Search - Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills on DVD

Troma Rules, but this ones a miss

sammyshoeshine | 10/22/1999

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I love Troma as a film studio and I enjoy a lot of their other films, yet this ones a miss. Its about a woman who turns into a pterodactyl. and thats it. its mildly entertaining, but not up to Troma standards. the funniest thing in the movie is Salvatore Dali, an indian cheif with an attitude."

"This Is The First Talking Pterodactyl From Westwood With Ve

Robert I. Hedges | 07/28/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I know that "Pterodactyl Woman From Beverly Hills" sounds like the perfect movie. Underneath that utterly engaging title is a plodding film that drags through the gags. It's an atypical Troma film (although it has the standard, if unconventional, introduction by Lloyd Kaufman) that is half about relationships centered on a narcissistic family, the Chandlers, who live in Beverly Hills, and half about Pixie Chandler (Beverly D'Angelo) being turned into a pterodactyl. An explanation is in order.

Dick Chandler (Brad Wilson) is a paleontologist on a dig in the desert, when he makes the discovery of his career: a dinosaur egg. As soon as he sees it, a mystical witch doctor named Salvador Dali (Brion James) who warns Chandler and his assistant that if he disturbs the egg he will turn Chandler's wife into a pterodactyl, but, conveniently to the storyline, the spell will only be intermittent. When they proceed, he also turns the assistant into a lizard. All this brings to mind one question: what paleontologist can afford a mansion in Beverly Hills?

Shortly after the spell is cast Pixie begins behaving badly, first undergoing a behavioral transformation in a disturbing aerobics workout, and later dogfighting with an F-117 stealth fighter over Westwood. Pixie becomes more and more a pterosaur (the bedroom scene is particularly ludicrous) and eventually becomes pregnant: Dick is delighted when she delivers a bouncing baby egg. Mixed in with all this are a bunch of very slow family dramatic-comedy subplots that go nowhere, and don't get any laughs either. In short, the middle thirty minutes of the film are boring. Eventually the egg hatches into a rubber pterodactyl baby leading to a bunch more whiny interpersonal comedy involving a government agent who needs the pterodactyl baby for national security purposes, a dimwitted neighbor who wants to run for Congress and wants Pixie to be her manager (even if she is a pterosaur), and Sam, a shaman of some sort (who is himself also a part-time pterodactyl). It's slow going.

Finally the whole cast goes on a trip through a "paradigm shift" to "the land of special effects" where they meet a lot of stop-motion dinosaurs from the classic B-movie "Planet of the Dinosaurs", demonstrating once again that it's always a bad idea to put scenes from a better movie into your bad movie. With help from Pablo Picasso (Ron Soble) and Sam, Salvador turns Pixie back into a human, and they, in turn, give Salvador the baby pterodactyl to keep in his special effects sanctuary.

The premise of the film is great, and I was looking forward to seeing what Phillipe Mora could do with that premise. I enjoyed some of the more surreal elements of the film, finding Brion James, the peculiar character names, and Pixie's revulsion at chicken feet as particularly amusing. On balance, though, this is a movie that had too many disconnected subplots that really contributed nothing but running time to the final product, and it fizzled quickly. It has it's moments, but they're few and far between. The DVD comes with some extras, notably trailers for other Troma movies and one unbearable music video. Troma fans may like this, and doubtless some people will find the humor more entertaining than others, but I wouldn't make this a priority to see. I gave it two stars, the second of which is for somewhat effectively satirizing mindless, self-indulgent upscale California culture."