Raptor Ranch (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Nu Image

Runtime: 88 mins

Format: Imported DVD

Plot: A modern day small Texas community is overrun by vicious prehistoric Carnosaurs and a group of people try to survive the onslaught at a cattle ranch.

Review: I know I said on the Facebook page that I was taking a couple months break from working on the blog over the winter, like I usually do this time every year, but that was before I got my hands on a little diddy I've been wanting to check out for years, Raptor Ranch (also being referred to as Jurassic Dark: Raptor Ranch in some places of the Internet). So consider this a break frommy break, to bring you this Raptor Ranch review.

But first, a little bit of a backstory. I've always loved dinosaur movies, and I especially love dinosaur horror movies, so it goes without saying that the Carnosaur trilogy is one of my all-time top favorite B-Movie series'. Ever since I watched those three for the first time, I've been on the lookout for a great Carnosaur 4-in-spirit movie, one that while isn't technically Carnosaur 4, I could still view it as such in my head. There have been many Potentials over the years, movies like Raptor, which was made by the same people and made up almost entirely of stock footage from Carnosaur 1-3, or The Eden Formula which also used a bit of Carnosaur stock footage. More recently there's even been the found footage Area 407 or the 2013 Asylum 'summer blockbuster' Age of Dinosaurs that while arn't connected to the Carnosaur trilogy at all, are still great Potentials and each of those movies all had me viewing them at some point or another as a 'Carnosaur sequel-in-spirit'.

I can't remember the exact year, but I think it was somewhere in the 2003-2005 range, I started seeing news stories on an upcoming dinosaur horror flick called Raptor Ranch and I was even able to view Production Photos and Movie Stills on the film's own website. I saw it was shot and takes place in a small middle-of-nowhere desert town in Texas (Hey, just like Carnosaur!), I saw that the dinosaurs (at least partially) were done with practical models and props (Hey, just like Carnosaur!) that actually looked pretty reminiscent of the dinosaurs from Carnosaur and even had green-tinted POV shots from the dinosaurs (Hey, just like Carnosaur!), and it seemed to have a pretty dark and gloomy atmosphere from what I could tell (Hey, just like Carnosaur!). Suffice to say, I was uber-excited for this one and kept a very close eye on it. But then it just vanished. All news on it stopped coming out, the website went down, and even the imdb board for it went dead. I kept checking back in with Google on the project at random points over the years, hoping that some new article or website would give even a tiny morsel on what happened with this awesome-looking dinosaur horror movie, but I always came up with nada. Indiana Jones even had better luck tracking down ancient lost biblical artifacts then I did on turning up any mention of this movie or what might have happened to it. That is, until late last year/early this year, I saw it briefly mentioned in an article on Shock Till You Drop about a few upcoming B-Movies of 2013 in which Raptor Ranch was ever-so-briefly mentioned. A blink and you'd miss it namedrop. But it was something. And something, no matter how small, was the most I had gotten on this project in years. Not only that, but it mentioned a 2013 release! This year! Over the year more and more news on the movie started pouring out again – more photos, a plot synopsis, and even a brand new trailer. Yeah, I was pretty damn excited. 

Now here it is, the end of 2013, and technically Raptor Ranch still isn't being released over here in Canada or the U.S., but it has certainly played at some movie festivals and it does have a home video DVD release in other parts of the world in early December, so the day has finally come where I get to sit down and watch this potential Carnosaur 4-in-spirit dinosaur horror movie that I've been waiting all this time for!

Really, I pretty much only have myself to blame that I didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to. Don't get me wrong, I didn't totally dislike it, but it was nowhere near the level worthy of anticipation that I had set myself up for over the years. Right from the opening moments I was kind of doubting if I'd enjoy this as much as I had hoped I would. You see, the movie opens on a woman sitting in the woods getting stalked and killed by a Raptor, with a Tyrannosaurus Rex randomly walking down the street nearby, complete with music filled with attempted tension. The scene could have worked, but any attempt at genuine tension was ruined by a very annoying and out-of-place narration monologue from the main character of the movie that instantly takes you out of the moment of the scene, plus it doesn't even seem like the audio from her narration was mixed in with the audio from the scene very well either, more often clashing with it and being difficult to hear either audio tracks.

