Carnosaur (1993)

Diane Ladd ("The Wild Angels") stars as Dr. Jane Tiptree, a brilliant but demented geneticist who has managed to bring back the dinosaur species, by using virus-infected chicken eggs! Aiming to destroy the world as we know it, she deliberately allows some of the monsters to run loose in the nearby Nevada town. There isn't much that any slightly heroic character can do to stop this, although drunken security guard "Doc" (Raphael Sbarge, "My Science Project") and lovely environmental activist "Thrush" (Jennifer Runyon, "Up the Creek") give it a good effort.The eclectic cast also includes Harrison Page ("Lionheart"), Ned Bellamy ("Wind Chill"), Frank Novak ("Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2"), Ed Williams ('Police Squad!'), Brent Hinkley ("Ed Wood"), Lisa Moncure ("Corporate Affairs"), and the legendary Clint Howard ("Evilspeak"), who is good, as always, for some goofy comedy relief, before getting his head ripped off by the rampaging T-Rex. Sbarge and Runyon are kind of bland as the heroes, while Ladd plays the mad scientist in a more low-key manner than one might expect. Too bad; a little scenery-chewing might have made the character more fun.Overall, the movie IS a mild hoot, and should prove to be agreeable for any B movie fanatic just looking to watch some nondescript characters become dinosaur chow. The gore is quite enjoyable, although the dinosaurs themselves are variable. In fact, at times, the effects are quite laughable. Then again, what WOULD you expect, or demand, from anything coming from the Corman knock-off factory? "Carnosaur" provides decent thrills and chuckles and a "good" 83 minutes worth of schlock (not to mention numerous "quotes" of the renowned "birthing" sequence from "Alien").Scripted by director Adam Simon, who HAS done better work, based on the novel by John Brosnan. (Brosnan wrote the novel under a "Harry Adam Knight" pseudonym, and the treatment under his own name.)Some viewers may love it for its extremely bleak ending.Six out of 10.

What can I say except that I'm a sucker for a cute dinosaur puppet that is supposed to strike fear into the hearts of *adult* audiences watching this(?) Through a series of unlikely but, of course, since it's a Corman-produced cash-in on Jurassic Park (which had the wherewithal to be released a month *before* that movie came out) we have to buy into it events, a scientist who has been tasked with looking into gene experiments involving chickens somehow (ahem, fixes tie) hatches a plan to... capture a whole lot of local women, inseminate them, and one thing will lead to another through some mumbo jumbo involving gene changes and development and the women will "birth" eggs that have tiny dinosaurs that will rid take back the planet. Simple, right?Why is the dinosaur so cute? It's really about the scale of it, and how Corman's director, Adam Simon, has so little to work with and has to try to make the best of it. According to the IMDb trivia, they didn't have enough money to make a good giant robotic dinosaur (only for a few shots which, I assume, are near the end for that thrilling fight with the construction crane machine), so they mostly used a smaller model and even hand puppets. This is charmingly low- budget, though it does, here and there, try to be a real movie with a plot, which is really silly and at times nonsensical; the main male character starts off as a drunk who tries to ward off protesters trying to stop construction of... something, I don't remember now, and then halfway through the movie he becomes the noble hero who will save everyone from the dinosaurs with the use of his construction cranes.There are some stretches where we're watching dull scenes where the military are trying to figure out what to do - Ned Bellamy, who one might remember from Shawshank Redemption, is the main guy leading that charge which, eventually, will be like scenes from The Crazies on steroids - but when it gets back to the dinosaurs, or Diane Ladd who is acting as if she is in a legitimate movie (that is until near the end which... wow, just, that's amazing), it's a wonderful piece of schlock, full of bloody scenes of carnage that, with a little creative editing, come close to being real action set pieces, and it even goes for a dark ending that whether the movie fully earns it or not it shows chutzpah in not going for the predictable way out. I don't know whether or not Siskel was being tongue-in-cheek with his sincere 'Thumbs up' (really, how many Corman movies, much less those released during the Concorde years, did he praise like that so it could get on the damn box cover), but I know I was laughing nearly until tears during any scene with a dinosaur in it.It's also apparently based on a book which I'd have to assume makes Crichton look like HG Wells.

