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75 reviews in total

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11 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
"Jurassic Park" written and directed by Ed Wood, 5 July 1999
Author: Jay Norris from United States

This movie was the best of the bad films I ever seen. I do have to agree with Big Rich when he said "Makes 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' Look like 'Jurassic Park.'" It does look like a movie that Ed Wood would have done! But, this film was better then any of Ed's movies, sure the dinosaur looked liked a man in a dinosaur costume but at least the dinosaur wasn't "dead" like the octopus in the Ed Wood film. If you're a "Jurassic Park" fan or a dinosaur fan you should give this movie a try.

A very enjoyable film!

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8 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Reminds me of spaghetti..., 20 December 2006

Author: sarah-rendall from United States

I saw this film for the first time when I was in high school. My friends and I were looking for a bad horror flick, and we were right on our renting fee money when we picked out this gem. If you want to watch a movie that is scary, uses realistic-looking-dinosaurs, and authentic-looking blood and guts, then this movie is not right for you. Do not take it even remotely seriously. If you are looking for a good laugh, then, please, take this movie seriously. Somewhere between the horrible cinematography, several messily mauled treehuggers, and the science that completely lacked any validity whatsoever, I found myself actually rolling on the floor, convulsing with laughter. I now proudly own the entire trilogy of Carnosaur-ridden hilarity. If you have seen Ed Wood and became intrigued with bad cinema, then Carnosaur should be just right for you.

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
The Darkest Dinosaur Movie I've Ever Seen, 30 July 2002

Author: Adam Davis (adamdav@bloomington.in.us) from Columbus, OH

Carnosaur definitely takes the top spot of the dark and unusual dinosaur movies. The almost noir atmosphere of this movie really makes it creepy, at least until the dinosaurs show themselves. Unfortunately, the spooky air of this movie looses its feel when the rubber puppet dinosaurs show up. Sad to say, the Velociraptor dinosaur in this movie is only a step above a Muppet, and the Tyrannosaurus is only slightly better. However, I still enjoyed the movie for the ham and cheese it is. Dianne Ladd really takes her mad scientist role to interesting places in this movie. The excessive gore I could've done without, but it doesn't detract too much from the film overall. A great 'bad' movie that true b-movie fans shouldn't miss.

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5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
I thought it was pretty fun for what it was..., 12 July 2006

Author: Paul Andrews (poolandrews@hotmail.com) from UK

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Carnosaur tells the tale of ex loony biowarfare scientist Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd) who is working on behalf of the 'Eunice Food Service Division' where she gets to conduct as many unethical experiments as she likes, Dr. Tiptree has genetically recreated a Dinosaur egg which hatches & means a vicious Dinosaur is on the loose much to the annoyance of alcoholic night watchman Doc (Raphael Sbarge) who encounters it when it slaughters a bunch of protesters & he gets the finger of suspicion pointed at him by Sheriff Fowler (Harrison Page). In an effort to clear his name he traces Dr. Tiptree down & discovers that she has engineered a virus hidden within apparently harmless Chicken eggs which cause woman to become pregnant with a baby Dinosaur in an attempt to wipe out mankind & let the Dinosaurs rule the Earth once more! Can her plans be halted or is it too late already...

Written & directed by Adam Simon Carnosaur is a Jurassic Park (1993) rip-off from beginning to end & was obviously made to cash in on Spielberg's monster sized hit by executive producer Roger Corman (who else?). In no way are Jurassic Park & Carnosaur comparable in terms of size, scale, scope or entertainment value although I thought Carnosaur was at least quite fun to watch. It moves along at a nice pace & never became boring & it was pretty funny at times. All the usual Dinosaur & mad scientist clichés are here but what the hell sometimes you just manage to enjoy a film for what it is, for me Carnosaur is one of those films. It's by no means a good film, it's very silly, it's tries to do far too much considering it's meagre budget & you can't help but keep thinking about Jurassic Park as you watch it. Basically Carnosaur is a cheap & gory Jurassic Park imitator which I found quite watchable, it's far from the best film ever made but I also think it's far from the worst.

Director Simon was working with a low budget & it shows, there's no real style & the Dinosaur effects are plain embarrassing. They are truly some of the worst special effects you will ever see, most of the Dinosaur shots are out of scale & use poor rubber puppet effects while the climactic fight between a T-Rex & Doc in a Bulldozer looks like a hand puppet fighting a toy truck, the special effects are a million miles behind those that Spielberg had at his disposal that were so impressive over a decade ago. One surprising thing about Carnosaur is how gory it is, there is footage from inside a Chicken slaughter house, people have limbs bitten off, guts & bodily organs are torn out, people have their faces ripped off, people are impaled & there's even time for a messy Dinosaur birth that rips-off Alien (1979). Carnosaur doesn't shy away from showing the red stuff, which helps.

