Ever since John Hammond opened his gates for that fateful test viewing of his Saurian safari park back in 1993, Jurassic Park has become synonymous with hideous fails of health and safety protocols that usually result in a fatal case of chewing for anyone caught out by the various, toothy bastards that stalk around the place openly the second the power goes down.
But as we await Colin Tevorrow’s incoming dinosaurs-loose-in-the-world epic, Jurassic Park: Dominion (can’t blame things on park failure if there is no park, I guess), the question remains: of all the intestinal tract related deaths that’s ever traumatised an audience, which ones where the most disturbing?
Join us now as we search for the nastiest JP exit that the dino-franchise has to offer – and as we do so, try to keep an eye out for any additional attacks that may come from the side, from the two other moments you didn’t even know were there….
5) Dining On Dieter (The Lost World: Jurassic Park – 1997)
Usually, when a character tags out early in a Jurassic Park flick, it’s because some poor soul has wandered into the path of a bloody great lizard that’s noticably bigger than them. However, on The Lost World, that cheeky innovator of the truly hideous PG death known as Steven Allan Spielberg decided to keep things varied by taking the odious, wood chipper using Gaear Grimsrud from Fargo and having him picked apart by tiny, ravenous, murder lizards.
Heavily portented by both an opening scene where a young girl is swarmed by a vicious band of Compsognathu and a later scene where Peter Stormare’s sneering hunter Dieter Stark foolishly Mark’s himself as a chewed man walking by zapping one of the little buggers with a taser, the thuggish oaf finds himself separated from his group of bedraggled survivors and is immediately beset by dozens of instances of karma as the “Compys” contine to pile onto him like a flock of reptilian piranha. Drawing genuine winces from the audience as one particularly ballsy dino gnaws in its victim’s upper lip, Stark repeatedly fighting them off only to find out they don’t really take a hint particularly well and they relentlessly dog him until, exhausted, he collapses behind a log. We hear his screams as the little shits tuck into him like he’s a giant, sweaty, stubbled thanksgiving turkey as blood trickles out through a small stream as Spielberg let’s our overactive imaginations take the strain.
The fucking sadist.
4) T-Rex For Two (The Lost World: Jurassic Park – 1997)
We’ve seen Jurassic Park’s mascot species crunch down on victims before and we’ve seen her do it since, but what makes this particular instance of traumatic swallowing so memorable is the stupidly tense hullabaloo that leads up to it.
Allow me to paint the scene: Ian Malcom, Sarah Harding and Nick Van Owen are all dangling off the side of a cliff thanks to some overzealous helicopter parenting by a couple of T-Rexes has lead to their mobile command centre being rammed into disaster and as they dangle for their lives, gadget man Eddie Carr roars in with a jeep to save the day. After a couple of close calls, Eddie manages to hook the precariously balanced trailer to his vehicle, slams it into reverse 4-wheel drive, and starts to drag his friends back up to salvation – but here’s the rub: if Eddie takes his foot off the gas, everyone plummets to their doom and the roaring of his Joe’s overtaxed engine has lured the Rex parents back into the area.
From here we are presented with a sequence where the two dinosaurs rip Eddie’s vehicle to pieces around him while he has no choice by to stay put and keep his foot on the gas a d eventually, the wannabe hero is wrenched from the wreck and torn in two. Ever for a franchise that’s got a rep for being pretty cruel to its supporting cast, this one is pretty cold blooded as Eddie’s sacrifice has him as the spaghetti as the two Rex’s use him to homage Lady & The Tramp in the absolute worst way possible.
3) Crapper Snapper (Jurassic Park – 1993)
We now go from the lethal jungles of Isla Sorna to the paddocks of Isla Nublar as we shift our focus to the dino-related atrocities of the OG Jurassic Park and in particular, the death of shifty lawyer type Donald Gennaro.