This would be a problem that would go on to plaque the majority of the rest of the movie. Not the audio clashing so much as just what that issue represented – a pretty disjointed movie that just did not seem to flow naturally at all. The entire thing actually felt like an amalgamation of multiple different cuts and reshoots of the same movie. Not sure if that's actually the case, but considering that it took the better part of a decade to be released from it's initial production, I wouldn't be surprised if that was at least partially true. Certainly, it didn't help either that the movie failed to even let you know when a scene was taking place in another location, until after the fact. This was most present in the beginning portion of the movie when it was setting up all the characters: We have the main town that the movie takes place in, this middle-of-nowhere Texan town, of which our main lead lives in, hates, and wants to leave ASAP. Than we have a trio of college kids on a roadtrip to a ski resort somewhere to have fun and get laid (cause nothing says getting laid like being buried in bundles of thick winter gear), and then we have a gay low quality pimp-wannabe/singer and his two young hot ladies that are on a trip to L.A., and the way the movie sets all these groups of people up, and the way their individual introduction locations look, you'd think they all started out in the same town and it's not until they end up all converging in that town later into the movie that I realized that it was all separate locations and towns that these characters and their subplots started out in. The only exception to that was the two FBI characters (one of which is played by B-Movie familiar Lorenzo Lamas, who has gone up against dinosaurs before in the unrelated Raptor Island) that leave the big city (which does get a subtitle indicating where it's to, even though that's the one location that actually already looked different anyway and was easily assumed to be a different place) to go investigate a series of mysterious deaths in this small town. 

There's also weird scene cuts that only work to confuse the viewer, such as this one part where it directly cuts from them running out of a store away from the dinosaurs in the middle of downtown with the power out at night, right to them running through the desert to an abandoned factory during the middle of the day but acting as if it was just a couple minutes later for them. Like I said at the top, stuff like that makes the movie feel very disjointed and like a mish-mash of various different final cuts and reshoots that maybe shouldn't have been edited together in the way they were.

As for the actors portraying these human characters, they covered all the levels of the acting ladder here, some being actually pretty good and enjoyable (like leading lady Jana Mashonee, who actually has never been in any other movie or show according to IMDB), all the way down to just downright painful to watch (most of the others), with a couple of the really bad ones coming across like they were stoned and high while filming. Lorenzo Lamas is passable enough, but he has next to nothing to do since he's missing from most of the movie. He comes across in the first 20 minutes like he's going to be a main character, but then he just drops out of the movie altogether and pops back up at the very end again, having absolutely no impact on anything, which just adds to the uneven disjointed feel I mentioned previously. It's not just the actors' faults though, because quite frankly, they weren’t given a whole lot to work with. The characters they have to play – every single one - are underwritten and just plain unlikable, and none of them actually seem to have been written to act like how real people act. None of them are all that surprised when they find out they're dealing with living dinosaurs, and even after everything starts happening, hardly any of the characters ever even take the whole situation seriously much.

As for the effects work on the dinosaurs, we got both CGI models and practical work, and they tend to range from surprisingly good to really really bad, depending on the scene. For the physical puppets and models, I actually wish we saw more, since they were mostly only used for really quick shots, but what we do get of them I thought looked great (and I kept pausing and doing frame-by-frame looks at them as often as I could). I would understand using them only for quick shots if they work on them wasn't that great, but considering the level of detail in them and how great they ended up looking, I'm surprised we weren’t given longer and better looks at them, especially when it comes to that amazingly well-made T. Rex head model - THAT was the stuff of a Carnosaur movie right there! The CGI models though is where things wavered. Luckily most of the time they too looked surprisingly great for such a low budget affair, but there were scenes and shots scattered throughout where they did not look anywhere near on-par with the rest of the movie. Over all though, I was more impressed then let down. 

I did not care, however, for showing a Raptor and a Rex in their full glory right off the bat within the first 10 seconds of the movie. It felt forced, unneeded, and without that scene the movie would have had an excellently-paced build-up to the reveal of the dinosaurs later in the movie. What they should have done was just give us a quick glimpse of an outline of...something...mysterious in the woods, and then the couple roars in the distance that we get at one point, and then that should have been it until the dinosaurs are let loose later in the movie. Sometimes it's the little changes that can make the big differences in the end.

