Produced on the quick for reportedly less than one-million dollars by the legendary Roger Corman, and directed by Adam Simon (who had previously helmed 1990’s Brain Dead and 1991’s Body Chemistry II for Corman), Carnosaur was released to a very limited number of theaters in late May of 1993. Despite beating Jurassic Park to theaters by nearly a month, Carnosaur has quite fairly been labelled a “rip-off” of Steven Spielberg’s mammoth “summer blockbuster” hit from the moment Corman started production. I mean, it wasn’t just coincidence that 3-time Oscar nominee Diane Ladd, the mother of Jurassic Park co-star Laura Dern, was cast in the lead role. However, to be fair, Carnosaur is very loosely based off of a 1984 novel from author Harry Adam Knight (real name, John Brosnan), which Corman had acquired the screen rights to a few years prior, while Michael Crichton’s novel didn’t release until 1990. So, who is really ripping off who here?

Answer: It’s Corman. If anyone is ripping off anyone here, Corman was surely behind it.

Scene from “Carnosaur” (1993)

Despite only showing on a small number of screens, Carnosaur managed to pull in nearly double its budget at the box office. It also garnered its fair share of media attention, especially after Roger Ebert called Carnosaur “The Worst Film of 1993”, while Gene Siskel actually gave the film a “thumbs up”. Even though Carnosaur found more of an audience on home video and cable network airings, it has been alleged that Corman “greenlit” a sequel before production on the first film had even completed. True or not, Carnosaur 2 was released to home video in February of 1995.

Directed by Louis Morneau (Bats, The Hitcher II), Carnosaur 2 features a group of technicians facing off against dinosaurs in a military-owned uranium mine and shares a few similarities to James Cameron’s Aliens. Then again, every movie of the last 40 years that features a monster loose inside any sort of industrial complex can be said to “share a few similarities” with Aliens. The film stars John Savage, Cliff DeYoung, and features supporting roles from Return of the Living Dead alum Miguel Nunez Jr., Island of Death‘s Rick Dean, and Michael McDonald of “MadTV” fame. While not as dark and daring as the first film, I’ve always enjoyed Carnosaur 2, but never really considered it more than a mindless, late-night “time killer”.

“Scene from “Carnosaur 2” (1995)

Although produced for the around the same budget as the first film, if not marginally more, Carnosaur 2 did cut a few corners in the effects budget by reusing the dinosaur props and animatronics that special-effects wizard John Carl Buechler had created for the original film. As such, the effects don’t feel quite as upfront and present as in the first film, but the use of shadow and quick-cut editing helps hide some of the flaws of the various dinosaur puppets and animatronics, as well as signs of wear. Again, Carnosaur 2 found enough of an audience for Corman to produce a third film in the series, albeit with a smaller budget this time.

For the franchise’s third film, Corman enlisted Jonathan Winfrey to direct. Winfrey had also previously directed and produced films for Roger, such as Sorority House Massacre II and III (aka Hard To Die), 1991’s Dead Space (co-starring Bryan Cranston), and 1995’s Black Scorpion, which was released as part of the “Roger Corman Presents” series of films created for the Showtime Network in the mid-1990s. Winfrey would also direct the 1997 sequel to Black Scorpion, 1995’s Bloodfist VII, and co-produce 2006’s The Marine, featuring John Cena.

The “star” of Carnosaur 3 is Scott Valentine, now years away from his breakout role as “Nick”, the trash-sculpting boyfriend of Justine Bateman’s “Mallory” on the popular 1980s’ sitcom “Family Ties”. Although he had previously appeared in the 1986 anthology horror film Deadtime Stories (a title that undoubted saw rental numbers increased by his newfound, yet albeit minor “stardom”), Valentine was able to capitalize on the character’s popularity, landing the lead role in the 1987 horror/comedy My Demon Lover. While I may have watched the film about a dozen times in the theater, My Demon Lover was a critical and financial failure. Maybe if I had actually paid to see the movie instead of having my brother (who worked at the theater at the time) just let me in, the film may have made more than $3.9 of its $4 million budget back at the box office. As is, Valentine spent the remainder of the 80s primarily appearing in TV movies before finding his way into a number of B-grade horror films and erotic thrillers in the early 1990s.

Carnosaur 3 features a few other recognizable faces in supporting roles, such as the late Stephen Lee (Dolls, 1991’s The Pit and The Pendulum), Cyril O’Reilly (Porky’s and Porky’s II), and Terri J. Vaughn, who would later appear as “Lovita” on “The Steve Harvey Show”. Rick Dean returns in a somewhat similar role, while Michael McDonald makes another appearance, this time as an ill-fated police officer.

The plot is your fairly generic B-grade “soldiers vs. monsters” fare. O’Reilly’s gang of terrorists hijack what they believe to be a shipment of uranium, only to find even more of the genetically-altered dinosaurs from the first two films. A crack squad of commandos, led by Valentine’s “Col. Rance Higgins”, is sent in to eliminate the terrorists and retrieve the specimens. The “elimination” part of the plan doesn’t prove much of a challenge as the escaped dinos have already dined their way through all the terrorists, as well as made dessert out of a handful of cops.

