Carnosaur (film)
Encyclopedia
Carnosaur is a 1993 horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 starring Diane Ladd
Diane Ladd
Diane Ladd is an American actress, film director, producer and published author. She has appeared in over 120 roles, on television, and in miniseries and feature films, including Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore , Wild at Heart , Rambling Rose , Ghosts of Mississippi, Primary Colors, 28 Days , and...

 as a mad scientist
Mad scientist
A mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...

 who plans to recreate dinosaurs and destroy humanity. The film is loosely based on a the novel Carnosaur
Carnosaur (novel)
Carnosaur is a horror novel written by Australian author John Brosnan, under the pseudonym of Harry Adam Knight. A film adaptation was made in 1993 by Adam Simon....

 by John Brosnan
John Brosnan
John Raymond Brosnan was an Australian writer of both fiction and non-fiction works based around the fantasy and science fiction genres. He was born in Perth, Western Australia, and died in South Harrow, London, from acute pancreatitis...

 (under the pseudonym of Harry Adam Knight) that was released in 1984, but the two have little in common. They share only a few scenes, the villain still has the same basic motive, and both contain explicit gore and violence. It was the only film based on a Brosnan novel to be produced in America. As it was released two weeks before the larger-scale blockbuster Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park (film)
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...

, Carnosaur may be considered a "mockbuster
Mockbuster
A mockbuster is a film created with the apparent intention of piggy-backing on the publicity of a major film with a similar title or theme and are often made with a low budget. Often these films are created to be released direct-to-video at the same time as the mainstream film reaches theaters or...

".

The film grossed $1,753,979 - a success, given its extremely tight budget
Budget
A budget is a financial plan and a list of all planned expenses and revenues. It is a plan for saving, borrowing and spending. A budget is an important concept in microeconomics, which uses a budget line to illustrate the trade-offs between two or more goods...

 and very limited theatrical release. It spawned two official direct-to-video
Direct-to-video
Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...

 sequels, and stock footage
Stock footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures and file footage are film or video footage that may or may not be custom shot for use in a specific film or television program. Stock footage is of beneficial use to filmmakers as it is sometimes less expensive than shooting new...

 was recycled from all three films for 2001's Raptor.

Plot

Set in the American Southwest
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...

, Doc (Raphael Sbarge
Raphael Sbarge
Raphael Sbarge is an American actor and voice actor.-Early life:Sbarge was born into a theatre-oriented family in New York City. His mother, Jeanne Button, was a costume designer, and his father, Stephen A. Sbarge, was an artist, writer and stage director who named his son after the Renaissance...

) is an alcoholic security
Security
Security is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Security as a form of protection are structures and processes that provide or improve security as a condition. The Institute for Security and Open Methodologies in the OSSTMM 3 defines security as "a form of protection...

 watchman protecting digging equipment from environmental
Environmental movement
The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....

 activists, though he befriends one of them named Thrush (Jennifer Runyon
Jennifer Runyon
-Biography:She is known for guest appearances or secondary characters in various sitcoms and dramas, as well as a couple of made-for-TV movies. Among her roles are Sally Frame on Another World , Gwendolyn Pierce on Charles in Charge , and replacing Susan Olsen as Cindy Brady in A Very Brady Christmas...

). Meanwhile, Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd
Diane Ladd
Diane Ladd is an American actress, film director, producer and published author. She has appeared in over 120 roles, on television, and in miniseries and feature films, including Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore , Wild at Heart , Rambling Rose , Ghosts of Mississippi, Primary Colors, 28 Days , and...

) of the Eunice Corporation is breeding a strain of extra large and fertile chicken
Chicken
The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...

s by splicing their DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

 with that of crocodile
Crocodile
A crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...

s, iguana
Iguana
Iguana is a herbivorous genus of lizard native to tropical areas of Central America and the Caribbean. The genus was first described in 1768 by Austrian naturalist Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti in his book Specimen Medicum, Exhibens Synopsin Reptilium Emendatam cum Experimentis circa Venena...

s, albatross
Albatross
Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds allied to the procellariids, storm-petrels and diving-petrels in the order Procellariiformes . They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific...

es, and ostrich
Ostrich
The Ostrich is one or two species of large flightless birds native to Africa, the only living member of the genus Struthio. Some analyses indicate that the Somali Ostrich may be better considered a full species apart from the Common Ostrich, but most taxonomists consider it to be a...

es. Unknown to the Corporation's sponsors however, Triptree is impregnating several of the chickens with dinosaur DNA. One of her resulting creatures, a Deinonychus
Deinonychus
Deinonychus was a genus of carnivorous dromaeosaurid dinosaur. There is one described species, Deinonychus antirrhopus. This 3.4 meter long dinosaur lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 115–108 million years ago . Fossils have been recovered from the U.S...

