Michael Banning

Michael Banning was a supporting character featured in the 2004 direct-to-video sci-fi/horror film Dinocroc. He was played by actor Jake Thomas.

Biography
Michael Banning was the younger brother of artist Tom Banning and lived in the town of Grant's Cove. Michael's parents died when he was still very young, and Tom was left to look after him in their small home. Michael owned a three-legged dog named Lucky who went missing, causing Michael tremendous grief.

Michael began posting flyers all over town in the hopes that someone might have seen Lucky. An animal control officer named Diane Harper saw Michael and promised that she would do everything she could to help locate his missing dog.

That evening, Diane and Tom Banning went out in search of Lucky and found him scavenging around a wooded preserve owned by the Gereco genetics research laboratory. Lucky ran too deep into the woods and it was too dark for Tom and Diane to chase him any further. They returned back to the house with the intent of resuming the search the following morning. Believing that Michael was fast asleep, Tom and Diane shared a few drinks and laughed over the notion of a three-legged dog running so fast. Michael overheard them and decided to creep out and find Lucky on his own.

He entered the restricted Gereco preserve, unaware that one of their experiments, a genetically engineered crocodile spliced with dinosaur DNA, had escaped from the laboratory and began hunting in the local area. Michael caught sight of the so-called "Dinocroc" and sought shelter inside a fishing shack built atop several pylons. The Dinocroc swam underneath the shack and came up through the floorboards, decapitating young Michael with one powerful snap of it's jaws. Michael's body was consumed by the beast, but his head was discovered the following day by Sheriff Harper. When Tom heard about his brother's death, he was overwhelmed with grief, blaming himself for not keeping a closer eye on him.

Notes & Trivia

 * The character of was created by director Kevin O'Neill, producer Roger Corman and writers Dan Acre, Frances Doel and John Huckert.


 * Michael Banning's final fate represents one of the rare instances in which the visceral death of a child is presented onscreen. His demise is made even more jarring by the fact that he is presented as one of the main characters of the film. The scene of Michael's head flying through the air was deleted when the film was originally broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel.


 * Actor Jake Thomas is also known for playing the role of Matt McGuire, younger brother of Lizzie McGuire from the Disney Channel television series of the same name. Thomas also appeared in the 2006 family horror film Monster Night playing a character named Issac Ackerman. In 2009, he played Andrew Carlin in the "Endless Love" episode of the CBS television series Ghost Whisperer.