Now, with some of those things out of the way, including everything that makes up the disappointment I felt at times throughout...this movie is FUN. Perfect? Hell no, very far from it as I've already covered, to the point where parts in that first half of the movie are almost unwatchable, depending on the scene. But despite all those issues the movie still ultimately manages to be fun as hell, thanks in large part to it's Carnosaur-style dinosaur carnage filling up the second half. We have Raptors stalking their prey in the dark, a Rex's head coming down through the roof of a house to eat someone and bursting through the walls to get to the others within, a Raptor breaking into a gas station's outhouse to get to the person using it, Raptors sneaking into the tour bus to get to two teens having sex, and later a Rex going all Jurassic Park on the bus by knocking it over, then upside down, and banging it around as it tries to get to the survivors inside, in addition to a very nice scene of two Rexes stalking the characters through a forest. And that stuff is only a small sample of the dino carnage on display here, culminating in a pretty awesome fight between two Raptors, two Rexes, and a Megalosaurus. Oh, and also toss in a tough badass lead chick with a crossbow as a weapon to fight against the dinosaurs. Once the movie truly kicks into high gear for it's second half, there's not a dull moment to be found, and plenty of action and gore in every single scene.

There's still one aspect I'm still not quite clear on though, and that's the subplot of one of the Raptors being loose all along. There was a Raptor that killed the misses in the beginning, that then started stalking the teens as they appeared in the town, but the movie never explained anything about that. There was never any mention of a dinosaur having escaped before that, nor any mention by the guy who was creating them being worried about one having escaped, and other than the intro scene the escaped Raptor didn't really do anything at all, so I'm not really sure what the deal was with that. The movie also never explains why or more importantly how the guy created the dinosaurs, just that he has. Which I suppose, for me viewing this as a Carnosaur 4-in-spirit movie, actually works kind of good cause I can just assume the guy found some leftover Carnosaur eggs from one of those movies – ha! Actually, speaking of the Carnosaur movies, I got a tad bit giddy when one of the characters names off the dinosaurs and say they're from the 'Carnosaur family'. I know that's actually a real thing, but seeing as how much I'm jonsing for comparing this to the Carnosaur movie series, that was the nice little sweet cherry on top for me. Although for a movie called Raptor Ranch, the Raptors themselves aren’t even really in the movie much - it's mostly just the two Rexes and the Megolosaurus that are the main dinosaurs here, and considering that the characters even say right in the movie that they're of the Carnosaur family, I'm not sure why the movie wasn't just named Carnosaur Ranch and be done with it. Not only would I have liked that Carnosaur connection in the name, but it also would have been more accurate since the dinosaurs of the Carnosaur family make up a hell of a lot more screentime then the Raptors do.

The movie also fully embraces the camp instead of trying to pretend it's not there like so many of these movies do, and at times it actually comes across like more of a comedy than I was expecting. I was expecting a dark, gritty, serious dinosaur horror movie along the likes of the Carnosaur flicks and while we do get quite a bit of that, there was equally as much of it that was played for laughs, including not one death-by-being-stepped-on, but two. I'm not saying the comedy wasn't fun, nor am I holding it against the movie, it just wasn't what I was expecting going into the movie is all.

In short, the flow of Raptor Ranch felt very disjointed and lots of the poor editing made some aspects confusing to watch, plus the acting really doesn't help much either and most of the characters are unlikable and don't even act like real people, making the first half of the movie honestly a bit hard to sit through at times. However, once the dinosaur action really kicks into high gear around the halfway mark, the movie throws enough blood, gore, screams, and dinosaur attack scenes our way that you quickly forget about most of that other stuff because it's so much fun to watch, although some of the questionable editing certainly takes you out of the moment quite a few times. I do, however, love that almost all of it took place during the nighttime. So many B-Movies these days take place entirely during bright day scenes, I often find myself longing for the B-Movies of old, where they actually liked taking place in the dark and using that kind of atmosphere to its advantage, and I loved that this movie brought that back.

Even though the finished product is quite uneven and at times frustrating even, if there ever was to be a Carnosaur 4 made now-adays, I would actually really like for it to be along the lines of this movie, just with a bit stronger of a first half, as I felt this movie was quite a decent Carnosaur 4-in-spirit attempt that I can easily see myself adding to my annual Carnosaur series re-watch and just pretending it's part of that series. Now if we could just get a Region 1 DVD or Region A BluRay release for Raptor Ranch, I'll be set for that.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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The Eden Formula (2006)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Fantastical Cinema

RUNTIME: 92 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: Terrorists infiltrate a research facility with the intent of stealing the top-secret Eden Formula, only to accidentally let loose a fully-grown cloned Tyrannosaurus Rex.

