NOTE- This was originally published on my Facebook, It is being republished here.
Released in 1993 about a month before Jurassic Park came out, Carnosaur actually represents the beginning of the rise of a new sort of cash-in film. Cash-in films are perhaps as old as cinema itself, but before Carnosaur they all followed a very specific formula in that the cash-ins would all follow the original film. This can be easily seen in the case of landmark 70’s films such as Jaws and Halloween as we did not get any cash-in films like Grizzly or My Bloody Valentine until after those movies came out. The reason for this is pretty clear, no one really knew just how popular Jaws and Halloween would be so there was no point in trying to cash-in on their success until after they came out. By beating Jurassic Park to the theaters by a month Carnosaur began a second trend where the cash-in film in question would try to predict which films would be popular, make a movie cheaply and quickly and then release it right before the more popular film in an attempt to latch onto some of the pre-release popularity of the popular film. The classic sort of cash-in certainly still exists, and is even the more prevalent of the two kinds, but with Carnosaur, a new kind of way to latch onto another film’s success was born.
Anyway, Carnosaur is a lot of fun. Its plot very much keeps the coming of Jurassic Park in mind as it too utilizes genetically cloned dinosaurs, rejecting the classic dinosaur movie set up where a dinosaur or dinosaurs would be found in some lost part of the world or by natural causes. I’d hesitate to call it a straight up Jurassic Park rip off for this because Carnosaur is actually based on a book, however loosely by John Brosnan that utilized the same plot and actually predated the Jurassic Park novel by a number of years. Sure it was made to latch onto Jurassic Park, but it’s really not quite as big of rip off as you might expect. What’s cool about this though is that they actually manage to do something interesting with it. You see, Diane Ladd (the mother of Laura Dern who played Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park) plays a mad scientist who launches a plan to destroy the human race by spreading a virus that causes female humans to give birth to dinosaurs, something that kills them in the process. Of course without any means to reproduce the human race is doomed to extinction in just a few decades. Her reason for this? She likes dinosaurs and feels humans are destroying the planet. So now it’s up to an alcoholic night watchman and a hippie to foil the evil plan. We’ve seen mad scientists in a lot of movies. And while the Dinosploitation genre never made much use for them and while few of them have been women, something else sets Ladd’s performance part from the rest. In short- she’s absolutely excellent. Amazingly, Gene Siskel gave this movie a “thumbs up”, mostly because of Ladd’s performance. That’s how good it is. Ladd has the sweet, motherly quality that is a refreshing pace from the typical mad scientist set up and works particularly well when one sets her performance up against her scheme, to eventually create perverse form of motherhood that can destroy the human race. The rest of the cast for the most part does a decent job at least, but it’s Ladd that steals the show, even away from the dinosaurs. Clint Howard is also on hand here, giving that wonderfully creepy performance that made him famous in early to mid 1990’s horror movies.
Still, Carnosaur has plenty to offer B-movie fans. For one, it soaks in that Roger Corman vibe that is in so many great movies. And with that, this movie takes to more exploitative elements of the film it is attempting to emulate and really cranks it up. So yeah, Carnosaur is really bloody, including scenes of gut munching and castration. All good stuff, but my favorite scene is when a dinosaur kills a bunch of hippies who have chained themselves to a piece of construction equipment in order to stop all further development. It’s also full of groovy little references to many other horror films such as Night of the Living Dead, The Crazies, and Alien so fans of the genre will have a lot of fun with this one. It has no real sex amazingly, so it will be ok for American children to watch as it has a dinosaur eating a guy’s guts on screen, but no nipple.
Sadly though, the use of puppets to bring the dinosaurs to life ultimately disappoint. The classic tool to bring dinosaurs to life on film, stop motion wasn’t a viable option and while they tried to use the old “man in a suit” angle, ultimately this film makes heavy use of puppets. Look, clearly Carnosaur wasn’t going to match the awesomeness of the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, but that’s ok as I remember what it was like in 1993, we had never seen anything like those dinosaurs. What it not OK is that the dinosaurs look worse than some movies that had come out decades earlier. Granted it’s not a complete disaster as it does help create even more of a B-movie vibe, but it’s something I was still disappointed in. For the first part of the movie it looks as if they’ll be solving this by only showing bits and pieces of the dinosaur. It’s a good movie because 1) it does help hide some of the cheapness of the dinosaur design and 2) is actually a welcomed change of pace as most dinosaur movies showed their creatures early and often, including the movies where they tried to pass off lizards is dinosaurs. So while it initially looks like Carnosaur is 1) clearly recognizing its limits and 2) bucking a long standing genre thread, towards the end of the movie the dinosaurs become more visible, and while the dinosaurs are still somewhat kept under the cover of darkness, it’s still not enough, or rather too much and the film does suffer. Look, Carnosaur is no classic. It’s exactly what you think it, a cheaply made film that tries to latch onto Jurassic Park by amping up the violence. Still, and based mostly on Ladd’s performance it works and is far better than you really think it would be. And perhaps that is why Carnosaur works so well despite its limitations. It manages to deliver what anyone watching this would want from this movie, but actually manages to do a little more by giving us such an interesting villain and a great performance. The dinosaurs do let down, but even that can be enjoyed in the right state of mind. Check it out!
7.7/10
Bad Movies for Bad People 