Wyvern

2009
Written by Jason Bourque
Directed by Steven R. Monroe

Do you guys have those pancakes with chocolate chips in them? Mansquito really turned me onto them…

Wyvern is a generic title for a generic movie about a thawed out tiny dragon that terrorizes an isolated town until it’s killed by a stunt from a 1950s teenage rebel movie. If you think this sound generic enough to be a SciFi Channel (aka SyFy) original flick, then you win a gold star!

Director Steven R. Monroe is a SyFy machine, helming flicks such as Sasquatch Mountain, Ogre, Jabberwock, Mongolian Death Worm, and Ice Twisters. Writer Jason Bourque both writes and directs B-grade schlock such as Beyond Loch Ness, Metal Tornado, Dark Storm, and Doomsday Prophecy. So this are experienced hands here.

The most hardcore rock station Alaska has ever seen!

As Wyvern takes place in Alaska and we got two stars of Northern Exposure in the cast (3 if you count the bloody moose head!), so it is fun to pretend this is sort of an epilogue to the series, especially since I was never that into the show and only casually watched it. So let’s enjoy this fanfic version where all the beloved characters are eaten by a dragon! (Excuse me…a wyvern!)

If this happened more often I’d actually watch Ice Truckers!

The big problem with Wyvern is it is a bit too by the numbers. It doesn’t do anything beyond what it is, a simple monster flick. Now, I don’t expect every film I watch to have all sorts of hidden meaning and cool things going on. That’s why I make up crazy things like the Northern Exposure connection. But I do believe with working with what you have, and that wasn’t achieved, and the film is poorer for it. So what could have been exceptional is instead just average. It isn’t bad, it’s even fun. But it was so close to being over the top, and floundered. It makes me sad just thinking about it. So instead of making frowny faces, let’s enjoy us some monster mayhem!!

Jake Suttner (Nick Chinlund) – Just your average trucker getting over the the death of his brother by killing a giant thawed out wyvern to save a tiny town. Claire (Erin Karpluk) – Owns a cafe and is the love interest, because there are only like three women in this town. Haas (Barry Corbin) – The richest man in Alaska has now become a hillbilly! We’re through the looking glass here, folks! Deputy Susie Barnes (Elaine Miles) – Hey, it’s me, that lady from Northern Exposure you recognize sort of and then went on to do little. Does little here. Vinyl Hampton (Tinsel Korey) – The radio DJ for the local low-watt station that just seems to employ her and no one else. This was her pre-werewolf days, for all you Twilight fans out there. Farley (Simon Longmore) – Local resident who just wants to grill. He plays checkers by himself, and I don’t mean Nixon’s dog. Colonel Travis Sherman (Don S. Davis) – TarsTarkas.NET salutes the late, great Don S. Davis, here playing a complete nutter who gets chomped. There seems to be a lot of mental illness in this tiny town. Chief Dawson (John Shaw) – The chief and the only sensible guy in town. So he’s dead… Wyvern (CGI) – If you think penguins marched, just wait until you get a load of this guy! Wyvern has come out from the ice to eat and eat and eat like some sort of prehistoric jerk!

How quickly do you think we’re gonna die? Very quickly.

I hate it when people at the door look through the peephole!

Up in Alaska, thawing ice releases a prehistoric monster. How come this was never in any Al Gore PowerPoint slide movie? I think we’d see a quick cap on carbon emissions if giant flying lizards were being released to destroy Alaskan towns. Or maybe not, knowing this country! This lizard is a wyvern, who is soon chomping on a fisherman.

The nearby town is Beaver Mills (Heh heh heh, Beaver. I am three years old!), population 307. But everyone except for like 10 people are out of town, but there is also a huge festival in 2 days for solstice, because of the 24 hours of sunshine ending. So they combined the tiny town of Tremors with the festival that can’t be shut down from every Jaws ripoff. Nice. The talk of the town is the new handyman Jake, whose brother has recently died. Cafe owner Claire and Deputy Susie Barnes spend a few minutes gawking at him, but are bothered by Dr. David Yates, who is interested in Claire. Just think of Claire and Dr. David as Maggie and Dr. Joel Fleischman.

Crazy nut Colonel Travis Sherman gets a moose head tossed in his jacuzzi thanks to the wyvern! They killed Mort the Moose! After some filler, Dr. David is chomped by the wyvern while out taking a leak. He didn’t bother to shut the door of his car after he ran back to it. D’oh! Remember to shut the door of your car when a giant flying lizard is trying to eat you, okay kids?

It’s my special cameo role as myself!

Great, this film got an “How To Train Your Dragon” infection. We’re gonna have to clear out and just throw tons of antibiotics at it until something works!

“That ain’t moose muckage!” – Haas upon encountering wyvern poo in the forest.

The wyvern attacks, Haas shoots, Police Chief Dawson hears the gunfire and invites Jake to go with him to check it out (as they are both up at five in the morning and cops invite random civilians along to possible shootouts for some reason.) Haas isn’t dead, but freaked out, and the two take him back to their truck, and then find a severed arm on the ground. It is Dr. David’s arm. For those of you who are wondering. I know it is a lot of you.