REVIEW: Anyone who knows me, or have been following my reviews here on this blog, should already understand that my all-time favorite low budget movie series is the Carnosaur trilogy. In 2001 there was a new movie made titled Raptor, which starred Eric Roberts and was almost entirely made up of stock footage from the three Carnosaur flicks (and badly, I might add), and thus it's often regarded as an unofficial Carnosaur 4 (there are actually some European countries that have it officially, although mistakenly, titled as Carnosaur 4). But for the longest time, I always thought that was it for the world of Carnosaur, and I've constantly been lobbying for a new Carnosaur flick, even if it's done for the SyFy Channel or some other such company.

So you can imagine my amazement when it was brought to my attention that there actually was another Carnosaur movie made in 2006 that completely escaped me! Well to be honest, it's not a real Carnosaur sequel, but much like 2001's Raptor, it was made up of mostly stock footage from the Carnosaur flicks and thus should be regarded as an unofficial sequel as much as Raptor is. So of course I wasted no time at all in tracking down a copy of The Eden Formula to munch down on and review. If Raptor is an unofficial Carnosaur 4, then in my eyes The Eden Formula should be considered an unofficial Carnosaur 5.

Since these kinds of movies are pretty much just made up of footage from other movies, they need to have some selling point to attract interested parties, and that's where the stunt casting comes in; Where Raptor had Eric Roberts, this one improves on that by including Tony Todd (Candyman, Final Destination), Dee Wallace (The Howling, E.T.), and Jeff Fahey (Manticore, Lost), and oddly enough the only one out of that trio who really came across as really all that bad, was Dee Wallace. Jeff Fahey didn't really have to show much emotion to show so that was fine, and Tony Todd just had fun with it all and hammed up his role like crazy (which isn't a bad thing since this is a B-Movie after all, so that just makes it more cheesy and thus more entertaining). He totally stole the show as the too-cool-for-school terrorist leader, while Jeff Fahey and Dee Wallace play the two people in charge of the research facility that's created this Eden formula. The rest of the supporting characters though are pretty brutal in the acting department, which consist mostly of a female cop, an overweight security guard, and then the other members of Tony Todd's terrorist group, whom launches an attack on that research facility with the intent of stealing the scientific breakthrough formula and, of course, inadvertently cause a fully-grown cloned Tyrannosaurus Rex to escape and start causing havoc around Los Angeles, in the gory buckets-of-blood way that only a Carnosaur T. Rex can.

What this movie also improved on from Raptor, other then the stunt casting, are the special effects – sure, it used almost as much stock footage from the Carnosaur trilogy as Raptor did, but it integrated that footage a bit more smoothly, and also managed to create new effects shots as well! Granted, the new practical Rex model doesn't really look like the Carnosaur Rex stock footage much (same basic design, but more thin and seems to be far more cheaply-made, and some shots make it look more like a 2-legged crocodile then it does the Carnosaur T. Rex), and the new CGI version that they use a few times does somewhat resemble the original design as well, but ultimately the body comes across as very disproportionate; the head is fine, but the rest is far too small for that head. In addition, some of the things they do with the CGI model isn't realistic and its just not faithful to the physics of what has been portrayed with the physical models previously (seriously, there is one scene where the CGI Rex is jumping and hoping around like a basketball-playing bunny rabbit), and the worst part about it all is that these new models aren’t even the same color as one another! The Rex footage from the Carnosaur movies have it as a dark brown color while the new, cheaper-looking, Rex model changes from all-green to green with some white, and the CGI model is all-white! It's like the dinosaur version of those old gimmicky Micro Machine car toys where they completely changed colors when you held them up in sunlight or submerged them in water. They do get props from me though for at least putting in the effort to have something more then just stock footage like Raptor did, even if the execution didn't turn out all that great. The thought and effort was clearly there, and that counts for something in my books.

