A month before the release of Spielberg's Dinosaur classic that had groundbreaking effects, another Dinosaur film produced by B movie director Roger Corman was made to cash in on the hype surrounding "Jurassic Park". The film made back its money (which isn't surprising since the film was made under a low budget as it was shot for only 18 days), but the overall reaction among audiences and critics were "I hope the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park look better than this". Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film a Thumbs Down and labeled it as the "Worst Movie Of The Year", while Gene Siskel gave it a Thumbs Up despite criticizing how fake the Dinosaurs looked. Roger Ebert would later on make fun of Gene Siskel for giving the film a Thumbs Up in an episode of "The Critic" where he and Gene split up. After seeing the review from Siskel and Ebert, knowing about the film's producer, and hearing about when the film was released, I decided to review it under curiosity to see if I would enjoy it for what it is, or despise it almost as much as Ebert did. So is the film entertaining, or is it just plain bad; ON WITH THE REVIEW!
The film stars Diane Ladd (who is the Mother of Laura Dern who stared as Dr. Sattler in "Jurassic Park") as a mad scientist who is breeding chickens and impregnating some of them with Dinosaur DNA in hopes to have Dinosaurs rule the Earth once again, and kill off the human race. To make matters worse, one of her Dinosaurs escapes and goes on a killing spree to eat everyone it meets. The only people that can stop her plan of inhabiting the world with Dinosaurs is an alcoholic security watchman (Raphael Sbarge) and an environmental activist (Jennifer Runyon).
The premise sounds straight forward like a classic B monster movie that seems simple and entertaining, but truth be told, I only gave you the basics because believe it or not, for some strange and out of the blue reason a virus created by the scientist begins to spread where women are giving birth to baby Dinosaurs, as they die in the process. And when the Government finds out about the virus, they just kill people whether or not they are infected. The overall concept of women giving birth to Dinosaur's isn't scary, disturbing, or even remotely funny. It's just stupid and flat out gross, pure and simple. And adding in this stupid virus to the plot right in the middle of the film with no build-up to it is just confusing and feels there just to expand on the film’s run time. The logic in the film involving the Dinosaurs and the virus is also complex and head-scratching to the max. And the conversations that the characters have about these issues aren’t any where near interesting for how dull the acting and the discussion themselves are. I'm more interested in the Coca-Cola cans that they are all drinking out of in a few scenes, rather than the stuff that they are actually saying about the Dinosaur, which is definitely not a good sign when forced Product Placement becomes the center of attention. But what annoys me the most about these boring conversations is how they keep interrupting the Dinosaur action that we get, which sadly breaks the pace for these scenes. And speaking of pace, since the film is flooded with tedious conversations that are edited in at the wrong time, it makes the pacing for this hour and 22 minute movie incredibly slow. Things get even more tedious when we keep getting descriptions of each character and location that's shown on the screen, which feels extremely pointless. Considering that each place we visit are not that far away from the other locations we see throughout the film, and the fact that we can already guess who these characters are and what they do, there just isn't really a need for all of these repetitive descriptions. And the crazy part about them is that there's so much stuff written on the screen, the film hardly gives you the time to read them, since they come and go so fast that it just in the end emphasizes how unneeded they are. I'm not going to waste my time talking about the characters because they're all boring, annoying, and forgettable who only feel there to get killed by Dinosaurs. Even Diane Ladd who Gene Siskel (and even Roger Ebert himself) praised in the movie, bored me for how monotone and bland her performance is, where she even lacks that classic and over the top mad scientist personality that you would expect to see in a B movie like this.
Before I talk about the effects for the Dinosaurs, I just want to make it clear that I’m going to be nice and judge the effects on its own merits instead of comparing them to the effects in "Jurassic Park" because lets be honest there's no contest at all. The effects used for the Dinosaurs in the film were done by a miniature remote control puppet, hand puppets, guys in costumes, and a full sized 16 foot tall robot. Now that's a creative variety of effects made for a film on a tight budget where the effects will only be shot in 18 days. And the concept of filming the Dinosaur scenes at night to try to hide how fake they look seemed like a promising idea. But as impressive as it sounds, the effects still suck. Even when filming the Dinosaur's at night to hide how fake they look, they still look awful. All they pretty much did was try to make them suck less. They don't look real, they look as plastic and rubbery as a toy Dinosaur. There are even times when you can spot when there's a guy in a Dinosaur costume, just by judging how quickly they move, compared to their stiff and robotic like movements that we keep seeing. There are old films with Stop-Motion Dinosaurs and actors in rubber suits (particularly the Godzilla films) that look more convincing and real than this! The cheesiest effect in the whole movie in my opinion has to be the effect for the T-Rex walking through the city, as it keeps its mouth hanging open that gives him a duh look on his face. It looks silly, as opposed to being scary! The T-Rex for some reason also changes its look between shots that makes you question what the director was thinking for how noticeable it looks. The only credible thing that the effects team did with the T-Rex is the sound effect for his roar which isn’t scary, or sounds awesome for that matter, but it’s serviceable at best. Given the film's budget and limited amount of days to shoot each scene, I do think the effects team did everything they can to try to make them work, but that still doesn't change the fact that the Dinosaur's still look like crap.