With a supposed budget of about $1,000,000 I sort of feel sorry for Simon who had literally no chance whatsoever to compete with Spielberg's millions. The special effects are among the worst I've seen, the sets cheap, it's not that well made or put together & the acting could have been better but at least he tried to get as much money as possible on screen even if the film falls short on several occasions.

Carnosaur is a terrible film if you look at it from a normal film-goers perspective, however never let it be said that I'm not an individual because, crazy as it may sound, I actually quite liked Carnosaur. There I've said it so sue me. Large chunks of Carnosaur was edited into Raptor (2001) & it spawned two sequels Carnosaur 2 (1995) & Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996).

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5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Funny dino splatter - watch immediately after Jurassic Park, 13 May 2002

Author: Bogey Man from Finland

This little Roger Corman produced film is pretty funny. It has some crazy scientist who thinks that people have violated and exploited nature and also animals for so long, that it is now the time for a payback. The plot is pretty confusing (as usual) but soon very hungry and angry dinosaurs are eating people alive in hilarious trash scenes.

The effects are OK and you'll love this if you like trash cinema. This is not great movie, but great in its own little category which has to be understood. If you only like mainstream s*it like Armageddon or Jurassic Park 1-3 then you'll hate this and laugh yourself alive. But viewed as a trash picture without significant cinematic or artistic values Carnosaur is OK. I haven't seen the sequels but will pick them up if opportunity appears.

5/10

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Wow, can't believe this scared me as a kid!, 7 April 2008

Author: the_headless_cross from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Buuut in a way I can. When you're young as I was when I watched this, you don't get adult humor and seeing dinosaurs tear people apart can be a little scary. Well flash forward to 15 years later I kinda get curious and decide to give it another watch. And man I can't believe I was scared by it! (Well, Airplane and the evil toilet scene from Look Who's Talking Too kinda scared me too, so it ain't saying much now is it?) First of all forgot how faked the little raptor thing looked! And of course the humor in it as well Seriously, was that hippie stoned when he said "Peace, Green Brother" to the Raptor? Personally I would have said "Ah crap" but maybe that's just me. And the hero does deliver a good action movie one liner with "I hate wildlife" before killing the T-Rex. Very repeatable line there. Oh and this movie was my first exposure to Alfred E. Neuman as well. But the movie does have it's dark moments, such as Diane Ladd (whose daughter starred in the other dinosaur flick that came out around the time this did. Can you guess who she is and what movie it is?) as the evil bioengineer who thinks humans don't deserve the planet and dinosaurs do. Wow, did she wake up on the wrong side of the bed or what? And wait till you find out what the "fever" is.

My only beef with this movie is the middle (or maybe it's not the middle, I can never keep track with 80 minute movies sometimes) where our hero confronts Ladd about what she's doing. It seems she took a little too long to explain her side of the story. I mean, he gets inside, holds her at gunpoint. Next scene it's morning, Sheriff is preparing breakfast, then the next it's night when B Movie king Clint "Not Ron" Howard has his head bitten off, then cut back to the hero still holding Ladd at gunpoint. Dude, you have a gun. Make her give you answers immediately, no matter how cold hearted she is! Seems he was a little too patient.

So, while it's not the scariest movie ever that I thought it was at 8 years old, it's still a fun campy horror movie just not meant to be taken seriously.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Could have been great, instead it's just OK, 13 August 2006

Author: Phillemos from New England, USA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I've seen "Carnosaur" twice. Judging from the tone of the previously submitted comments, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who think "Carnosaur" was an atrocious plagiarism of "Jurassic Park" and those who think "Carnosaur" was a misunderstood masterpiece. I have to say I stand firmly entrenched between the two extremes. "Carnosaur" had the potential of being a REALLY good horror movie. It's very dark and brooding, and you watch it and you feel like the world is about to end. The plot is unique and different from the typical "dinosaur-runs-amok" movie. But a couple of things really hold this movie back. First, the special effects are awful. Since the movie didn't have a "Jurassic Park" budget, I don't expect "Jurassic Park" effects. But I also don't want to see a Velociraptor that looks like Kermit the Frog's big brother, either. The thumbnail says this movie was released in 1993, but the special effects give it the feel of a movie that was made 10 years earlier and kept locked in a safe somewhere until the right moment for release (presumably, to capitalize on the "Jurassic Park" craze). There are also a few silly moments that will have you scratching your head. (I mean, it's a dinosaur movie so you do have to suspend realism to a certain extent, but Dr. Tiptree laying an egg is just a little much). It does have an ending that's as dark as the rest of the movie, which I like here. If they had refined the plot a little and worked on the special effects, I'd give it a much higher rating.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
It's no Jurassic Park!, 5 June 2005
Author: Rain85

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

When I bought, payed for and viewed Carnosaur, I took into account its budget limitations, it was, after all, made possible by legendary 'B' movie producer Roger Corman. I also tried my hardest not to make too many comparisons between this film and the mega-budget Jurassic Park, despite more than a few nods made to the movie in the script ("It would make a great theme park!", Diane Ladd being the mother of Laura Dern, a main cast member in Jurassic Park and a cool-acting black cop who seemed to be modelling himself on Samuel L Jacksons role.)