The final aspect that I felt The Eden Formula did better then Raptor is the story. Raptor was pretty much just a re-telling of the first Carnosaur movie, where-as this one actually had a unique plot not yet done previously in the series, with some genuinely surprising twists thrown in here and there. In-part, it's the plot I mentioned in my Carnosaur 3 review as having thought and hoped that Carnosaur 3 was going to do (and it ended up not). Granted, it didn't do it to the degree I would have liked, but at least it's a really nice step in that direction. If you remember from that review, I initially expected Carnosaur 3 to have the dinosaurs rampaging through the city but instead we just got them stalking a warehouse and then trapped on a transport boat out in the ocean. Well this movie does indeed have a dinosaur rampaging through a city for a large portion of the movie, though it only has the one dinosaur instead of a group of dinosaurs like Carnosaur 3 had.

And that brings me to the main thing this movie lacks IMO - the dinosaurs. Sure, we get lots of really good stuff with the Rex, but with this being the first Carnosaur-esque movie to have only the one dinosaur, you kind of feel a void left behind by not including a pack of vicious intelligent Raptors alongside the Rex. Especially with the 'Loose in the city' plot, it would have been awesome to see a pack of Raptors darting about the streets with one or two scenes of them possibly getting into a house or apartment complex or something. Just seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity, especially considering that half of the movie takes place inside of the research facility as Dee Wallace and Jeff Fahey try to escape from Tony Todd and his terrorists. That could have been the perfect opportunity to use some stock footage from Carnosaur 2 and 3 of the Raptors, having those things chase both groups of people through the facility. It at least would have made the scenes taking place in that facility more interesting while the Rex is away munching on people throughout the city.

Another aspect that bugged me a bit, which is something I also had a problem with in the similar-themed movie 100 Million B.C., and that is that despite a fully-grown giant Tyrannosaurus Rex rampaging through the middle of Los freakin' Angeles, nobody at all seems to even notice except the occasional random person that gets eaten; these streets in this movie are more lonely and deserted then those of Silent Hill. So much for Los Angeles having a bustling night life. Hell, not even the main characters themselves seem to be too concerned about the escaped Rex for the majority of the movie.

To top it all off, for the first time in the Carnosaur series (both official and unofficial entries included), the dinosaur does not make the same kinds of noises that it did in every previous movie. One of the things I loved about Carnosaur 1-3 and even Raptor, is that the dinosaurs had some really awesome-sounding vocal noises, but for this one they go with an entirely new soundboard, which isn't nearly as effective or memorable as the dinosaur sounds they used for all the other movies.

The movie on a whole really is not very good, and I probably would never recommend it to anyone. However, for someone who was starving for a new Carnosaur outing, this wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been (i.e. It isn't Raptor). Sure, the final 'polished' product is a pretty uneven mess that can get a bit boring when the dinosaur isn't on-screen, but there was at least some genuine effort attempted with it (even if it did fall a bit short), and there's always Tony Todd's cheesefest performance and some great gooey gore at the hands...err, jaws...of the escaped Rex to keep you riveted to the screen, plus there are some laugh-out loud lines of dialog to entertain you along the way (“I think we're gonna need a bigger bucket.”, “Ok, so in hindsight maybe creating a giant T. Rex wasn't the best of ideas.”).

If it was just Carnosaur 1-3 and then this, I probably wouldn't be nearly so kind to it. However, since its following on the heels of Raptor while trying to accomplish the same thing, I'm just happy that it's at least much more enjoyable then that one was. Until the next movie comes along that decides to use stock footage from the Carnosaur movies, this one will tide me over quite well for now.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Raptor (2001)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Concorde 

RUNTIME: 81 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A small town Sheriff and a Wildlife Officer look into some grisly murders and discover that not only is a dinosaur on the loose, but it came from the nearby Government laboratory and they go to investigate, but only end up making things go from bad to worse as they accidentally cause all the Carnosaurs...err, I mean dinosaurs... in the lab complex to get loose.

REVIEW: I had really wanted to see Carnosaur 4 get made for the simple fact that I thought Carnosaur 3 was easily the weakest in the series and would have liked to see the series go out on a higher note. While Carnosaur 4 was never made, another movie was brought to my attention in it's place: Raptor. Made by all the same people and acts as kind of an unofficial Carnosaur 4 (apparently they couldn't get the Rights to the title, for whatever reason since it was made by the same company and people, however it's even regarded as Carnosaur 4 in parts of the world). As soon as the DVD arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to pop it in and check this Raptor out and get started on a review, fully excited to get back into the world of Carnosaur.

Oh boy. This movie is bad. Even by my very low standards.

