Saurians Blu-ray Review

Visual Vengeance

Blu-ray Release: April 21, 2026

Video: 1.33:1/1080i (SD master)/Color

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo

Subtitles: English 

Run Time: 77:35

Director: Mark Polonia

When a routine construction blast shakes their sleepy town, a group of locals discover that the explosion has awakened two dinosaurs from a centuries-long slumber, who soon run amok in the local woods on a rampage of terror. (From Visual Vengeance’s official synopsis)

The Polonia Brothers are perhaps the ultimate ‘if you know, you know’ figures in the annals of cult film fandom. Twins Mark & John rose to indie horror prominence as teenagers when their inscrutably strange, shot-on-video slasher Splatter Farm somehow got a nationwide VHS release in 1987. Their biggest hit was Feeders (1996), an alien invasion movie that was miraculously carried by Blockbuster Video. The rental giant was desperate to put anything vaguely resembling Roland Emmerich’s summer hit, Independence Day (1996), on their shelves, apparently.

Ultimately, Feeders was a case of creative coincidence where DIY filmmakers and a major studio production were both drawing influence from decades of alien invasion movies. However, three years prior, Mark Polonia wrote, directed, co-produced (with John), and starred in a project that could probably be considered a proper attempt at making a ‘mockbuster.’ Saurians was completed in 1994, less than a year after Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993) took the cinematic world by storm. The timing of the distribution (not production) is certainly suspect, though I assume that Dinosaurs Attack!*, the 1988 Topps trading card series, which depicted dinosaurs killing modern day humans in extremely violent ways, was also an inspiration (Visual Vengeance’s disc comes fitted with extras that use graphic design inspired by the cards’ packaging).

It’s mind boggling to imagine a time where Splatter Farm got a major home video release, but it at least serves the basic functions of a low budget rural horror movie. Saurians being available to own or rent is far more insane, because it mostly amounts to a very elaborate child’s play session. This is, of course, the appeal of the Polonias as enthusiastic outsider artists, but most normies won’t be prepared for exactly how crude Saurians is. While there are plenty of charming puppets and handcrafted stop-motion effects**, the special effects are, indeed, handcrafted stop-motion, a lot of the dinosaur footage in this movie is literally someone wiggling toys from below the frame. Many children of the ‘80s & ‘90s with access to camcorders, including myself, did this in our spare time. Very few of us self-published retail VHS copies of our efforts.

To further illustrate the utter amateurism of Saurians, there was already a violent, low-budget alternative to Jurassic Park released in 1993. Carnosaur was produced under Roger Corman’s New Horizon Pictures and directed by Adam Simon. Critics famously mocked Carnosaur as a pathetically cheap shadow of Spielberg’s film. If only they’d known that Saurians was on the horizon. That said, Polonia’s film is probably more educational than Simon’s. Likely a dinosaur kid at heart, Mark, via his on-screen character, supplies us with plenty of pertinent paleontology and geology factoids. He’s no Alan Grant, but he’ll do in a pinch. I highly recommend triple-featuring Jurassic Park, Carnosaur, and Saurians someday soon, in that specific order.

* Dinosaurs Attack! was itself made in homage to Topps’ 1962 Mars Attacks! card series. Ironically, interest in the Mars Attacks! and Dinosaurs Attack! cards peaked a couple of years after Saurians was made, in part due to renewed interest in trading cards in general, but also because Tim Burton made a Mars Attacks! film in 1996, which itself was an occasional parody of Independence Day.

** Speaking from experience, 8mm cameras were the ideal way to make amateur stop-motion, claymation, and handdrawn animation in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. They were small, affordable, and could be fitted with a simple frame-advancing system. In fact, when I took an animation class in college in 2000, the school was still implementing them, even though the editing software connected to them was entirely digital.

Video

Saurians was initially released on VHS on the Polonias’ own label, Polonia Brothers Entertainment (PBE) in 1994. After that, it disappeared into obscurity and copies of that tape go for hundreds on the internet. Visual Vengeance’s Blu-ray features a standard definition transfer from “original tape elements” that was supervised by Mark Polonia himself. 

According to Polonia, Saurians was shot mostly on Super 8 film, then transferred to ¾ inch tape and edited/composited using Video Toaster. This included adding analog effects to the dino POVs and titles. The image quality is, obviously, less than spectacular, exhibiting the shortcomings of both the 8mm and video formats. The original film footage is in rough shape with plenty of print damage artifacts and the tape elements have the usual issues with combing, bleeding, and low resolution. If you expected anything more from this particular film, that’s on you, not Visual Vengeance.

Audio

Saurians is presented in its original stereo and lossy Dolby Digital sound. Being largely shot on Super 8mm means that basically all of the audio was added in post, so there’s an uncanny quality to all of the ADR’d performances. Everyone is speaking to match lip sync, instead of inflection and there’s exactly zero energy or volume modulation to any of the dialogue. At one point a seagull is also dubbed with duck quacking sounds. Effects work is similarly uneven, though Polonia puts some effort into filling the aural space with natural ambience. The bouncy synth score is made up of library tracks and sounds a-okay.

Extras

• Commentary with Mark Polonia – The director, along with moderators Matt Desiderio and Rob Huschild of Visual Vengeance, discuss the logistics of making of the film, the technology on hand, collaborating with the cast & crew, special effects, prop making, losing money to a distributor (Rae Don home video, who went out of business before releasing the movie), not intending to rip off Jurassic Park, and the wider Polonia filmography, all with a great sense of humor. I don’t believe anyone mentioned the Dinosaurs Attack! cards, but I admit I hopped around the timeline a bit, so I might have missed it.

• The Making of Saurians (7:18, HD) – A quick interview with Mark and Maria Polonia that sort of acts as a compressed version of the commentary.

• Location tour (4:46. HD) – Polonia walks us through some still photos of the Pennsylvania filming locations as they appear now.

• Tales of the Hunter (4:11, HD) – Actor Todd Carpenter chats about making the movie and his friendship with the brothers.

• Kevin Lindenmuth Interview (7:30, HD) – Lindenmuth, the director of Vampires and Other Stereotypes (1994), discusses his job as independent producer and director, and helping Polonia complete Saurians.

• Stop motion outtakes (3:51, HD) – A raw footage reel hosted by Polonia.

• Raw Super8 footage (8:18, HD)

• Alternate, unreleased Rae Don version of the film (55:53, SD) – This is the original video cut that Polonia gave to the defunct home video company. It’s much shorter, without Lindenmuth’s Yellowstone mudpot footage, a different score, more stop-motion (some of it was replaced with puppets for the final cut), and the final scene is actually used as a framing device.

  • Rae Don cut commentary with Mark Polonia – This time, the director mostly talks about various failed distribution projects (mostly Saurians) and the changes made between cuts.

• Bonus film: The Dinosaur Chronicles (2004, 68:26, SD) – Polonia actually made a direct sequel, Saurians 2 in 2023, which is available on DVD from VV’s parent company Wilde Eye, but VV opted instead to include his third zero-budget dinosaur movie as a bonus feature.

  • Dinosaur Chronicles commentary with Mark Polonia – Guys, I’m gonna be honest, two Mark Polonia commentary tracks in one day was my limit. I’m sure this one is great and informative, like the others.

  • The Making of The Dinosaur Chronicles (4:31, HD) – Polonia explains the origins of the film and utilizing old footage and ideas to make a new movie in order to fulfill a distribution quota.

• Saurians, Dinosaur Chronicles, and Saurians 2 trailers

• Visual Vengeance trailer reel

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