Alrightythen. Mindlessly, we soldier forward in our attempts to watch every single Sci-Fi Original movie ever made, and today this journey has led us to the creature feature ‘Mammoth’! The thing is I actually saw this movie back in 2006 when it first aired, something I didn’t realize until it started playing and certain things were looking a little familiar to me. But for some reason I didn’t write anything about it back then. Probably because the FCU was just getting started, possibly because Mammoth was terrible, and possibly because my foolish obsession with terrible Sci-Fi original movies had yet to manifest itself as of yet. Note to self: After you finish watching a movie, Christopher, write something so this will never happen again. But it wasn’t all that bad really, to be honest with you, all things considered, depending on how you look at it.

Dateline Louisiana… or Romania… what’s the difference really? Ultra nerdy museum curator Dr. Frank Abernathy (Vincent Ventresca) has spent the last five years researching his museums prize possession, a completely intact, frozen wooly mammoth from the ice age. He’s also been spending the last five years being a lousy dad to his teenage daughter Jack (Summer Glau), but that’s neither here nor there right now. The issue right now is that Jack has found an odd device embedded in this frozen mammoth, and when he pulls it out it broadcasts some space waves which activates a space beacon which descends upon this museum in the form of a meteorite and reanimates this wooly mammoth. This mammoth proceeds to stomp a security guard, suck out this guards lifeforce through its trunk, and then like a ninja stomp out of the museum completely undetected. Only in Louisiana.

Frank thought that the meteorite just disintegrated the mammoth, but when the Black People in Black showed up, we all know something’s up. Agents Whittaker (Marcus Lyle Brown) and Powers (Leila Arcieri), members of the secret Government space creature organization, know the lowdown, like this giant mammoth was reanimated by an alien lifeforce and is running around town eating people, and they need the resident mammoth expert to help them catch the damn thing or this town is gonna get nuked. First though, they need to retrieve his teenage daughter from that rave party she snuck

out to with her boyfriend Spanky (Cole Williams). Note that Summer Glau is supposed to be sixteen in this movie, but when she did her LSD, I’m on ecstasy, tripped out sexy dance, brought about by music her boyfriend Sparky let her listen to, since this a family friendly movie, that’s not the way most sixteen year old girls move. Heck, that’s not the way most women move period. Completely destroyed the illusion of Summer being sixteen in this movie. Also, actor Marcus Lyle Brown was decapitated in this movie. I think this is the fourth or fifth time this I’ve seen this brother decapitated in a Sci-Fi movie. At least he works steady.

That nonsense aside, we need to stop this Mammoth because it’s sucking life forces and causing a ruckus. Not to mention the whole nuke thing. So Frank, his nutty UFO enabled father (Tom Skerritt), the hot daughter who’s not really a teenager, the hotter agent who somehow keeps losing various outerwear as this movie goes on, and Spunky the boyfriend have to stop the alien monster before it’s too late. Too late for what… I really don’t know. They might’ve told me but then Leila Arcieri started bouncing around in a tank top two sizes too small and I got distracted.

There’s a couple of things that set director Tim Cox’s movie ‘Mammoth’ apart from the rest of the ‘Sci-Fi’ animals gone wild crowd, for one the monster isn’t a reptile. No boa’s or crocs or gators are dinos spliced with gator croc DNA in this one. It does encroach a little on the hot property of a screenplay I’ve been developing for the last fifteen years ‘Elephantosaur’, but an angry elephant is a refreshing change. Secondly this one has its tongue firmly in its cheek as it attempts to riff off of those cheesy fifties styled monster flicks from way back. This is all different, and different is appreciated when it comes to the much maligned Sci-Fi original.

Still, different doesn’t necessarily mean good we have to say. The goofy nature of the film doesn’t really work all that well, since rare was time the time we actually managed to laugh from the plethora of the goofiness. It happened on occasion, but it was rare. The mammoth itself looked like ass, but not complete and total CGI ass since the filmmakers were smart to keep it and the humans separated at almost all times. The acting was decent enough, particularly Leila Arcieri and the unique and visually exciting skill set that she brings to the various roles she chooses to accept, but Tom Skerritt acted out each scene like he couldn’t wait for a break so he could jump on his mobile and cuss out his agent. Still, the ninja enhanced CGI wooly mammoth was kind of cool since it had this special ability to sneak up on people and gore them to death, despite the fact it shook the ground on almost step, smelled funny, and howled incessantly. Plus the cast, at least those not named Tom Skerritt, seemed to be having a good time with this movie. We must say that watching Spiffy get gored was especially heart wrenching since he was just moments away from tagging the hot daughter for the very first time. How unjust is that?

Since I obviously have a lot of time on my hands, I think I’m going to numerically arrange all these Sci-Fi movies in some kind of order. It’s early, but early I think ‘Mammoth’ just might be in the top 100. Of course I’ve only seen 102 of the 230 and counting that are out there as of this writing, but we’re going to stay positive about this.