First off, there is no new dinosaur footage in this movie - every single scene with a dinosaur in it is just stock footage from one of the three Carnosaur movies, and while that stock footage was integrated pretty well in the first half of the movie, the second half was botched all to hell, combining shots from each movie together into the same scene, despite the fact that they don't match up at all. One part has a famous Tyrannosaurus vs Construction vehicle scene that this series is known for...except it's made up of footage from both Carnosaur and Carnosaur 2, despite the fact that the construction vehicle used in the first movie was different then the construction vehicle used in the second, but this movie treats them the same, so you'll see a shot of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting, cut to a reaction shot of the person, then cut back to the Tyrannosaurus Rex and vehicle fighting again...except now the vehicle is suddenly a different one, even though it's supposed to be the same. The second half of the movie is filled with that kind of stuff. Up until that point, I actually didn't mind the use of stock footage as, understandably, the props and suits had gone into disrepair and couldn't be used in a 4th movie, and said stock footage was integrated pretty well. Hell, they even got an actor from the first movie back for this for a few scenes, just so they could re-use his death scene (although he is considerably older here then in the re-used stock footage, but it's the attempt and effort that counts). But then the second half of the movie comes along and does the above-mentioned horrible botching every step of the way and it just gets gross. There are quite a few scenes where we see someone get attacked, but then we cut to stock footage from one of the Carnosaur movies and suddenly it's a completely different person being chomped down on by the dinosaur in place of the one we were just seeing, and in a completely different location then the one the character was just in. It really made no sense whatsoever and was some of the most horrid use of stock footage that I've ever seen (in one scene from Carnosaur 3 used here, we see life boats and a life preserver hung on the wall...yet the characters in this movie are in the middle of an underground basement-level of a Government facility in the middle of the desert...). To further the point, when the dinosaurs start running amok in the facility, the Government sends in not one team, not two teams, but three different, unrelated, teams of Black Op soldiers to deal with it, so that they can use footage from both Carnosaur 2 and Carnosaur 3, where the government/military characters were dressed wearing different uniforms. And one of these teams is dressed in...rain jackets. Yes, rain jackets. No explanation is given in-movie at all for sending in three unrelated teams, nor why one team is dressed in rain jackets despite the fact that it's not raining outside.

And it's a real shame too, because apart from that stock footage debacle, this movie actually had some potential. It's more or less a remake of the first Carnosaur movie, but minus the dino-birthing disease and with more likable lead characters (the Sheriff is actually played by none other then Eric Roberts, oddly enough, though even saying that he's phoning it in may be giving too much credit). And IMO, this movie actually worked the mad scientist angle better then the original Carnosaur. Here, the guy (named Dr. Hyde if you can believe that) was actually making intelligent dinosaurs at the request of the Government to use in overseas warfare in a project titled Jurassic Storm, but then he decided to go rogue and wanted to instead sell them to the highest foreign bidder, but before he can get that far they break loose and start causing havoc first in the nearby small desert town, and then in the facility itself.

To flesh out Eric Roberts' Sheriff character, he has a teen daughter (played by a porn star that looks almost as old as him) that sets him on the path of figuring everything out, as she and her boyfriend get attacked by the escaped Raptor and results in her getting hospitalized and the Sheriff wanting revenge on whatever attacked her, which leads him to the nearby government facility. To aid him along the way is a Wildlife Control Officer (played by a stripper, who has since gone on to star in many movies of this elk). At first they think the creature may be an escaped cougar, which is a subplot not in the original Carnosaur movie but is in the original Carnosaur novel that the series is based on, so it surprised me they included it here, and a surprise that is more then welcomed. If the movie had continue to follow the path of the original book, even the stock footage may not have seemed so bad for me because that book was pure awesome. Adding to the cast, just over halfway through we get two teams of Black Op military characters, and then a third team shortly after that. Most, like in Carnosaur 3, are just background cannon fodder and don't even have names or more then one or two lines of dialog, but there is a couple that are given personality and they're pretty fun to watch, especially the hard-as-nails swear-loving Boston-native leader of the 'Black Team'.

Also in it's favor is lots of good gore (granted it's all from stock footage of the other movies, but they could have gone near-goreless like the third movie did, so props have to be given there), and surprisingly they got James Horner to do the music. What kind of giant ass favor he owed these people, I'm not sure, but it was good to see his name there because the music is one of the movie's strongest points and is really befitting of a much better movie then the one the music ultimately ended up being for. Often times I'd zone out of what was happening on-screen and just listened to the awesome music.