, escapes and kills the activists, as well as other civilians. Doc investigates and discovers that Tiptree is also creating a virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...

 which causes women to fatally conceive baby dinosaurs, in order to wipe out humanity and thus allow Carnosaurs and Raptors
Dromaeosauridae
Dromaeosauridae is a family of bird-like theropod dinosaurs. They were small- to medium-sized feathered carnivores that flourished in the Cretaceous Period. The name Dromaeosauridae means 'running lizards', from Greek dromeus meaning 'runner' and sauros meaning 'lizard'...

 to reclaim the Earth as their own. After narrowly escaping a Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...

 and the lab, Doc and Thrush battle it with skidsteers near the end of the film (an action that was repeated in the sequel). The government infiltrates the community in order to "sterilize" the situation by shooting all the civilians, infected or not. In the end, Thrush dies from the virus and Doc is shot by government soldiers, then their bodies are burned.

Production

John Brosnan was first approached to write the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 in mid-1991 by Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...

's wife Julie, who formalised the deal at Brosnan's drinking club, and drew up the contract on a bar napkin. As the film was meant to compete with Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park (film)
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...

, Brosnan later wrote that he was taken aback when it was revealed that the film's budget would have only been $1 million. Although concerned that the restrictive budget would require a reduction in the amount of dinosaurs used, Corman assured him that he was free to write whatever he wanted, and that any modifications would be made in the final draft. Once Brosnan sent his first draft to Hollywood, he lost all contact with the film crew. His screenplay had in fact been heavily revised to the point where his credit had been reduced to "original story".

Special effects

Creature designer John Carl Buechler was assigned to create the dinosaur models, under the supervision of amateur paleontologist Donald F. Glut
Donald F. Glut
Donald F. Glut is an American writer, motion picture director, screenwriter, amateur paleontologist, musician and actor....

. Buechler's special effects crew had only 10 weeks to complete both the miniature and full sized models, due to the film's limited budget. Also, many of Glut's suggestions were not incorporated into the dinosaur's final designs, as many of the models were already in various stages of completion when he was consulted. For the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Buechler created numerous different sized props, including a pneumatically-operated creature measuring 16 feet in height, 25 feet in length and 450 lbs in weight, a 7 feet (2.1 m) suit version and a 3 foot (0.9144 m) mechanical walking puppet. An 8 feet (2.4 m) suit was made for the Deinonychus
Deinonychus
Deinonychus was a genus of carnivorous dromaeosaurid dinosaur. There is one described species, Deinonychus antirrhopus. This 3.4 meter long dinosaur lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 115–108 million years ago . Fossils have been recovered from the U.S...

, as well as a 1 foot (0.3048 m) mechanized, walking mockup. Due to the low budget, Buechler could not create the full scale Tyrannosaurus model with standard sculpting and molding techniques; therefore, the Tyrannosaurus understructure was built using L200, a light polyurethane
Polyurethane
A polyurethane is any polymer composed of a chain of organic units joined by carbamate links. Polyurethane polymers are formed through step-growth polymerization, by reacting a monomer with another monomer in the presence of a catalyst.Polyurethanes are...

 foam, while the skin was crafted with urethane
Polyurethane
A polyurethane is any polymer composed of a chain of organic units joined by carbamate links. Polyurethane polymers are formed through step-growth polymerization, by reacting a monomer with another monomer in the presence of a catalyst.Polyurethanes are...

 foam sheets. Miniature models for the Tyrannosaurus and the skid loader
Skid loader
A skid loader or skid steer loader is a small rigid frame, engine-powered machine with lift arms used to attach a wide variety of labor-saving tools or attachments. Though sometimes they are equipped with tracks, skid-steer loaders are typically four-wheel drive vehicles with the left-side drive...

 were used for most of the penultimate scene, as the full scale model was too inarticulate to fight the vehicle convincingly.

