When it comes to the live action portrayal of dinosaurs in film, you can basically split it into two eras: dinosaur movies before 1993 and dinosaur movies after 1993. Up until 1993, all dinosaur movies followed one or two pretty basic formulas. The first kind would be about cavemen dealing with all manner of prehistoric creatures. This type includes movies like Brute Force, Three Ages, and One Million B.C. The second kind would follow a group of people who would stumble upon a land that time forgot that was populated with dinosaurs. The people would have to contend with these prehistoric creatures, and sometimes they would bring one back to modern society where it would run amok. These types of films included The Lost World, King Kong, and The Valley of Gwangi.
That all changed when a prolific filmmaker acquired the film rights to a novel that posited the idea that dinosaurs could be brought back into the modern world through genetic engineering. His film was a financial success that resulted in multiple sequels and a legion of dedicated fans. I am of course referring to Roger Corman and his Carnosaur film series that he produced.
What? Did you think I was talking about something else? I thought I was so clever with this setup to discussing the Carnosaur film series, but the joke is on me because I actually had to sit down and watch all of these movies. I had only seen the first one prior to this month, so I had a lot of catching up to do. There are five total films in the series, and that’s about four too many according to my math.
Carnosaur was released on May 13, 1993. That’s almost a full month before Jurassic Park hit cinemas! Much like Jurassic Park, it was also based on a novel. Carnosaur was written by John Brosnan (under the pen name Harry Adam Knight) and published in 1984. That happens to be six years prior to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. The film is only loosely based on the novel, but it does incorporate elements of genetic engineering to bring dinosaurs back to life. The film was written and directed by Adam Simon who had previously directed Brain Dead (1990) which was produced by Julie Corman (Roger’s wife). I give Simon a lot of credit for how ambitious he was with such a minuscule budget (more on that later). The premise of the movie is that a deranged scientist (played by Diane Ladd who is the mother of Jurassic Park star Laura Dern) has created a virus using chicken eggs that causes infected women to become impregnated with dinosaur embryos that kill the women in the process of giving birth so that humanity will go extinct and get replaced with dinosaurs. Seriously. That’s what this movie is about. The majority of the action in the movie is the result of a Deinonychus hatching from one of the chicken eggs, growing to adulthood in a matter of hours, and then going around killing a bunch of unsuspecting people. This was a lot more difficult to research than you might expect, but it appears Carnosaur is the first live action movie to feature a Dromaeosaur (the “raptor” family of dinosaurs) as a primary antagonist. Obviously they became famous following Jurassic Park, but it’s funny to me how many times Carnosaur beat it to the punch. And because you just can’t have a dinosaur film without one, the climax of Carnosaur features Tyrannosaurus fighting a bulldozer. As I said previously, this is a very ambitious film considering the budget.
Now let’s get into the controversy surrounding that budget. Roger Corman is the undisputed king of B-movies. He has produced over five hundred movies in his lifetime, and he has more lined up for the future. You don’t produce that many movies if they have massive budgets. Corman produces movies on the fast and cheap, and Carnosaur is no exception. In an interview with Connie Chung in 1993, it’s stated that the budget for Carnosaur was $4 million. That is certainly a small budget for a dinosaur film in 1993 (Jurassic Park’s budget was $63 million), but director Adam Simon gave an interview to Inverse earlier this year in which he claims the budget was closer to $500,000 with only about $50,000 going towards the special effects. That means you get a lot of puppets and forced perspective camera tricks to try and give the dinosaurs a sense of scale. While that meant the dinosaurs look less than perfect, Simon was able to at least infuse the film with a much cheaper special effect: fake blood. While Jurassic Park went for a PG-13 rating to make it appeal to as wide an audience as possible, Carnosaur was a gruesome gore-fest that embraced a hard R rating. That’s where the real appeal of the film lies.
There is a whole host of teenagers, townsfolk, security guards, and Clint Howard getting mauled and mutilated by dinosaurs. These scenes are shot in a way to obscure the puppets and focus on the gore, and I think they largely succeed. The film is at its best when it’s going for pure horror, and I think it’s a pretty entertaining film when you meet it on its own terms. I think of it as kind of the platonic ideal of a B-movie you’d see based on the VHS cover in a rental store in the ‘90s. It’s a fun enough time that I’ve actually watched it on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, there are also four sequels…
I had heard from more than one person over the years that Carnosaur 2 is actually the best film in the series. It came out in 1995 from director Louis Morneau with a similar budget to the original, and it was more of an action film than a pure horror film. It’s kinda like how James Cameron steered Aliens in an action movie direction following Ridley Scott’s more horror focused Alien. In fact, it’s exactly like Aliens. No, really. They just took every plot point and story beat from Aliens and replaced the creatures with dinosaurs. I feel like there probably could have been a lawsuit over this if anyone at 20th Century Fox had ever seen or heard of Carnosaur 2. You probably think I’m exaggerating, but this movie is practically a shot for shot remake. I even put together a little super cut to highlight the most egregious examples. Spoiler alert for both Aliens and Carnosaur 2.
