuart Franklin both of whom appear as the exact same characters from Full Moon family film “Remote.” Like many of Full Moon’s other titles, “Prehysteria!” is an original and novel concept that banks on the dinosaur popularity while saving money by turning them in to miniatures. Not to mention the dinosaurs have interesting personalities and are often as cute as a button. For a nineties product, it’s a definite Full Moon gem. A definite heavyweight in the Charles Band library, “Prehysteria!” is a cheesy but fun nineties family film with a story that works well within the confines of the low budget. It has its definite appeal, especially to nineties kids.