Product Details

• Actors: Diane Ladd, Raphael Sbarge, Jennifer Runyon, Harrison Page, Ned Bellamy
• Directors: Adam Simon, Darren Moloney
• Writers: Adam Simon, John Brosnan
• Producers: Mike Elliott, Roger Corman
• Format: Color, EP, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: New Concorde
• VHS Release Date: October 29, 1996
• Run Time: 83 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302917344
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #258,366 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Call it Jurassic Apocalypse. King of B movies Roger Corman beat Steven Spielberg's dinosaur monster mash to the theater by weeks with this nasty preemptive knock-off. Diane Ladd (yes, the mother of the star of Jurassic Park) plays a chilly genetics scientist who gives up a career in biological warfare to build a better chicken and emerges with a giant meat-eating lizard bred from ancient DNA and poultry embryos. Think of her as a misanthropic Earth mother, spreading her genetic virus across the country through supermarket chicken eggs, and hatching her scaly brood in unsuspecting women (the birth scenes echo the earlier Corman sleaze classic Humanoids from the Deep). Director Adam Simon, who adapts John Brosnan's novel, bounces between self-consciously serious scenes of scientists and government officials huddled in impossibly dark control rooms and hilariously phony foam-rubber monsters hunting the high desert for food on the hoof. The highlight is a veritable meat market of human flesh featuring protesting hippie environmentalists chained to construction equipment ("Greetings, green brother." Chomp!). Behind the buckets of blood and gore is a sinister, cynical "end of the world" thriller with sharp references to Dr. Strangelove and Night of the Living Dead. It's far more subversive and sinister than your average rampaging dinosaur movie, and, in its own perverse way, more fun than Spielberg's infinitely more polished classic. --Sean Axmaker

Product Description

Item Name: Carnosaur; Studio: New Concorde

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BITING FUN, December 31, 2003

By 

Michael Butts (Berkeley Springs, WV USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Carnosaur (DVD)

Coming on the overwhelming reception for JURASSIC PARK, hence came CARNOSAUR. Long-time b-horror maven Bert I. Gordon got a bigger budget and has delivered a bloody but diverting monster movie.
Brilliant geneticist Diane Ladd has created a virus which she is putting in chickens, so that when they hatch their eggs, they are being sold and unwary citizens are eating the eggs and getting sick, and even worse...won't spoil the plot. Ladd's performance is so coldy calculating that she comes across as one of the most intriguing villainesses in some time.
Raphael Sbarge is a construction maintenance worker who guards the equipment from a group of protesters, wherein he meets Jennifer Runyon (a strong Mariel Hemingway lookalike) and they inevitably fall in love after being saved from the evil Carnosaur.
The dinosaur effects are nowhere near as brilliant as Jurassic's, but they are convincing enough---even when they're munching on someone's arms or legs. Harrison Page as the stalwart sheriff meets his fate in a rather ouch way...
I haven't seen the sequels yet, but this is an above average thrillfest.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Carnosaur (1993), June 22, 2002

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Carnosaur 1 [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is probably the most bizarre and dark movie ever to be made. The plot is pretty weird, and the special effects are terrible. The plot: A mad scientist, Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd, mother of Laura Dern, who was in the other dino film of the year, JURASSIC PARK) uses chicken eggs to make an army of Velociraptors and T-rexes, and she sets them loose in a quiet town. There is a lot of gore, so it's no wonder why it's rated R. The acting and music is pretty good, and the dino vision is cool. Their vision is how it looks like when you have night vision goggles on; it's a greenish color. This is overall an okay movie, watch it more than once. CARNOSAUR 2 (1995), CARNOSAUR 3: PRIMAL SPECIES (1996) and RAPTOR (2001) are it's sequels.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars cashing in on jurassic park, June 13, 2000

By 

"koolio" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Carnosaur (DVD)

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.