Starring - Madelyn Wiley (Dracula A.D. 2015, Homicide City), Haley Zega (The Night of Medusa, Two Sticks), and Carmen Vienhage (Slave Girls on the Moon, The Night of Medusa)
Release Date - 2021
Genre - Action/Western
Format - Bluray (Personal Collection)
Rating (out of 5):
I find a lot of wild things searching social media hashtags. I hate how quickly a shitty but "extreme" horror movie can pick up traction on social media while unique and original flicks get buried under pictures of cats and anti/pro- Trump memes. A few weeks ago I was browsing my personal Facebook page when I saw that filmmaker Joshua Kennedy had shared a trailer for his new western adventure film Cowgirls vs. Pterodactyls. The trailer had been shared for sometime before I saw it but I still wanted to run it on the site. As soon as I posted it I rushed to his site to order a copy of the film on blu. The day I got it in I immediately gave it a watch.
The film follows a school teacher who watches a prehistoric pterodactyl abduct her husband. When the police refuse to help her retrieve him she sets out to do it herself with the help of a female drunken gunslinger and prostitute to hunt them down and save her husband.
I was really excited to give this one a spin. I absolutely loved the poster for the film and the trailer looked really fun. However, as I got into the heart of the film I found myself wishing I had picked something else to watch. The movie has an amazing idea and I loved the classic effects but the story itself, along with the pacing, makes for an extremely dull watch. The acting in this one isn't what I would consider bad but I do feel that some of the characters were cast wrong. The cast really gets into their roles but I feel like if the lovely ladies just switched roles with some of their co-stars it would have been a little more genuine. I mean no disrespect to the cast. They do a wonderful job but some of the characters felt like a stretch with how the actress approached them. The story for this one is one that I could really get behind but the scenes and pacing is very inconsistent. From my understanding, it took three years for the film to be completed which would explain the inconsistency in the film. It drags in spots and the scenes that actually work for the story could be cut down to maybe 40 or so minutes. I really like the idea but the execution creates a pretty rough film to finish. Finally, this is not a bloody or gory flick but we do get some amazing throwback effects that reminds me a lot of the drive-in era mash-ups of the 50s and 60s. There is a few scenes where the pterodactyls look rough with the edges of the green screen or something showing but overall they look great. I really loved the forced perspective and animation used in the film. Too bad it story didn't work around it a little better. Overall, Cowgirls vs. Pterodactyls is a very underwhelming film. It has all the makings of a modern classic but it falls very short of it's goal. Honestly, this is one I would skip which really pains me to say this.
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