Flicks of Shame: what's a nice actor like you doing in a movie like this?

Carnosaur (1993)

The one time darling of the new wave of movie brats of the Sixties and Seventies, Diane Ladd starred alongside the likes of Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern in biker flicks like The Wild Angels and The Rebel Rousers before graduating to classics like Chinatown and Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

She married co-star Bruce Dern in 1960, and though they divorced in 1969, their union did produce a daughter – Laura Dern. In 1993, Laura starred in Spielberg’s dinosaur blockbuster, Jurassic Park and, clearly not wanting to be left out, Diane got in on the action as well – starring in Roger Corman’s wonderfully shameless low budget rip-off, Carnosaur.

Using a similar genetic engineering hook to justify the reptile rampage, Carnosaur differentiated itself from Jurassic Park by veering into outright mad scientist territory…and by costing about as much to produce as Sam Neill’s hat.

Ladd stars as Dr. Tiptree, a brilliant geneticist who has been working away in secret for the Eunice Corporation. She’s supposed to be helping them build a better chicken, but she’s actually working to her own agenda – the accelerated extinction of mankind to make way for her new breed of genetically recreated dinosaurs. Why does she do this? She’s spectacularly insane. How does she do this? By sending out batches of infected chicken eggs which spread a virus that makes all human females become pregnant with dinosaur babies, that’s how. Don’t even ask how it works – it just does, OK?

To confuse matters, she’s even got a few fully-grown dinosaurs roaming around already – one of which has got loose. As the rogue lizard starts chewing on various locals, it falls to the unlikely combo of a disgraced doctor turned night watchman and a feisty eco-warrior (yes, they fall in love) to solve the mystery.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Carnosaur’s special effects don’t quite match up to those of Spielberg’s hit. No CGI for this masterpiece of cheese. No, instead you get some bargain basement animatronics that move with all the grace and realism of those crude cobbling dummies you see in the windows of shoe shops, stiffly hammering the same battered sole for months on end. As you can guess, the climatic battle – which takes place between what is clearly a toy model of a bulldozer and a jerky mechanical dinosaur - is truly a sight to behold.

Where Carnosaur does outdo Jurassic Park is in the use of gore – the red stuff is splattered around with cheery abandon, with plenty of severed limbs, disembowelling and even a couple of decapitations.

In keeping with this over the top style, Ladd’s exit is suitably gruesome and hilarious. Having infected herself with her own inexplicable chicken/dinosaur pregnancy virus, she happily lies back on the floor of her secret hideout, spreads her legs and coos maternally at the stiff plastic monster that suddenly bursts out of her stomach, even as her intestines are splattering against the ceiling. Then she dies. Did Spielberg dare to cross that line? No sir, he did not. The big beardy wuss.

Need to know: Carnosaur reunited Ladd with her Wild Angels director Roger Corman, though his involvement in the dino-pic was limited to producing. The director was Adam Simon, who also put together the excellent horror documentary The American Nightmare in 2000. Like Jurassic Park, Carnosaur was based on a novel – this time by Harry Adam Knight, who also wrote the book on which Beyond Bedlam was based (see: Elizabeth Hurley). The US VHS edition of Carnosaur is notable for being the only place you can find the trailer for Corman’s never-released Fantastic Four movie. Two more Carnosaur movies followed – Carnosaur 2 debuted in 1995, with Carnosaur 3: Primal Species hitting video in 1996.

Honourable mention: Ladd met another ridiculous demise in the gynaecological sci-fi film, Embryo (see: Rock Hudson).

Availability: Carnosaur is out on DVD in the US. In the UK, second hand VHS is your only hope.

		Carnosaur (1993) The one time darling of the new wave of movie brats of the Sixties and Seventies, Diane Ladd starred alongside the likes of Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern in biker flicks like The Wild Angels and The Rebel Rousers before graduating to classics like Chinatown and Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. She married co-star Bruce Dern in 1960, and though they divorced in 1969, their union did produce a daughter – Laura Dern. In 1993, Laura starred in Spielberg’s dinosaur blockbuster, Jurassic Park and, clearly not wanting to be left out, Diane got in on the action as well – starring in Roger Corman’s wonderfully shameless low budget rip-off, Carnosaur. Using a similar genetic engineering hook to justify the reptile rampage, Carnosaur differentiated itself from Jurassic Park by veering into outright mad scientist territory…and by costing about as much to produce as Sam Neill’s hat. Ladd stars as Dr. Tiptree, a brilliant geneticist who has been working away in secret for the Eunice Corporation. She’s supposed to be helping them build a better chicken, but she’s actually working to her own agenda – the accelerated extinction of mankind to make way for her new breed of genetically recreated dinosaurs. Why does she do this? She’s spectacularly insane. How does she do this? By sending out batches of infected chicken eggs which spread a virus that makes all human females become pregnant with dinosaur babies, that’s how. Don’t even ask how it works – it just does, OK? To confuse matters, she’s even got a few fully-grown dinosaurs roaming around already – one of which has got loose. As the rogue lizard starts chewing on various locals, it falls to the unlikely combo of a disgraced doctor turned night watchman and a feisty eco-warrior (yes, they fall in love) to solve the mystery. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Carnosaur’s special effects don’t quite match up to those of Spielberg’s hit. No CGI for this masterpiece of cheese. No, instead you get some bargain basement animatronics that move with all the grace and realism of those crude cobbling dummies you see in the windows of shoe shops, stiffly hammering the same battered sole for months on end. As you can guess, the climatic battle – which takes place between what is clearly a toy model of a bulldozer and a jerky mechanical dinosaur - is truly a sight to behold. Where Carnosaur does outdo Jurassic Park is in the use of gore – the red stuff is splattered around with cheery abandon, with plenty of severed limbs, disembowelling and even a couple of decapitations. In keeping with this over the top style, Ladd’s exit is suitably gruesome and hilarious. Having infected herself with her own inexplicable chicken/dinosaur pregnancy virus, she happily lies back on the floor of her secret hideout, spreads her legs and coos maternally at the stiff plastic monster that suddenly bursts out of her stomach, even as her intestines are splattering against the ceiling. Then she dies. Did Spielberg dare to cross that line? No sir, he did not. The big beardy wuss. Need to know: Carnosaur reunited Ladd with her Wild Angels director Roger Corman, though his involvement in the dino-pic was limited to producing. The director was Adam Simon, who also put together the excellent horror documentary The American Nightmare in 2000. Like Jurassic Park, Carnosaur was based on a novel – this time by Harry Adam Knight, who also wrote the book on which Beyond Bedlam was based (see: Elizabeth Hurley). The US VHS edition of Carnosaur is notable for being the only place you can find the trailer for Corman’s never-released Fantastic Four movie. Two more Carnosaur movies followed – Carnosaur 2 debuted in 1995, with Carnosaur 3: Primal Species hitting video in 1996. Honourable mention: Ladd met another ridiculous demise in the gynaecological sci-fi film, Embryo (see: Rock Hudson). Availability: Carnosaur is out on DVD in the US. In the UK, second hand VHS is your only hope.
Text © 2008 Dan Whitehead. No cut and paste, y'hear? All images remain the property of the offending studios and their reproduction is covered by Fair Use law.