Carnosaur (1993)

Excellent, a Must See

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Ahhh, one of the classics from my Godzilla-obsessed childhood. Seemed so much better back then..but apart from that, we have a Dinosaur obsessed scientist who believes that humans should be wiped out (except for her I guess) and the Dinosaurs brought back to life, hence why she's breeding them back into existence with chickens. The movie has an interesting plot but the way it unfolds really leaves you scratching your head sometimes. Like, how on earth did an egg that's bigger than a full grown chicken...come out of a full grown chicken? I guess it kinda looked like the chicken actually exploded due to the size of the egg, but you don't really find out. It's extremely obvious in many scenes that they are literally using a large hand puppet for the dinosaur, simply snapping its jaws up and down at peoples mid sections. I mean hey, it's no classic but its one of those movies you watch when you're a teen and its late at night on the weekends. Wouldn't mind watching it again.

This cheap cash-in on JURASSIC PARK is, I have to say, absolutely atrocious in every way. Dispensing with an original plot, this plays more like a generic monster movie, with lots of people getting eaten and a sinister government conspiracy acting as the catalyst for all the evil. The only way to actually enjoy this movie is to laugh at it, just like I did. Take it seriously and you'll be in for a rough time. A cast of nobodies and a couple of B-movie old-timers are picked off one by one by some vicious raptor-like dinosaur. The explanation for all this is some kind of silly, confused rubbish, about genetically modifying chickens or something.Throughout this film we see women giving birth to dinosaur eggs...Excuse me while credibility flies out of the window. Towards the end of the film the chief scientist gets to talk for 20 WHOLE MINUTES about why she's doing what she is, and it gets boring very quickly. I can't emphasise how totally dumb and mindless this film is. The leads act in stupid ways, people hang around and wait to be killed, and nobody has a very plausible death scene - instead, they all sit or stand around waiting for the dinosaurs to show up and munch on them. Some silly dialogue ("it carved him up like a Christmas turkey!") and some really annoying subtitles also help to spoil things.The male lead, played by some non-entity going by the name of Raphael Sbarge, is totally wooden and far too young to have any authority. Diane Ladd, who plays the misguided scientist, is usually far too superior to appear in rubbish like this and looks mightily out of place. Clint Howard is wasted in a tiny role which fails to make use of his creepy talents, while only Harrison Page (A.W.O.L.) lends any credibility to the proceedings as the old-time sheriff. The best part of this film has to be the unexpected, out-of-nowhere ending which had me in stitches. Oh, and the excessive violence.The producers obviously saw fit to add in as much unpleasant, comic book gore as they possibly could here, and the results are splashed (often vividly) across the screen. Countless non-actors and actresses are eaten by the dinosaurs, having their chests and stomachs torn open. Faces and legs are also chewed off. Other hapless souls lose their hands and arms to the monsters.Don't watch this movie expecting any fun special effects. The dinosaurs are extremely poorly animated, some of the worst I have ever seen in fact. Forget CGI, forget stop-motion, even forget the men in rubber suits; these clunky models beat everything in terms of sheer nerve and hopelessness when it comes down to the special effects. When standing still, they look fine, but as soon as they move, the film loses it. Sometimes they're obviously being carried along just off camera. This is bad enough, but then a giant T-Rex goes on the rampage and things get worse. I'm speechless as to how poor these effects were - they have to be seen for yourself. Things made more sense as the credits rolled and I saw that half of the actors were also crew members, and it all begins to fall into place when you see that Roger Corman's production company were responsible for this outrage. It only gets an extra star for the bloody violence. This is bad, bad, bad, so please don't bother watching it!

This is based upon the book by Harry Adam Night which was a pen name and author and critic John Brosnan . Brosnan wrote Future Tense one of the most readable books on the history of science fiction cinema ever written . He also wrote a highly regarded column in the SF magazine Starburst which over the years degenerated in to a soapbox where Brosnan stated his hatred for both STAR TREK and the works of James Herbert at every opportunity . No one can state enough hatred for STAR TREK in my view but it's unfair to slag off Herbert . His books are never going to win the Nobel prize but they are entertaining for what they are and he also brings a back story to most of his characters even if they exist only to be killed off later in the chapter Knowing this I wonder if there's a bit of post modernism to Brosnan literature . Even the name Harry Adam Knight ( HAK ! ) conjures up a tongue in cheek name . Certainly I'm left with the impression that HAK is trying to emulate Herbert as a homage . You can see characters getting a brief bio then after that their function to the plot becomes dinosaur food in much the same way as Herbert likes feeding his characters to a swarm of giant mutant ratsThe problem is it's difficult to realise swarms of mutant rats on screen and the problem is dinosaurs are even more difficult to realise . Steven Spielberg managed it in 1993 but let's not kid ourselves he had unlimited technical know how and expense to do so . In this film there's only one way dinosaurs can be brought to screen and that's via puppetry , usually glove puppets which gives the impression Rod Hull's on a murder spree with reptiles Does this make CARNOSAUR a bad movie ? Not necessarily . Certainly it's a badly made movie that'll have you laughing out loud at some scenes and much of the humour doesn't give the impression that it's really intentional and therefor doesn't qualify as post modernist but for those people who sometimes enjoy horror B movies with mad scientists and situations that don't themselves too seriously it's an enjoyable waste of 82 minutes

Roger Corman got the genius idea of going head-to-head with Spielberg's JURASSIC PARK the same summer and even cast Diane Ladd, the mother of PARK's Laura Dern. Sadly, the results aren't that good. Dr. Jane Tiptree (Ladd) has created some genetically modified eggs that house creatures made up of the blended DNA of various things including iguanas, ostriches, and chickens. It is all part of her plot to destroy mankind. Standing in her way are drunk night-watchman "Doc" Smith (Raphael Sbarge) and environmentalist Thrush (Jennifer Runyon). The only thing sadder than this movie is that I felt the need to watch it again nearly 20 years later to confirm, "Yeah, it still sucks." The film does have some bright spots in that the dinosaur attacks are gory and there are some funny Coca-Cola product placements. But the dinosaur effects are pretty bad and the script (adapting, but apparently not very well, a 1984 novel) is totally flat. Matching this flatness are woefully miscast Sbarge and the seemingly lifeless Ladd. Ladd, who probably only did 3 days max on this, has absolutely no pulse and delivers one of cinema's worst mad scientists EVER. The film holds the distinction of being the last Corman production to ever play in theaters, grossing $1.7 million over a period of six months or so. Corman did get two sequels out of it though, but I haven't seen them. I probably will now. :-(