There's honestly not a whole lot more to say, since most of it is just a clip show of the previous movies, which I've already reviewed. If this movie had been filmed using the actual props and costumes of the previous movies instead of horribly badly-integrated stock footage, it actually would have been a really good Carnosaur 4 or Carnosaur remake, as a lot of the actual plot itself was pretty good.. Unfortunately the use of stock footage to the degree they use it, especially in the second-half of the movie when all the dinosaurs take over the facility and all those random Special Black Op teams are sent in, as well as some of the newly-shot story aspects that had to be there in order to have the stock footage scenes make sense, really brings it down to not even being enjoyable on a so-bad-it's-good level, as it's just too damn distracting and really takes you out of the movie, instantly making you think of the better Carnosaur movies.

2/10 rooms in the Psych Ward
 

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Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Concorde-New Horizons

RUNTIME: 80 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: When terrorists accidentally unleash the last remaining Carnosaurs, a Special Ops team is sent in to fix the problem.

REVIEW: After I managed to get my hands on Carnosaur and then Carnosaur 2, it was only a matter of time until Carnosaur 3: Primal Species came my way via Ebay. After Part 1 met my expectations, and Part 2 exceeded them...well...Part 3 was already in last place by numbering default so I guess it decided to stay there, but not without putting up a decent fight.

I'd go into the inner workings of the plot, except I don't really remember. That's the biggest problem of this movie – it's just so forgettable. Every time I watch it, I've forgotten about 90% of what happens in it almost right away. There is no real plot to this one - Terrorists hijack a Government transport truck they believe is carrying uranium, but instead it's carrying the last three surviving Carnosaurs (two Raptors and one Tyrannosaurus), which wake up and kill the the terrorists. Then some cops go in and check the warehouse out, also getting killed. Then a military Special Ops team is sent in to retrieve the truck, but they get ambushed by the Raptors and retreat. Then they return, get ambushed again, and retreat. Return once more and lead the dinosaurs onto a boat, get said boat out into the middle of the ocean and, going against their orders to capture the dinosaurs alive, blow the boat and everything on it into smithereens. The end. That is literally the entire plot. There were some good ideas scattered around in there, but they mostly just replaced plot with mindless action. Don't get me wrong, mindless action can be a good thing, but not when there is no plot connecting those mindless action scenes.

One of the good ideas they touched on in this that I did like was that similar with the first movie, we actually get to see the Government side of things during these events, now that the Government has taken control of the top secret Carnosaur Project. We of course get a beautiful female scientist who's in charge of the project and has been studying the Carnosaurs and wants them captured and brought back alive as she's near a breakthrough in reverse engineering them. While she's not exactly a saint, she's not nearly as insane or evil as the older scientist lady from the first movie. That one had wanted the dinosaurs to take over the world, while this one is just in charge of the now Government-controlled project, which consists of trying to reverse engineer the remaining Carnosaurs so they can create their own Carnosaurs and use them to somehow (never really explained) unlock potential cures for human diseases and other medical breakthroughs. Can't really fault them too much for that I suppose, although she did come across as a tad bit minor-crazy with her constant insistence the the dinosaurs be captured alive. By way of this subplot, we also get a pretty interesting in-depth briefing on the Carnosaurs and we're given far more information on them then we were in the previous two movies combined, with the reveal that they actually have some human DNA in them which explains why they're incredibly intelligent. It also includes newly revealed information on how these animals are starting to evolve and are becoming even more deadly then they already are. Gotta give props when a sequel takes what we already know from the previous movies and then adds onto it and builds on it to give us something fresh, especially when it's the final movie in the series; gotta up the ante somehow.

I also liked the over all basic plot of terrorists accidentally unleashing the dinosaurs and the military team being sent in - except that's ad deep as the plot goes and the action scenes all take place either in a warehouse (why the dinosaurs never feel the need to actually leave that warehouse is never explained) and then on a boat. Admittedly, I actually liked everything that took place on the boat far more and would have preferred it if the majority of the movie took place there instead of mostly all in the warehouse and just the last 15 minutes on the boat.

