As another in the long line of shitty Sci-Fi Channel original movies, Manticore suffers from the same problems most of them tend to: it's low-budget and it shows (this is most obvious when you look at the sets created to emulate a small Iraqi village), it sports some pretty lousy CGI effects for the title beast, and it tends to fall apart in the last third. It's pretty much what you'd expect, by now, from movies debuting on the cable network. This is the kind of garbage they've been peddling to desperate horror/sci-fi fans for years and continues to prove that the suits in charge are pouring most of the channel's production monies into their popular re-invention of the Battlestar Galactica franchise.

Just what is a Manticore you might wonder? Well, from what I can make-out of the muddled creature design, it looks to be a crusty looking lion that just happens to have dragon-like wings on its back and a tail that looks (and attacks) like that of a scorpion. It's one messy beast and while it looks like the creature designers were trying to have a unique monster they instead shot themselves in the foot by making it look like a failed play-doh experiment.

But things really don't start off that badly, to be honest. Some American soldiers led by Sergeant Baxter (Robert Beltran) are patrolling the Iraqi desert and are sent in to investigate reports of a bombed-out museum being robbed. They soon run into some insurgents, which gives us our first minor action sequence as a firefight follows (and director Tripp Reed shakes his camera around vigorously while the action is blurred). At about the same time two petty crooks have stolen an ancient medallion which baddie Umari (Faran Tahir) intends to use to take back the land.

Seems the medallion has the power to unleash the mystical Manticore but things don't go as planned as the ritual to perform this task does bring it back, but they're unable to control it. It soon escapes and starts to wreak havoc at a nearby town.

Baxter and his squadron find themselves back in action not long after their shoot-out as their commanding Major (played by B-movie staple Jeff Fahey) sends them on a mission to track down missing American reporter Ashley Pierce (Chase Masterson) and her cameraman. Unluckily for them, they happen to be at the town where our Manticore has been unleashed and the rest of the movie has our soldiers fighting off the creature while John Werner's minor script under-develops a secondary villain with Tahir's character.

Manticore is a good example as to why made-for-television movies just aren't as popular or common as they used to be. Back when I was a youngster you could be guaranteed that there'd be a few TV movies per week and there was always some "event" mini-series set to debut. Now, thanks to the low cost of reality shows, such things are few and far in-between and they're usually made on the cheap (like all of Sci-Fi's efforts) and complete crap to boot. It's a shame really as even some of the weaker telefilms of old (The Savage Bees, to name one) were still more watchable than almost all of the ones airing on Sci-Fi.

For the first half, this really isn't that bad as it benefits from being set in a location you don't see often in this type of movie, we get some mildly enjoyable attack scenes which wisely leave the creature to quick cuts (and gives us a few ripped-up bodies), and there's generally acceptable performances on hand, but once the finale rolls around is when Manticore really shows off its mediocrity. To say the last third is pretty terrible would be an understatement as the junky CGI effects take centre stage and there's some groanable hokum about the creature's reflection turning it to stone. Let's just say almost all of my goodwill towards this was sucked away during the last half-hour and leave it at that.

Beltran is as bland as can be in the lead and would follow this with more monster mayhem in Cry Of The Winged Serpent and Fire Serpent, Fahey simply seems to be here to cash a paycheck, and Donahue (The Blair Witch Project) makes no impression as the only female squad member, Corporal Keats. In anyone gives an okay performance it's Star Trek: Deep Space Nine veteran Masterson who plays bitchy pretty good as our career driven reporter. Director Reed would go on to direct both direct-to-video sequels to 2004's Walking Tall remake. (Chris Hartley, 12/3/07)

Directed By: Tripp Reed.
Written By: John Werner.

Starring: Robert Beltran, Heather Donahue, Chase Masterson, A.J. Buckley.

Picture Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: While the picture here isn't crystal clear, this looks perfectly acceptable for a low-budget production with a clean transfer and colours that hold up quite solidly.

Extras: Everything about Manticore's DVD presentation feels "tossed off". From the awful looking menus down there seems to have been no effort put into it - if anything the most strain anyone put out was creating the pretty junky Photoshopped box art. All we get here is a trailer for the amusing looking Undead Or Alive and ads for two other Sci-Fi releases which consists of pictures of the DVD artwork.

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