Release

Carnosaur received a limited release
Limited release
Limited release is a term in the American motion picture industry for a motion picture that is playing in a select few theaters across the country ....

 theatrically from Concorde Films in May 1993. It ended up grossing $1,753,979 at the box office.

The film has been released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 by New Concorde Home Entertainment
New Concorde
New Concorde is a Los Angeles, California based film distribution company founded by Roger Corman. NC got its start in 1983 when Corman formed the production and distribution Concorde-New Horizons as one of the first production companies to develop and take advantage of video as a distribution...

 three times. The first release was a single disc release in April 2000. The company subsequently re-released the film in The Carnosaur Collection in 2001 and on a double feature
Double feature
The double feature, also known as a double bill, was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.The double feature, also known as...

 DVD alongside sequel Carnosaur 2 in 2003. The last two versions are both currently out of print
Out of print
Out of print refers to an item, typically a book , but can include any print or visual media or sound recording, that is in the state of no longer being published....

.

Reception

The movie received mostly negative reviews. Review aggregator
Review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services . This system stores the reviews and then uses them for purposes such as: creating a website for users to view the reviews, selling information to third parties about consumer tendencies and creating databases for...

 website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 noted that only 11% of reviewers gave it a positive review. Gene Siskel
Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal "Gene" Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death....

 gave the film a marginal "thumbs up," while Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 gave it "thumbs down" on Siskel & Ebert; their difference in opinion was parodied in television show The Critic
The Critic
The Critic is an American prime time animated series revolving around the life of film critic Jay Sherman, voiced by actor Jon Lovitz. It was created by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, both of whom had worked as writers on The Simpsons. The Critic had 23 episodes produced, first broadcast on ABC in 1994,...

, where Ebert taunts Siskel with "you liked Carnosaur!" Although John Brosnan described the dinosaurs as "laughable" compared to the ones in Jurassic Park, and agreed that the film was "crap", he nonetheless wrote that it was "interesting crap", and credited it with raising greater awareness of the novel. He screened the film at a re-launch party for his novel, and stated that "I will no doubt take the lead in shouting abuse at the screen".

Differences from the novel

  • While the novel is set in Cambridgeshire
    Cambridgeshire
    Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...

    , England
    England
    England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

    , the film takes place in the American Southwest
    Southwestern United States
    The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...

    .
  • The number of dinosaur species in the film is greatly reduced. While the novel featured Deinonychus, Tyrannosaurus, Tarbosaurus
    Tarbosaurus
    Tarbosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that flourished in Asia about 70 million years ago, at the end of the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils have been recovered in Mongolia, with more fragmentary remains found further afield in parts of China. Although many species have been...

    , Megalosaurus
    Megalosaurus
    Megalosaurus is a genus of large meat-eating theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic period of Europe...

    , Dilophosaurus
    Dilophosaurus
    Dilophosaurus was a theropod dinosaur from the Sinemurian stage of the Early Jurassic Period, about 193 million years ago. The first specimens were described in 1954, but it was not until over a decade later that the genus received its current name...

    , Plesiosaurus
    Plesiosaurus
    Plesiosaurus was a genus of large marine sauropterygian reptile that lived during the early part of the Jurassic Period, and is known by nearly complete skeletons from the Lias of England...

    , Brachiosaurus
    Brachiosaurus
    Brachiosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic Morrison Formation of North America. It was first described by Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 from fossils found in the Grand River Canyon of western Colorado, in the United States. Riggs named the dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax,...

    , Scolosaurus and Altispinax
    Altispinax
    Altispinax is a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Obernkirchen Sandstein of Niedersachsen, Germany. Material has also been referred to it from the Hastings Beds , Purbeck Beds , and Lower Greensand of England, and the Weald Clay of England and Belgium, but this material...

    , the film only features Deinonychus and Tyrannosaurus.
  • The heroes of the novel are a pair of journalists, while in the film the heroes are a night watchman and an environmentalist.
  • The villain of the novel is male, while the film's villain is female.
  • The film's virus subplot is entirely absent in the novel.
  • Initially, the kills are blamed on a Siberian tiger in the novel. In the film, they are blamed on a Bobcat
    Bobcat
    The bobcat is a North American mammal of the cat family Felidae, appearing during the Irvingtonian stage of around 1.8 million years ago . With twelve recognized subspecies, it ranges from southern Canada to northern Mexico, including most of the continental United States...

    .
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