Carnosaur (1993) – Review

When a hot property is in the wings, one that looks be a potential blockbuster, it’s a sure bet that legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman will be thinking on how to capitalize on such a product with a cheap quickie of his own, thus when Steven Spielberg was in the midst of making his adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park good ole Roger took a dinosaur project of his own, one that had been sitting on his shelf for years, and then rushed it into production and from that Carnosaur was born.

Loosely based on the novel by John Brosnan the plot of Carnosaur deals your stock mad scientist type but in this case, one with a rather unique goal, that of planning to exterminate the human race with a lethal virus and then replacing humanity with her own genetically created dinosaurs, and one must admit that as “Mad Science” goes that does have to be one of the more off the rails ideas out there. The mad scientist of this particular piece is Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd) a world-renowned geneticist who withdrew from public life to work for the Eunice Corporation where she was given a contract that would allow her three years of non-interference from her bosses, they’d lose the patent rights to anything she came up if they even asked her what she was working on, but her “silence” had drawn concern from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) as they believe someone like her with no oversight could lead to disaster, and they’re not wrong, because faster than you can say “Escaped Monster” bodies starting piling up.

“This was no boating accident.”

Storywise Carnosaur doesn’t have much of a plot, or even protagonists for that matter, first we have Sheriff Fowler (Harrison Page) but he’s spends most of the film’s running time scratching his head in bewilderment before eventually getting eviscerated by a mutant dinosaur, then we have environmentalist Ann Thrush (Jennifer Runyon) spouting off “Earth First” rhetoric but aside from vandalizing bulldozers and watching her idiot friends get eaten by a dinosaur, while they are chained to construction equipment, she doesn’t really do much to further what little plot we do have, and finally we have Doc Smith (Raphael Sbarge), an alcoholic night watchmen at the construction site that Thrush and her moron friends are protesting, and out of nowhere he goes from a drunk who can’t shoot straight to suddenly going all “James Bond” as infiltrates Tiptree’s lab so that he can find out why everyone is getting sick and also to discover what’s eating all the locals, but when it comes right down to it he’s about as effective as a fart in a hurricane so I wouldn’t quite put him in the hero category.

Note: As in the films Dinosaurus and The Crater Lake Monster we are shown that the only proper way to fight a dinosaur is with construction equipment.

Stray Observations:

• This movie stars Diane Ladd, the mother of Laura Dern who is one of the stars of Jurassic Park, coincidence? I think not.
• Tiptree states that her genetically modified chickens are a step towards returning the Earth back to its rightful owners, the dinosaurs, which to this Doc Smith comments “It will make for a great theme park” which is another nice nod to Jurassic Park.
• If Clint Howard appears on screen it either means you are watching a Ron Howard movie or a very low-budget horror film.
• People in this movie either sneeze without covering their noses or immediately shake hands with the one that they just sneezed into, clearly, this movie was made pre-global pandemic.
• The climactic battle between Smith and the T-Rex was nearly a shot-for-shot remake of the finale of James Cameron’s Aliens.
• Dr. Jane Tiptree embraces her conviction as she is impregnated by the virus as well, only she doesn’t pop out a dino egg her offspring tears itself out through her belly like a certain chestburster we are all familiar with.

“We not only cashing in on Jurassic Park but also ripping off both Alien and Aliens.”

With dialogue like “The last thing we need is a biotech panic about chickens!” you know what kind of film you’re watching, and with a mad scientist spouting gibberish like “The earth was not made for us, she was made for the dinosaurs” one can’t be expected to take too much of this seriously, especially when you are talking about Roger Corman film, but even by B-picture expectations this one is a bit of a dog and aside from some cool animatronic dinosaur puppets there really isn’t much here to recommend. Diane Ladd is sort of fun as this dinosaur-obsessed mad scientist but every other character in this movie are simply two-dimensional pieces of window dressing that are here to be either get eaten or spout expository dialogue, though both is often the case. For a “Bad Movie Night” viewing some entertainment can be derived from watching Carnosaur, and the amount of alcohol on hand will determine just how much, but those hoping to find a fun dinosaur picture should look elsewhere.