Nostalgia Kinky

An early feature from no-budget trailblazer Mark Polonia, Saurians (1994) is a charming stop-motion animated/live-action dinosaur picture that is as cheap, goofy, and fun as it comes. Recently released by Video Vengeance as a fully loaded special edition Blu-ray, Saurians is endearing, amateurish, and pointedly individualistic. 

Saurians has a plot, but recounting it seems a bit silly. I like how the Letterboxd synopsis is simply, “2 dinosaurs are awakened by a construction blast”. That pretty much sums it up honestly, as a strong narrative structure isn’t what Polonia was aiming for in this backyard 80-minute goof-off. 

Polonia made Saurians with family and friends, just one of the many charming aspects about it. In the wake of Jurassic Park, Saurians is the complete opposite of that corporate juggernaut. This is a film that exists solely out of the creative’s desire to make it. Nobody here has any money, and more importantly, nobody here is looking to make any off this. Just attempting to get the thing a VHS release back in the day was a money-losing prospect. 

Saurians marked one of Polonia’s first non-horror projects, making this a real one-off at the time for the director of Splatter Farm (1987). While Saurians contains some gore for the most part, this is inoffensive as it comes, a film made for kids who’d never see it. 

Saurians most surprising strength is just how downright trippy it is. Thanks to the out-of-synch post-dubbing, weirdly chosen library score, and so much more, Saurians feels even weirder than I suspect Polonia intended. To say this is a great one for evening gardeners is putting it mildly. 

Visual Vengeance has done its usual incredible job restoring and bringing these zero-budget delights to Blu-ray. With this release of Saurians, we get two versions of the film plus hours of extras, including two commentary tracks, new featurettes, archival interviews, outtake reels, and more. Packed with a poster, sticker sheet, and even a Super 8 reel snippet, this reversible sleeve/slipcover package is a real treat for independent film collectors.

A decade after Saurians, the Polonia Brothers return for The Dinosaur Chronicles (2004), a cobbled-together production making the already cheap-looking Saurians look like Apocalypse Now. That said, like the film it now shares a Visual Vengeance Blu-ray special edition with, it’s hard not to have a cheese-caked grin on your face watching this less than no-budget film cobble together a couple of unfinished projects, some original stop-motion, and public-domain footage into this hour-long experiment. Like Saurians, this features a very entertaining commentary track from the nonconformists that made it, as well as a making-of featurette. Ridiculously goofy and hard to resist. 

-Jeremy Richey, May 2026-

Order Saurians on Blu-ray from MVD.