Rating: 
Summary: Disjointed Mess
Review: To give you a quick idea of how bad this film is: the best thing about it is that Clint Howard has a small role.The basic plot of this film is that the biowarfare division of a corporation has genetically modified chickens so that they lay eggs which hatch dinosaurs. Despite the fact that the company knows these eggs are dangerous (they already have a full-grown dinosaur locked up in their basement), the modified chickens are not only kept in a minimum security warehouse, they are also sometimes shipped out to be sold commercially as food!!! (Yes, the insane scientist in charge of the project has kept its purpose secret from most, but there are others who know about it). Also, for reasons not clearly explained, a surpisingly large number of pregnant women in the film give birth to dinosaurs (I guess they ate some of the slimy green eggs!). Now, if the movie were fun I'd be willing to suspend my disbelief about all this, but the movie is a complete mess. This film was obviously rushed out to cash in on the simultaneous release of Jurassic Park. It appears that in order to meet this deadline, Roger Corman took an incomplete film and re-edited it chronologically into something competely lacking continuity. For example, what should be a continuous ten-minute sequence near the end of the movie (the hero confronting the mad scientist) is spliced up so that the scene apparently takes place over the space of two or more days! Scenes keep shifting from day to night and back to day again. Characters suddenly pop up in completely different locations from where they were seconds before and engage in acts that do not logically follow what they were doing before, and appear to pick up new information clairvoyantly (when they are not completely forgetting other important events). Various plot threads also go absolutely nowhere. Even the meaningless captions about "Contaminated Cells Per Million" occassionally flashed on the screen (it does not actually appear to refer to anything!), instead of continuously climbing, jumps up and down (20%...35%...12%). In films like Plan 9 From Outer Space where there was no budget or talent to work with, this sort of thing is excusable and the results can be entertaining. However, I found Carnosaur to just be frustrating and insulting. It is too bad this had to happen considering the script does make some interesting points about uncontrolled research into genetically modified food, etc., and has a more interesting premise than Jurrasic Park regarding the origins of its dinosaurs. But instead what resulted is a shameful cash-grab which should only appeal to those who care more about gore than story. And the dinosaurs look silly!
Rating: 
Summary: cashing in on jurassic park
Review: when this movie was released in the summer of 1993, same summer as 'the other dinosaur movie', I was very curious to see it. but I never acted up on it and instead saw Jurassic Park six times. so when it was released on video, I decided to check it out. and I'm sure glad I avoided it at the theaters. I have never read the novel it was based off, but I'm interested to see what changes were made.. the acting is credible, characters somewhat developed... but the effects; if you can call them that, are unconvincing at best. that is the main reason I watch a dinosaur movie. the special effects. and this movie did not deliver in that field. the dinosaurs were hand puppets, rod controlled puppets, and a close to full size tyrannosaur animatronic robot. and yes, I could tell when which technique was used and when another was not. the tyrannosaur robot provided the best performance but it was severly underused. for those who are interested in seeing a gory version of jurassic park, check this one out. just don't expect the same feeling of awe and wonder of spielberg's epic.
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