Starring Ian Ziering as ...

I happened to be watching the Sci-Fi Channel tonight. What, you may ask, was on? Well, it was a fine movie called Tyrannosaurus Azteca, or its far cooler American title, Aztec Rex. Now, this movie, like many on the Sci-Fi Channel, was complete crap. A group of Spaniards lands in Mexico and finds a group of Aztecs who sacrifice people to a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Of course, one of their number falls in love with a local lass (as I was researching this, I noticed the actress who plays her was born in Kathmandu, which is kind of neat), and the two fight against the dinosaur and an evil Aztec shaman. Two things made me laugh: at one point, the Spaniard and his Aztec girl flee the dinosaur with a monk, and as they hide in a stand of trees, the monk marries them and then they have sex. With a freakin' dinosaur breathing down their necks! Yeah, nothing turns you on like a giant lizard about to eat you!

Better than that, though, was the casting of Hernán Cortés. You may know him as blond, blue-eyed Steve Sanders on Beverly Hills 90210, but I'll forever know him as black-haired, poorly-bewigged, blue-eyed Hernán Cortés! Yes, Ian Ziering as Cortés. The mind reels.

Anyway, the movie sucks, but if you happen across it on the Sci-Fi Channel, stay a while. Ziering apparently isn't in the movie all that much (I saw him early on, turned it off, and saw him at the end, but I watched the last twenty minutes and he had no role in defeating the T. Rex), but it's worth it to see him. It's awesomely awful.