Do we really need to go
over just how much this movie rips off Jurassic Park?
No? Okay, good.
Saying that Roger Corman makes his pay check on the backs and creativity of others is stupidly redundant. Redundant like saying, "Armageddon sucks!" Unfortunately, whenever Corman steals a concept, he always runs with it out beyond the land of sanity, all the way into that Other World. The Corman World.
Oh, 'tis a vile, evil place, where malformed monsters writhe and seethe in ever lasting flames that burn, but do not consume. This is a land where Humanoids from the Deep is considered a good movie and It Conqured the World replaces Citizen Kane.
Not that you can tell the difference but . . . ah, crap, now I've said too much.
Back to the subject: Carnosaur. Lordy, lordy, Carnosaur. This is a tough movie to watch in more ways than one. The movie displays the same kind of stomach churning carnage and disregard for human life that Corman (and his lackeys) brought to us with Humanoids. At least the dinosaurs don't rape anyone. Still . . .
Somewhere in the southwest (where all Bad Moviemakers go), trouble's a-brewin'. The chickens of the southwest are getting their revenge! Colonel Sanders, they're gunnin' for your ass, man and they're pissed off, too! There's nowhere to hide, Colonel. Where's your army now, huh? Huh?
Oh, sorry. That was a little fever dream I had. What can I say? I just watched a Roger Corman movie. Not everything's back to 100% yet.
So, no, the chickens will not be getting their revenge. Instead, an even greater injustice is done to them by one Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd). Dr. Tiptree, good Mad Scientist that she is, has used government Black Ops funding to genetically engineer dinosaurs out of chicken eggs. Dr. Tip, you see, is not really a "people person." With the teeming thousands of mutant eggs**, plus a mutated super virus, she plans to decimate the human race. Dinosaurs will rule the world once again.
With all the idiots running around Carnosaur's world, the damn lizards are welcome to it. Do I even need to point you towards the plot holes? For one thing, wouldn't there be tight controls on any and all materials Dr. Tippsy is working on? So as to prevent, say, a bunch of dinos running around the southwest, killing people?
But, then, if there was, there'd be no movie, would there? No, of course not. A competent government? My word, what a strange dream. Though, the government does seem pretty adept at killing its own citizens during the flicks last reel (once the super virus gets out). Paranoid conspiracy fantasy's are abound in this movie. Writer/director Adam Simon needs to work on his trust issues.
He also needs to learn how to write and direct. But then, talent is never a prerequisite when Roger Corman is concerned. Underdeveloped, idiot characters bump into each other, say things the poor sound quality doesn't let me hear and either (a) die or (b) . . . well . . . die.
That's another thing: everybody dies. If they aren't killed by the giant rubber dinosaurs, they're shot by some shady government agency that cleans up Dr. Tipper's mess.
What a mess, too. As mentioned, Carnosaur is horrendously gory ("It's gore-riffic!"), and, at the same time, embarrassingly shoddy. Puppeteer's hands, camera operator's hands, hell; maybe even the director's hands are visible during the show. It's damn funny at first. Then, it gets depressing. How could so many people be so stupid, so blind to such obvious flaws?
At least Diane Ladd gets to sink her teeth into this Mad Scientist thing, complete with pontificating speeches and all the ham a T-rex can swallow. The fact that she's a Woman Mad Scientist is the only original thing in here.
No one else is even interesting (or concise) enough to mention, not even our "hero," who goes one on one against a big T-rex puppet near the end. Oh yeah. Can you smell the tension?
Supposedly, all this idiocy was based on a novel. A British novel. I find that hard to believe. After all, no book is this bad, not even a British one. The production is cheep, the effects suck, the gore is gratuitous, everybody dies, and you walk away from your TV with a feeling of mindbending depression. If I wanted that, I'd watch CNN.
Or I'd contemplate the fact that this movie has 2 sequels. God help us all.