But as bad as the Dinosaur's look, do the scenes with them killing people make up for it? Well not really. I do like the gore effects that were used for these scenes, but in its long run they're sadly just as boring as the plot and characters are. The POV shots used for the Dinosaur's don't at all make me believe that I'm seeing through their eyes. They looks like the style that filmmakers would use to make a Found Footage film. You're just constantly aware that there was someone filming all this. A lot of the film's editing and pacing for these scenes with the Dinosaur's attacking feels very off which ruins the suspense that the film tries to bring. The scene when the off-screen Dinosaur scratches a guy's face after hatching out of an egg didn't feel like he was actually being attacked by one for how poor the editing was, and its use of the unconvincing POV shots. And half of the editing for the scenes when people are being killed by the Dinosaurs move so quickly that you can't see a thing, which comes off as another obvious and failed attempt to make the Dinosaur's seem less fake. One of the weirdest shots in the whole movie is when a Dinosaur kills its first victim where we cut to a mirror in the shape of a naked woman on the victim’s truck as the Dinosaur and the body that's reflected in the mirror moves up and down! That's just weird, and in a strange way for how its filmed perverted (like Michael Bay perverted). Some times when a person gets attacked, the actors themselves and the way scenes are filmed and edited don't give you that sense of pain that they're experiencing, even though we're seeing gore, especially when we get a predictable jump scare of a fake Dinosaur biting off someone’s head. You'll also find plenty of stupid moments surrounding the characters when they're being attacked or chased by a Dinosaur, in terms of both acting and writing. One of the best examples of that can be found in terms idiotic moments involving the characters are when two hippies are tied up (for unexplained reasons) as they are being eaten by Dinosaur's. The first victim greets a Dinosaur as if he was talking to a friend without showing any signs of fear or amazement that he's seeing a Dinosaur up close; while the other one goes from screaming at the top of her lungs, to suddenly shutting up and looking relaxed after when a Dinosaur amputates her leg (shouldn't she be screaming even more). Another great example of the idiocy surrounding the characters is when our hero finds a latter as he's being chased by a T-Rex, he just stands there for a few seconds to only figure out that he can climb the latter that he's standing right in front of to escape the beast. But the biggest idiotic moment from both the characters and the writing is when our leads find a wounded teenager who previously spoke English before he was being attacked by a Dinosaur, and is now for some reason speaking in Spanish. What did the Dinosaur change his language or something when it was attacking him, it makes no sense! As for the film's overall look it's just as boring as the Jurassic Park sequel that I previously reviewed, but I do think the colors and lightning for when a person walks into a room full of lasers and force fields looked pretty neat. It's just to bad that the scene itself isn't scary or so much as sucks you in to its breathtaking atmosphere.
What I find fascinating about this movie is, even though it’s obviously cashing in on the "Jurassic Park" hype, this film pretty much rips-off a few scenes and ideas from the first two "Alien" movies as the filmmakers try to cover up their attempts of plagiarism by replacing Aliens with Dinosaurs. For example, remember how in the first "Alien" movie that after the Alien is born, it quickly grows-up in a few scenes later. Same thing happens with the Dinosaur's. And having them being impregnated in a persons body where they violently pop out of their stomach, and kill the person in the process just like how the Alien was born, just adds insults to injury. Even the way the scene is shot looks similar to the Alien popping out of John Hurt's stomach. As for the film ripping things off from the second Alien film, remember that climatic scene when Ripley fights against the Queen Alien with an exosuit cargo-loader; our main characters fight against the T-Rex with skid-steer loaders that isn't at all as awesome as the scene that the film is clearly copying. And if you think ripping-off the first two "Alien" movies while competing against "Jurassic Park" isn't shameful enough for you, the concept of military people killing characters who are not at all infected with the virus is very reminiscence to Zombie films which feels just as stupid and out of place as the whole forced virus issue that the film just randomly throws at us.
On the whole, I don't think “Carnosaur” isn’t anywhere near close to being thee worst movie made during that year, nor would I consider it to be one of the worst movies that I've ever seen either, but it is still a bad movie. I mean the film did at first have a decent set-up, and the gore effects used for when the Dinosaurs' eat people looked cool. And as fake as the Dinosaurs looked, you can at least still tell that the people creating the effects were putting in some kind of effort. But instead of being a cheesy but entertaining Dinosaur B movie, it’s sadly just as boring as the last Dinosaur film that I reviewed. The premise and logic is convoluted; the characters and acting are a snooze-fest; the effects for the Dinosaurs are dreadful; the scenes with the Dinosaur's attacking people aren't fun or suspenseful; and the idea of the film being made to just make money off of the "Jurassic Park" hype that was going on at the time, while stealing ideas and scenes from other films is just shameful. It’s not a god awful movie by any means, but it’s still in my opinion unwatchable for how slow and unexciting it is.
RATING 1/5
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