After the park’s entire security system is brought down by a greedy employee (if you hire Newman from Seinfeld to do your I.T., then you’d better expect shenanigans), the tour party inconveniently grinds to a halt right next to the Rex’s bachelor pad that comes complete with bleating goat and an electric fence that’s about as formidable as a bullet proof vest made out of sponge cake. Sure enough, the Rex makes her presence known by first inhaling the goat and then trying to get cat the two, dumbass kids who’s picked that exact moment to screw around with a flash light, but they’re only being terrified idiots thanks to their protective adult figuratively soiling his shorts and making a snivelling bee-line straight for the nearest gents. Bad choice lawyer-man, because when a valiant attempt by Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm to save the children results in the Rex smashing up the rest room, Gennaro is left sitting utterly exposed in the rubble on a porcelain throne for a couple of beats before the bemused Rex takes the initiative as she snaps her screaming morsel up in her jaws and proceeds to turn him into a future trip to the loo for herself.
Dignity need not apply.
2) Taking A Bad Rap (Jurassic Park – 1993)
While the Rex is undeniably the true hero of Jurassic Park, snapping at it’s heels (often literally) is the magnificent beast that is the Velociraptor. Virtually unheard of before the original movie made the hook-toed lizards superstars overnight, you’d be hard pressed to find a better showcase for the terrifyingly cerebral predators than the genuinely cruel demise of big game hunter Robert Muldoon and it eerily mirrors the speech Alan Grant uses to teach a fat kid to respect these lethal bastards earlier in the film.
Trapped out in the open with Raptors lurking somewhere in the jungle like shifty teenagers, Muldoon tells Ellie Statler to make a break for it, thinking that he’s managed to spot one of the creatures hiding among the leaves. “I’ve got her!” he whispers as he slowly creeps toward his prey as he unslings his shotgun, blissfully aware that thanks to that earlier monologue, we know exactly what’s about to befall him and sure enough, as he draws a bead on the overgrown death-gecko, out pops another Raptor that he didn’t even know was there. He has just enough time to utter a single, deeply iconic line (“Clever girl…”) before the claws of the beast drives home just how badly he’s fucked up and as his death is just obscured by branches, his blood-curdling screams are observed by the first Raptor, who sits there like the smug little bitch she is.
The Jurassic franchise has been a brand leader in bowel flipping, “oh shit” moments since the second the first movie spooled through a projector and the moment that that scaley snout peeks through the foliage may rank as the best.
1) The Legend Of Creepy Swallow (Jurassic World – 2015)
I have to be honest, it was almost a clean sweep for Spielberg, as the man’s aptitude at staging an epic and memorable “Nomming” is second to none, however, pulling off the biggest upset in 65 million years (give or take) is Colin Tevorrow and Jurassic World – but he couldn’t have pulled it off alone…
The fateful meeting betwixt impatient assistant Zara Young and 14,000 kg of the aquatic nightmare known as the Mosasaurus takes a little while to set up, sonnets skins the cliff notes and go straight for the chomping. After floury skinned, genetically modified, dino-nutter, the Indominous Rex, manages to free an aviary full of rambunctious pterodactyl, they make a bee-line for Jurassic World’s Disneyland style main street an start causing havoc. One of the more noticable victims is poor Zara, who pays for being a bit snooty by being hauled way up into the air by the talons of an overzealous Pteranodon who then immediately drops her into the huge tank that contains the sea-beast that swallows sharks the size of Bruce from Jaws as a light snack. However, as the shrieking, gangly flying dinosaur tries to haul its wriggling prey clear of the water, the Mosasaurus, right on cue, explodes out of the water like a bullet with an over bite and crunches its jaws shut on the Pteranodon while swallowing poor Zara whole. It’s an utterly stunning moment of unrestrained nastiness as a side character who hasn’t done anyone any harm – apart from being on her phone a lot and maybe being a bit snide – scores herself possibly the most haunt-your-waking-moments screen death available.
However, if you wanna dig a little deeper and really make the moment even worse; sharp eared viewers can pick out the reason she’s on her phone, which is that she’s making calls about her engagement and is most likely trying to plan her upcoming wedding – so her payment for trying to organise the happiest day of her life is to look after a couple of bratty kids, get bad-touched by a flying screech-lizard and then abruptly end her days suffocating/drowning somewhere in the thorax region of a conscience-free, sea monster.
Jesus Christ, Trevorrow…
Jurassic World: Dominion takes a bite out of cinemas June 10th
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