Chief Dawson calls a meeting of the whole town (everyone who is still in town, all 10 people total) to say there is a flying predator on the loose, and they start calling it the Alaskan Cockatoad. But that doesn’t sound like a cool SciFi Channel name, so we know it ain’t gonna stick. People are like WTF? because normally the Chief of police doesn’t announce flying predators. The film throws a convention on its ear as the Chief is all about canceling the upcoming festival, but the people demand he doesn’t! Usually it is the corrupt town mayor/chief who wants to keep the festival on at all costs. This time, the people have no one to blame but themselves when they get eaten by sky lizards.

What happens when you mill a beaver, anyway???

Chief leaves because another person calls while being attacked, and Colonel Sherman is spotting the wyvern at his house via telescope. He drives into town and starts ranting about reptilian aliens invading, Susie the Deputy tells him to get some sleep. Chief Dawson finds a mink farm where all the mink are missing and the owners are dead, but he pukes himself unconscious. Did Peta strike again? Colonel Sherman is roaming around trying to convince everyone about the reptilian aliens, but they know that the reptilians live in the center of the Earth (the opening is nearby) and don’t fly, so Colonel Sherman must have hit the sauce today. The wyvern crashes on top of the radio station and menaces the deejay Hampton, but it doesn’t kill her because we still need some babes.

Chief Dawson awakens and orders the festival closed down, and as Deputy Susie tells the revelers, she’s sliced up by the wyvern! Scratch one NE cast member! Then for some reason the wyvern attacks the diner and the main characters inside, instead of the crowd outside filled with tasty extras. The wyvern can’t get in and flies away.

Radio deejay Hampton and local redneck Farley manage to escape the slaughter and hide in the diner along with Jake, Claire, Haas, and Edna Grunyun (an older woman who talks to her dead best friend.) Haas says it is a wyvern, the spawn of Hel (the Norse dude) that was supposed to eat the dead, but got bored and decided to eat live people and then bit Odin, ruler of Vahalla, who banished the wyvern to the frozen tundra locked in the ice caps, aka Alaska. Freaking vikings! Vikings call more SciFi Channel trouble with Thor: Hammer of the Gods, so look out for freaking viking monsters!

Suck it, Wyvern, I got an original Megatron toy protecting me!

Claire and Jake head to where the Chief was, but on the way they see the wyvern, so Jake wants to go get a better look at it. While the Colonel finds a bunch of destroyed cars on the highway and realizes the wyvern ain’t letting people leave. The Chief makes it back to town, but gets chomped before he can do anything. While Jake is snooping around where the wyvern was, Claire stays in the truck, but the wyvern comes and smashes at her. She manages to escape and the Colonel shows up with a big gun. They get back to town and get more guns out of the Chief’s truck. Luckily, everyone knows how to use the guns because its Alaska. The plan is to try to jerry-rig a radio antenna and communicate with the outside. They reach the antenna as the wyvern attacks again, and hook it up to a CB radio. They contact the authorities on the radio, but it breaks up and they don’t get any help. Stupid CB radios. Someone get me a satellite phone! While getting gas for the generator Farley gets sliced up, but not killed.

Back at the wyvern’s nest, Dr. David awakens with one arm, and sees eggs! Great, now Dr. David is going to kill Dr. Richard Kimble’s wife. The wyvern grabs Dr. David and tosses him in front of the diner everyone is hiding in, and then the creature lies in wait hoping to pick off people coming out to rescue the doctor. Wyvern is learning from Vietnamese snipers!

Wyvern angry you didn’t use siding! Look at this awful paint job!

Jake just runs out to grab Dr. David, and to save Jake the wounded Farley runs out to distract the monster. Dr. David is saved but Farley is dead

A helicopter comes to the rescue! And the wyvern smashes it up in seconds! D’oh!

Dr. David awakens and tells about the eggs, then he dies. Jake, Claire, Haas, Colonel, and Hampton arm themselves to go look for the wyvern nest. They see that the nest (made of metal debris) has a generator amongst the wreckage, they start to jerry-rig it up so it will turn on, be connected to the nest,and electrocute the wyvern when it returns. They hook it up, but the wyvern returns before the generator is started and stabs Haas in the chest with its tail, also slicing part of the cables on the generator. Jake goes to reconnect that as the others shoot at the wyvern. The generator shocks the wyvern, but it flies off so the whole thing only annoyed the wyvern for a few seconds! The Colonel shoots two eggs, but Jake takes the third one and takes it back on the pickup truck.

Trumpy eggs have arrived to save the day!

On the way back to the diner, they find more cars along side of road, including the replacement big rig trucker Jake ordered. Jake then takes a GPS and the egg and puts it in the new big rig. The score gets sort of AC-DCish and Jake somehow gets a trucker hat. We’re back in black, people! Jake drives and honks to attract attention of they wyvern. It starts slamming into the truck, then wedges its head into door and gets stuck. What a stupid wyvern! Jake jumps out of truck as he it drives off of a cliff, smashing onto the wyvern and exploding! This is the greatest chickie run I’ve ever seen in a flick. Eat your heart out, James Dean!

Jake heads back to town, and the day is saved. Just in time for the day to actually end! And so this review must end as well. We are older, wiser, wyverner. And though it was fun, it’s time for Wyvern to fade from our minds as the next creature feature begins on SyFy…

What do you mean my Ernest impression is the same as my Doug McKenzie impression???

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