My biggest complaint isn’t so much that it rips off Aliens. It’s that they somehow ripped off Aliens and made it boring. That’s a borderline criminal offense. The only real standouts from the film are Rick Dean as the comedic relief character (a soldier named Monk), and a particularly gruesome scene where one of soldiers is torn apart. It’s all pretty dull aside from that.
Carnosaur 3: Primal Species was released direct to video the following year in 1996. Directed by Jonathan Winfrey, it continues with the more action oriented approach of Carnosaur 2. Fortunately, this one isn’t just a shot for shot remake of a better movie. Unfortunately, it still isn’t very good. One thing to note about each of these three films is that they don’t appear to be connected in any way other than there are dinosaurs in them. Also, Rick Dean is back as a soldier, but he is playing a completely different character than the one he played in Carnosaur 2. Very confusing. He also can’t really be described as comic relief because every character in the movie is comic relief this time. Note to any filmmakers reading this: if every character undercuts the tension in every scene with a joke, then none of your scenes will have any tension. While I certainly wasn’t a fan of this entry in the series, I did appreciate that there was a bit more gore and carnage than there was in the previous installment.
Holy shit. I can’t believe this is a real movie. I was cautiously optimistic when I saw that 2001’s Raptor had Eric Roberts and Corbin Bernsen in the cast. Those are actors I’m actually familiar with! I had read that it was more of a “spinoff” of the Carnosaur series than a true sequel, but that didn’t raise any red flags since none of the previous films had much to do with each other. Directed by Jim Wynorski and released direct to video like its predecessor, the film opens with a rather curious scene. It’s one of the scenes from the first Carnosaur, and it’s one of the best from that movie as a group of teenagers are massacred by a Deinonychus. I don’t mean that this was a reimagining of that scene. It’s literally footage from the first movie. My first thought was that this was done to establish a connection to the original. The very next scene is a sheriff (Eric Roberts) arriving on the scene to investigate. So I guess this is something that was happening offscreen in the original? No. They just reused the footage for a brand new story. It’s an odd choice, but at least they picked a good scene to reuse. The next scene was yet another bit of reused footage from the original as the Deinonychus kills some more people. It was at this point that I realized what was happening. The movie was telling a brand new story, but every scene involving a dinosaur was just reused footage from a previous Carnosaur film. The only new footage in the entire movie was when Eric Roberts or Corbin Bernsen were delivering exposition. The movie even dresses the characters in the same clothes as the characters in the previous films when they were killed in the hopes that the viewer won’t realize that they are very clearly not the same actors. There are also instances where new characters are dropped into scenes from the previous films using very obvious green screen effects. I legitimately don’t know how you can even call this a movie. I have seen fan films that do a better job of this. I award this movie no stars, and may God have mercy on your soul.
We have mercifully come to the final entry in the Carnosaur series. This one is called The Eden Formula and stars Jeff Fahey, Dee Wallace, and Tony Todd. It’s another direct to video sequel that released in 2006, and it’s written and directed by John Carl Buechler. Buechler is a prolific special effects and makeup artist whose works include Re-Animator, Ghoulies, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (which he also directed), and the first two Carnosaur films. With those names attached, this has to be an improvement over the last few. Right? I guess it’s a slight improvement over Raptor, but that isn’t saying much. Once again, most of the dinosaur footage is recycled from previous Carnosaur films. The few new scenes involving a dinosaur just reuse the same Tyrannosaurus suit from the first film. Why have a practical effects guru direct your film and not have him make some new dinosaur suits or puppets?! What a waste. Tony Todd chewing scenery is the highlight of the film, but that can only take you so far. Apparently this film was alternately titled Tyrannosaurus Wrecks, and that is a much more appropriate name.
Our Carnosaur journey has finally come to an end. If Roger Corman is reading this, I want you to know that I will happily make the next Carnosaur movie if you still have those suits and puppets lying around somewhere. In the meantime, Dinosaur December will conclude next week with the actual breakout dinosaur movie from 1993. That’s right. I’m going to cover Super Mario Bros.! Just kidding. I’ll do Jurassic Park for real this time. Promise.