Tag Archives: Michael Lantieri

Komodo (1999)

''Now,  where is that damned remote?''If there’s a tag-line less appealing than “from writer of Anaconda,” it would have to be “from the writer of Batman and Robin.” But we’ll talk about Lost in Space later. This right here is Komodo, which not only boasts the writers of Anaconda, Hans Bauer and Craig Mitchell, but Michael Lantieri, one of Jurassic Park‘s many, many special effects designers. My theory: the producers hired Lantieri out of some last ditch effort to balance out the lukewarmth of Bauer’s and Mitchell’s script. Or perhaps I overanalyize. Perhaps it was as simple as finding Lantieri in a gutter somewhere, clutching his Oscar. “Hey, buddy, wanna job?” “Sure, man. You pay in cash or weed?”

I kid, Mike. I do. I love the stuff you did in JP. And I love the fact that you conned Phil Tippett (who’s far from extinct) into helping out on this little piece of crap. Without the smooth-as-silk CGI lizards, Komodo would be absolutely unbearable. As it is, Komodo won’t cause cancer in lab rats, but human subjects should beware of the early stages of narcolepsy, which set in sometime around the end of our prologue. {More}