Sabretooth

Interesting premise, not so good effects. I think they should have used the guys who did the effects for the History Channels Prehistoric Mammals show. And, as usual, really stupid characters...the only one with two brain cells to rub together was the hunter. I kept cheering on the 'cat to kill them all. (Due to the long list of stupidity, I won't bother trying to list them)

Notice the set up for a sequel. "What's wrong? Never hear two cats mating?" Bet that puma was a female.

I only watched this cuz' Josh Holloway ("Sawyer")from "Lost" is in it. Other posters' negative comments are right on & more entertaining than the movie was. The part about tranqualizing the tiger SO INACCURATE!!!The writer should've done research on this at the very least. It'd take an average tiger or black bear 15 min. to go down from a trank gun. This thing's size, if you were to dose safely, might take up to half hr. for it to go down all the way. This movie makes it immediate, and not only that, it wears off in 2 min. ??!?!?!? Plus, the fur just made me feel dirty. It looked as fakey,tangled,fuzzy & worn as a hard-as-sandbag moth-eaten, mildew infested stuffed animal "prize" you win at a carnival busting an impotent balloon w/ a dull dart.

(There are Spoilers) Your usual monster from the past coming to a theater, or DVD outlet, near you with a ferocious 500 plus pound saber-tooth tiger-minus its stripes-being brought back to life via DNA genetic engineering. The two persons responsible for the saber-tooth's resurrection multi-millionaire and presidential hopeful, or so he hopes, Anthony Bricklin, John Rhys-Davis, and his lover and assistant DNA and genetic engineer Catherine Vicly, Venessa Angel, have no idea in what a Frankenstein, or Tony the Tiger, monster they created until it was too late.

With the saber-tooth escaping from his confinement, when the truck that he was caged in overturned, he goes straight into he wilds of the Nortern California mountains and runs into this troop of outdoor guides lead by the beautiful and well built, she has to be in tip top shape for the job she's doing, Casey Balenger, Jenna Gering. Wanting to take the big cat alive both Catherine and Brickin get big game hunter Bob Thatcher, David Keith, to hunt the killer feline down but a with a tranquilizer, not a super elephant, gun.

The killer cat using his superior sense of smell and hunting ability has no trouble at all finding his prey, which seems to be exclusively humans, and in no time at all almost wipes out and eats the entire cast in the movie. Thatcher who's about the only person in the film who has a chance to bring down the saber-tooth is handicapped by both Catherine and Bricklin who want the beast to be taken alive not dead in order to get both rich and farther their careers in politics and science. Bricklin feels the cat, with the money he gets from exhibiting it, will get him elected president and Catherine, in her creating it out of 10,000 year old DNA matter, the Nobel Prize in biological research. The only thing these two deluded lunatics end up getting is having themselves served up as the big cat's lunch and dinner!

***SPOILERS*** Not as bad at it at first seemed with the killer cat after being practically invisible, we only get to see glimpse of him, for almost the entire film coming out into the open and really doing a number, with his foot long canines, on everyone that he both runs and bites into. Thatcher despite his best efforts as a big game hunter is stymied by both Bricklin & Catherine, in bringing the big cat down, who want to prevent him from doing his job not knowing, or even caring, that if he did they would live to see the end of the movie. It was Thatcher who finally put this indestructible killer away not with the modern and sophisticated weapons that he had at his disposal but with what the cave man used to both fend it off and kill it some 10,000 years ago!

Cheaply made Sci-Fi channel time filler which makes both humans and sabretooth tigers look like nitwits.

David Keith and John Rhys-Davies are the only actors who you'll recognize, and for good reason. Everybody else look like they were grabbed from a middle school "Introduction to Drama" course, (which they all flunked). Even Davies struggles with the brainless greedy rich bozo cliché he is stuck with. How Keith kept a straight face amidst all this is anybody's guess.

Somewhere, some scientist who saw Jurassic Park performs genetic restoration experiments or something, thus reproducing the imposing Ice Age beast, big teeth and all. The experiments fail to make the CGI monster look real, or to do a believable level of acting (well, he fits right in with his co-stars in that department). Keith plays a big game hunter who tries to hunt the thing, while your stock group of screaming group of stereotyped teens (nerd, jock, tramp, sexy intelligent girl, oversexed dumbbell guy etc.) camp nearby and say stupid stuff before they take turns getting munched. The hilarious scene of an idiot trying to fistfight/stab the creature is classic.

Good for a laugh only.

Still, it is much better than I anticipated, and a lot of fun to watch as it is pretty much a 1950s B-movie in plot and a 1970s eco-terror film in style. There isn't any letdown in action in this rather compact thriller, and not any moment was I bored. It's also nice to see David Keith use his considerable character-actor screen presence here, playing the part that would have gone to Patrick Wayne 25 years earlier, and doing it well. Everyone else is fairly adequate, though not at all outstanding, and perhaps it's because they're not supposed to upstage Keith and the creature. Though the creature effects are significantly lesser than what we now see from big studio productions, they are as good as many old-school animated or matte-effect creatures from 30, 40, and 50 yrs earlier. In the consideration of the time difference, this isn't much of a complement, but if this film can be enjoyed by a viewer on the level of such b-movies as, say, Monster that Challenged the World, it will be good entertainment.