From here, Carnosaur 3, much like the previous film, devolves into a series of “cat & mouse” sequences with soldier hunting dinosaur and dinosaur hunting soldier before concluding in somewhat video game-like fashion with a battle against a “final boss”; as with the previous Carnosaur films, that “final boss” is a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Naturally, the T-Rex is destroyed, but not before most of the cast have been turned into kibble.  As with any good horror film (and twice as many bad ones), the door is left open for yet another sequel. While a “true” fourth film in the series has yet to appear, Jim Wynorski’s 2001 film Raptor serves as something of a continuation/reboot, even reusing a lot of the dinosaur footage from the series. As if that weren’t enough, footage from the series is also recycled into 1994’s Dinosaur Island, 1997’s The Haunted Sea, and 2006’s The Eden Formula, while Carnosaur 3 was remade in 2006 as Scorpius Gigantus.

As with the first two films, Carnosaur 3 has been generally panned over the years, and not without some justification. Nearly every aspect of the film is a step down from the original and, in some ways, the second film as well. While the sequels are really quite interchangeable as far as generic plotlines go, the performances in Carnosaur 3 are generally quite poor. This especially applies to the “extras” cast as soldiers, who give some of the most unconvincing death performances I’ve witnessed in years. My old ass gives more convincing performances just trying to walk down my staircase. That said, someone in editing was either incredibly lazy or took morbid pride in this atrocity, as the same shot of soldiers being blown off a mound of freshly-piled dirt is used more than once in the same sequence! 

While even more touch-ups and revisions to Beuchler’s original creations didn’t exactly make them look any better than they previously had, age and budgetary restraints did result in less-effective methods occasionally being used. In some instances, the dinosaurs are clearly actors in rubber suits. While I am sure that it’s nowhere near the desired reaction that the filmmakers had envisioned, I found it hilarious watching the actors trying to run in these bulky costumes with squat little legs… and truly wish the film featured more of it! It’s comedy gold!

It’s really quite hard to take anything about Carnosaur 3 all that seriously, and Valentine seems to be the only one who is. With a constant, yet notably forced scowl on his face, he tends to overplay his role as a “no-nonsense” military man. Meanwhile, every other member of the cast is clearly hamming it, with Dean’s “Polchek” also bringing along enough “cheese” to make a sandwich.  There’s also evidence on display that director Winfrey wasn’t taking things too seriously either, spending way more time and focus on unique camera angles and pans than on creating any kind of cohesive narrative.

Simply put, Carnosaur 3 is a hot mess. So, why choose this film as my topic for this year’s series? It came down to three reasons.

1. While the film is undoubtedly a train wreck, I would be lying if I said that I was not entertained, and may actually consider Carnosaur 3 to be the most “fun” of the three films. No, really!

The first film is undoubtedly the strongest of the series, which is and isn’t saying all that much. However, as it does feature something of a deeper plotline, chances are that you may actually want to pay attention to it. Meanwhile, neither Carnosaur sequel offers much of a story, making up for it with enough gunplay, explosions, and people being mauled by prop dinosaur heads to keep a simpleton like me amused for 90 minutes.  While I hesitate to use the phrase “so bad it’s good” as there’s valid argument that any film that entertains you is a “good” film, fans of films commonly described as such may find Carnosaur 3 more appealing than its predecessors due to its less convincing performances and props. There’s also numerous filmmaking errors to be found, such as puppeteers and boom mics making their way into multiple shots, which is always good for a laugh.

2.  Without going over all of the fake “titles” that contributors were asked to choose their theme from, Carnosaur 3 is a sequel (“But Wait, There’s More!”), produced/directed by Roger Corman (“Cult Leader”), rated under 5-stars on IMDb (“Ain’t That Some Shit?”), and, undoubtedly, a rip-off of another film (“The Sincerest Form of Flattery”). So, I really could have used this film to fit a multitude of different themes. Would I if given those options? Probably not, which leads us to…

3. I know that this might sound like sacrilege to some, especially considering that I spent the entirety of my teenage years in the 1990s, but I’m just not the biggest fan of the decade when it comes to horror. Sure, there are films such as Candyman, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, and the early Full Moon releases that I’ve adored since they first debuted. However, for each of those, I frequently found myself sitting through numerous Scream clones*, endless Hellraiser and Leprechaun sequels of steadily decreasing budget and quality, and shit like Pumpkinhead II. Don’t even get me started on the Children of the Corn or Witchcraft films! Honestly, I’d much prefer the softcore dullness of a Witchcraft sequel as the only person guaranteed to get fucked in a Children of the Corn film is the viewer.

*If we are being completely honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Scream either. I didn’t dislike it. Just never “loved” it. 

Truth be told, I watched nearly 25 different films in my attempt to find a topic for this year’s Halloween Horrors series, most of which I had never watched before. While I won’t bother to list what those films were, I can tell you that I only found two of those to be moderately enjoyable. I guess I could have written about one of those early Full Moon releases, but felt that if I were asking contributors to watch and write about films they might not normally choose, I should do the same.

I won’t try to convince you that Carnosaur 3 is some “hidden gem”. It’s not. Nor will I try to convince you that it’s an over-looked “trash classic” that you’ve shamefully missed over the years, although I do believe that it could be seen as one if the right “boutique label” physical media distributors were to market their new “4K 17-disc Limited Collector’s Edition” release as such. (Yes, that is how that shit seems to work these days.) No, it’s just a dumb, low-budget movie with unconvincing dinosaur props and even less convincing acting. It just happened to be a dumb, low-budget movie with unconvincing dinosaur props and even less convincing acting that I had fun watching.

That said, I still look at this as a case of karma kicking me in the ass. 45 different themes to choose from and I randomly assign myself one that I would want least. If this year’s Halloween Horrors series really was a game, I clearly played the fool.