Warbirds

Amidst the later stages of World War II, a female OSS officer (Jamie Elle Mann) and her crew are tasked with ferrying a top special weapon to a US airbase in the Pacific.  Before arriving however their aircraft is attacked by an unknown assailant and forced to crash land on an unnamed island under Japanese control.  The Japanese soldiers are the least of the team’s worries however, for the remote atoll is also inhabited by Pteranodons, a fearsome band a flying prehistoric creatures that have already decimated the Imperial forces. 

The combination of flying dinosaurs and the horrors of World War II is a heady if nonsensical one, and could only be tackled by the fine minds at Sci-Fi Channel HQ.  The end result won’t win any awards, largely because it doesn’t deserve any, but there are still a number of positives to come out of a premise that sounds disastrous by any standard, even those of SFTV. 

Firstly the attractive Mann puts in a decent performance, given what she has to work with, and both looks and acts every bit the 1940s female officer - the producers certainly didn’t skimp on authentic hairstyles, makeup and costuming this time around.  The CGI is also used comparatively sparely and also looks comparatively convincing, though more Pteranodon screen time would have been welcome.   

And now for the negatives.  The sets are frequently shoddy - the aeroplane itself is straight out of Ed Wood - and the cover art is appallingly misleading, depicting a type of dinosaur, a T-Rex, to be found nowhere within the feature.  Actually, on second thought fuck the negatives.  It’s a WWII film about dinosaurs, no more, no less.  By Sci-Fi Channel standards it’s Citizen Kane, and all budget-related deficiencies aside it isn’t a bad place to spend 85 minutes.