“What do you think, sirs?”

Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment, but I having something of an affinity for cheesy B-movies. I probably acquired the taste during childhood, when Jaws II, III, IV, and most of the Godzilla series would be playing on any given weekend, and even though I would be hard pressed to give any of the movies more than 2 stars out of 5 I do like turning down the lights, grabbing some popcorn, and sitting down to watch something that I know is going to be nearly painfully bad. There are a few exceptions, a few creature features that stand out from the rest (i.e. Alligator, The Host), but by and large the films trigger plenty of unintentional laughs and are best viewed with someone who has a good sense of humor (and if you don’t believe me, obviously you’ve never seen MST3K).

Hence, I have a bit of a proposal for my regular readers. I’ve been trying to think of a weekly feature for Laelaps for quite a while, ranging from “Fossil Fridays” to featuring a different mammalian carnivore every week, but as I was looking up information for the upcoming Aussie horror film Rogue, I thought I would put my slowly expanding collection of creature flicks to use. There’s certainly no shortage of them, the number of killer crocodilian films alone would probably keep me busy for a few months, so every Friday I’ll write up a little review of one schlock film or another, mostly focusing on “revenge of nature” type films. In fact, I’ll probably start today after I get the chance to watch a stinker called Raptor Island. It’s got Lorenzo Lamas of “Renegade” fame in it, so I’m sure it’ll be a painful one, and if you want to join in on the discussion the movie is actually available for free online. Apparently the film was followed by a sequel entitled Planet Raptor, but that bit of movie cheese will have to wait for another time.