Watching this, it occurs to me that being a janitor in a horror film is sort of like wearing a red shirt on the old Star Trek television series. Pick up the mop and your ass is cat-food. A mauled (and now quite dead) janitor is left behind and we are rolling along, sort of. We have two groups of people in the film. First, we have the campers in training. They are learning the ropes so that they can escort some underprivileged children on an excursion into the woods. Second, we have the scientists who are responsible for our dead clean-up guy at the beginning, in a roundabout way. They are experimenting with a genetic growth hormone that they hope to use to save lives some day. "Need a new heart? Just go and buy one!" Well, it seems that part of the testing process involves cloning a prehistoric animal and feeding it the hormone so that it becomes a monstrous killing machine. Hey, makes sense to me. Yeah.

The campers are supposed to be volunteers but not everyone acts like they really want to be there, so there is some edginess. Looks like the two people who know what they are doing have a little history; a past relationship that didn't seem to work out to well. So there's the sexual tension and dramatic angle. The rest of them are wisecracking, disinterested, city folk who seem to complain more than anything else. The guys just want to get laid and the ladies, well, don't. The scientists were having the creature delivered up to Anthony's (the man supplying the money for the project - played by John Rhys-Davies) cabin in the woods for some reason that I'll never understand. On the way there the attitude having, ask-no-questions driver falls asleep at the wheel and crashes. The beast escapes and makes the driver a midnight snack. Now, when the package doesn't arrive, Anthony and his hot scientist associate, Catherine (Vanessa Angel), go looking for it. They find the wreckage but there is no sign of Fluffy anywhere. It's time to call in some heavy backup, someone who knows what they are doing; someone tough, rugged, manly. Someone who can handle a hunt like this with no outside help. Yep, David Keith! Dave plays Bob Thatcher; he's called in to track down the lost "kitty-cat with an attitude", and also to take it alive. They won't give him the details so he's hesitant. Fifty grand ends his hesitation pretty quickly. We later learn that Bob and Catherine also have a history together - it went real bad. Sure is a small world, eh? If you can get past the hot geneticist-had-an- affair-with-a-local-small-town-big-game-hunter angle, then you're almost home free.

While all of this is going on, scientists getting organized, campers walking through the woods firing epithets at one another, the tiger eats a horny young couple that managed to take a break from… their activities. Who are they? Doesn't matter, grist for the mill, nothing more. The important thing is that this is the first time you get a good look at the titular animal. It jumps up from behind a rock just like a cardboard cut out in a child's pop-up book and sinks back down with the woman in its claws faster than you can say Cat Scratch Fever! I admit that it took some time before I could stop giggling and get back to the flick. Pause buttons were created for such moments, after all. Good thing.

Anyhow, the hunt takes Bob and his group to the cabin where that previously mentioned couple were "getting in touch with nature". Inside are the mangled remains of the man and that's all Bob needs to see to want to call the police. He tells Catherine to call the cops on his cell-phone; instead, she tosses it into the bushes (ignoring the mangled woman who is now bleeding to death at her feet) and pretends that it's lost. Cold woman, that one. Bob wants to call the whole gig off but Anthony says he'll double his fee if they can have twenty-four more hours. He agrees.

Soon, the campers and the "safari" group meet up with each other. Those that remain fight for their lives, in the threatening jungles of Big Bear, California, against the five hundred-pound predator that would rather see them served up on a plate with a side o' corn. Okay, the movie is silly as all get out. Logically, there are tremendous pitfalls you'll have to negotiate. The single moment in the film where I started to sit up (a one on one knife battle against the Sabretooth) was cut very short and, like so many other scenes in the movie, ended up extremely unsatisfying. Anti-climactic is the word of the day here and the dreadful CGI didn't help matters any. The moments where mechanical F/X were used didn't look too bad at all; it's a shame there weren't more of them. Screaming Mad George was in the middle of the list of puppeteers who worked on the film. As for other effects, there is a little gore, but not too much. There is no nudity present at all, which is a shame. I may have poked a little fun, but David Keith does okay, miscast in the part or not. John Rhys-Davies is also a high-point, though his character doesn't really have a place here either. It could have been great. Unfortunately, horrid CGI, a ridiculous story, and a lot of predictable clichés do it in. The energy was there as were a lot of almost-type moments. That was almost exciting, I almost felt suspense, they almost surprised me, that almost made sense, etc. Too bad that 'almost' doesn't count for more. Director James D.R. Hickox is the son of Douglas Hickox and the brother to Anthony Hickox.

A screener disc was used for the review so the specs and extras might have been changed for the official release. Here though, there was a trailer for Sabretooth, and another for the film May.