In 'B' movie standards, this film should rate quite highly (I'm sure its Oscar material compared to the later 'B' flick 'Dinosaur Island', and at least this film generates a bit of an effort, some of the supposed 'great' films out there have a far higher budget and still fare worse than Carnosaur.

The narrative is simple: a mad scientist develops mutant chicken eggs that hatch deadly dinosaurs that grow big! Small dinosaurs escape, multiply and kill whilst a suspicious virus takes its toll on a quiet town. Much of the plot is interspersed with boring, confusing and sometimes irrelevant, badly scripted dialogue between second-rate characters. Diane Ladd, who plays the crazy scientist, brings the movie up a few pegs and one wishes her part was a little larger. Her acting capabilities are so much greater than the other, uninteresting cast members (Jennifer Runyon, Ned Bellamy, etc,)

The actual dinosaurs render the whole film comedic as they resemble plastic models one plays with as a child. I couldn't help thinking that a dinosaur toy was being filmed in close-up! The dreary Nevada setting doesn't add any interest to the movie and the blatant Coca-Cola sponsorship just gets annoying! For comedy, there is a giant T Rex kept amongst lasers in a basement and a scene showing Diane Ladd trying to lay an egg before attempting Cesarean section and encountering her own 'Alien' style John Hurt moment!

Overall, this film has a good idea but fails to develop it. Diane Ladd's attempt to recover a lush, earthly environment seems admirable and is far away from her counterpart Richard Attenborough's vision in Jurassic Park. If the film was made with a better script, a larger collection of good actors' and a better setting it could do a lot better. If, however, you enjoy watching opulent, expensive and technically excellent films-this movie will only serve to put you off your food...especially eggs!

I'll give it 4/10..Could have been better- Now where do I get a copy of the sequel!!!

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
The darkest dinosaur film I've ever seen!, 21 October 2002

Author: Big_Mike549 from New Jersey

So much more horror then any Jurassic Park movie! Carnosaur is one of the only films that the genre falls into "horror" and "dinosaurs." From beginning to end it's a true cult-classic for a those few die hard fans that are out there. But let's hope they don't go extinct. The #1 complaint has been that the special effects suck. Okay, the T-Rex was too fake for me but the little green raptor really rocks. Like when it takes down those idiotic kids in their jeep to when it takes down those chained environmentalists. And I loved how the writer named all the major characters after birds. What an irony! And for the novel, every dino fan should read Harry Adam Knight's Carnosaur! I own the novel on paperback and it is no longer in print from what I've heard so run and find a copy from a used shop or the web. And I really thought it was funny how some of the characters would be eating chicken like Clint Howard and then get taken down by the dinosaur. How ironic! I would have given this movie a perfect 10 if it only if they had dropped the concept about "women giving birth to dinosaurs"! But a movie like this is so rare to find and so fun to watch. And you'll never look at chickens the same way again!

8/10

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Unfairly slated b grade creature feature, 9 January 2008

Author: t-birkhead from United Kingdom

I saw this last night having read most of the mocking and negative reviews and expecting something not much good. I was surprised when the film revealed itself to be a perfectly decent low budget creature outing, with the main idea of killer dinosaurs well realised. Granted, the effects are rubbery and easy to slate, but I had more fun just accepting that they were cheaply made and then enjoying them wreak havoc. The havoc is fairly well portrayed with a handful of nice gory kills, more gruesome than one might expect of a film of this ilk. I though the acting to be pretty reasonable, with Diane Ladd particularly standing out with a suitably crackpot mad scientist performance. It was also nice to see the oddly watchable Clint Howard in a small role. The script isn't great, and the story is more than a tad silly, but these are acceptable faults, because the film is always fun and interesting, and it goes down the odd unexpected alley, which is always nice. Mt fondness for this movie may put me in a minority but I'd say this is a fun, mindless outing that whilst no classic should provide a good deal of fun to creature feature addicts. At the least, it certainly beats the hell out of watching the drecktastic family friendly nonsense of Jurassic Park or the majority of recent dinosaur themed movies.

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