Reading about Carnosaur, I was expecting a terribly cheap movie and for it to be blatantly derivative of the Steven Spielberg classic Jurassic Park. While far from a good movie, and certainly nowhere near as fun, thrilling or intense as Jurassic Park, I was expecting far worse than what I saw. Diane Ladd relishes her mad scientist, and this is one totally bonkers mad scientist, and the baby carnosaur is genuinely scary. Carnosaur is also gorier and bloodier than JP, and the gore is actually quite good and has moments where it is used inventively to the extent that you may be put off eating for some time after. Carnosaur is a very cheap-looking movie though, the sets lack colour and the camera work and editing lack finesse and cohesion. But I agree about the special effects and the animatronics on the dinosaurs faring worst in this regard, they are truly dreadful and definitely some of the worst dinosaur effects I've seen for any movie in my life. The score is not particularly rousing and has nothing that leaps out as memorable. It doesn't distract from what's going on as such but it just doesn't add anything either, it's just there and fails to make much of an impact. The script doesn't work either, nor does the story. The dialogue is stodgy, cheesy and overly-talky, while the story- not doing much with a decent if rather silly concept- apart from some inventive gory scenes is stripped of suspense, scenes that should scare can be unintentionally funny instead, the romantic plot line is mawkish and slows things down in the middle and the prehistoric rampage antics do get predictable quickly. The characters read of every cliché the writers could find and are poorly developed, no scratch that, the movie certainly knows what it tries to be which is good but while it does strive for some fun and scares(though not really succeeding) the characters are almost completely forgotten in the process. Of the acting only Ladd makes any kind of impression, the rest just sleepwalk through their roles and don't seem to care less about their characters' situations. Overall, could have been worse, especially considering what I'd read, but not a good movie. I recommend it partially for those who want a bit of silly fun without having to think too much, but for those who does know what to expect but still want to see some kind of quality put into it they may want to look elsewhere. 4/10 Bethany Cox

"Carnosaur" is a film that can probably blame its obviously low budget on it being a missed opportunity. This movie contains many good elements including a very wonderful performance by Academy Award-nominee Diane Ladd. About half of the time, this movie kept me entertained in its own unique way and the other half of the time I was bored to tears. Thus, I give it two stars out of four. Half and half. Sounds fair to me."Carnosaur" is loosely based on a novel by John Brosnan about a mad scientist (Diane Ladd) who is disgusted by the human race's destruction of the planet and plans to wipe it out with a killer virus while genetically engineering dinosaurs so that they can take over the planet once again.I was really surprised that film critic Gene Siskel, who had given the Oscar-winning masterpiece "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) a negative review found this movie appealing and gave it a marginally positive review. But now that I've actually seen the film, I can agree with him part way. I still give it a negative review, but I do see why he might have enjoyed it. First of all, like I mentioned earlier, Diane Ladd plays a terrific villain in this movie. Even though she was given some awfully poor lines to act on, she somehow managed to keep me interested and even a bit frightened whenever she was on the screen. I'll say this; she is a lot more interesting than the dinosaurs in this picture. Perhaps the reason "Carnosaur" was even made was to beat Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" (1993) to the big screen and make a little cash, which it did despite negative reviews from both critics and audience members. The film was made on a low budget and you can tell by the bad acting (excluding Diane Ladd, of course) and the poor special effects. The dinosaurs are seldom convincing at all. They are portrayed using rubber puppets and even though they are shot at night, they do become revealing at times. Sometimes painfully revealing. I also felt that the amount of blood and gore used in this film was way overdone, but that is typical of films of this grade.And there is also one major plot problem in this movie. If the Diane Ladd character wants to wipe out the human race, why not just create the virus and not even bother with the dinosaurs at all? Why go through all the trouble and risk being caught? Of course, the dinosaurs were thrown in one because of the novel source and two to get people interested in seeing the movie, but still it almost seems as though "Carnosaur" would have been better, at least more logical, if there were no dinosaurs in it at all. And it also doesn't make any sense that she only breeds carnivorous dinosaurs and no herbivores. There are some strangely appealing elements to "Carnosaur", much to my surprise, and there are some ludicrous and unbelievably poor elements, as anticipated. It is just too bad I wasn't surprised more while watching this movie. A few re-writes of the script and a slight ante in the budget would have done it wonders.