Unlike the previous movie, there aren’t really any memorable characters this time around. Granted, the ones we get are likable so that's a step up from the first movie in that department, but really, once the movie is over, there's only two or three that really stick with you. One would be the above-mentioned female scientist in charge of the current incarnation of the Carnosaur Project, another is the Sylvester Stallone look-alike leader of the Special Ops team who doesn't have much distinctive personality but the fact that he looks like he could be a long lost twin brother of Stallone makes him memorable all on its own, and finally we have the character named Polchek, who confusingly, is played by an actor from the previous movie and is given the exact same personality as the character that actor played in the previous movie (Monk from Carnosaur 2), but the two characters actually have no relation to one another at all. Normally that would probably bug me, except that despite his horrible acting I loved that character in Carnosaur 2 and I love him again here, albeit under a different name. Everyone else in this movie is not only forgettable, but pretty much just xerox copies of each other and only serve to be cannon fodder for the dinosaurs. Hell, I don't think most of them were even given names. On top of that, these guys are supposed to be a hardened military unit, yet the electrician tech characters in the previous movie had more testosterone and bravado then these characters do. And don't get me started on the acting. It's not like this series has ever had good acting, but this one takes the cake. You know it's bad when the worst actor of the previous movie is the best actor in this one.

But nobody really watches these movies for the deep human characters. As long as there's gore, the masses are kept happy. And while this is by far the tamest in the series when it comes to the gore, there's still a few good juicy bits in here; an awesome arm-ripping scene, a few scenes with massive blood splotches on the floor and/or walls with body parts strewn about, a head being ripped off, and a couple more that I won't spoil here. Unfortunately they're so spread out and most of the kills are cut away from before we see much that what we do get is just too little and far too spread out. This movie has by far the largest body count in the series...so why is it so damn tame on the gore?

The dinosaurs themselves still look really good for such a low budget movie though. Where the second movie had used different designs and models from the first movie (Tyrannosaurus aside), I was worried about what route they would go with this one, but I was happy to see they kept with the dinosaurs from Carnosaur 2. The only exception to that would be maybe the Tyrannosaurus. They either used a different robotic model this time around, or the thing was already starting to go into disrepair cause while it looked to be the same design as in the previous movies, there was just something totally off about it this time around that I can't quite put my finger on. Another thing that they kept from Carnosaur 2 is the same heightened intelligence of the dinosaurs, constantly setting traps for the human characters and outsmarting them. Actually, the heightened intelligence became quite an important plot point in this one. They did not, however, keep the creepy clicking noises that the Raptors make when they're on the hunt. That was a personal favorite aspect of the second movie for me and I was disappointed that they didn't carry that over here, for whatever reason. Without those creepy stalking noises, it removes a layer of suspense and atmosphere that the second movie was filled with and this movie really could have benefited from, especially once they got on the boat and had to hunt the creatures down in tight claustrophobic hallways.

We do get to see the Tyrannosaurus earlier then usual though, which was a nice change. In the first movie we get one look half-way through, but it's not until towards the end we get a real good look and the creature becomes a main driving force of the plot, and in the second movie it's not until the final 10 minutes that we even get a glimpse of it. But in this one, it makes it's first appearance and goreless kill less then 20 minutes in and then continues to pop up throughout at various points of the movie, which I wasn't expecting and oddly enough liked a lot more then I would have normally thought. After all, we've seen it enough times now between the other movies, there's no point in keeping it hidden until the final few minutes and use it as shock value anymore. Just let it come on out and have fun with the other dinosaurs. Then of course it returns in full glory at the end to once again be the 'Final Boss' of the movie, which this movie changed up and doesn't go with the construction vehicle fight like the previous two, and instead goes it's own route that really worked for me. Actually, dare I say, out of the climatic Rex fights from all three movies, this one is my favorite as the two surviving characters do battle against it on the deck of the transport boat and defeat it in a truly awesome way. They also added a new problem into the mix by having the Tyrannosaurus starting to breed, and as revealed earlier in the movie – each generation of Carnosaur is more evolved, more intelligent, and more dangerous then the previous generation, so that little addition really helped to bring more threat to the movie, which is always good to see for a final entry of a trilogy.

Another welcomed and surprising change is that while the first movie took place almost entirely during night scenes, and the second took place almost entirely in a low-lit cramped claustrophobic facility, this one takes place almost entirely during the middle of the day, with most of the scenes happening in broad daylight. Sure, the darkness adds atmosphere but we already had two full movies of that so for the third one it was good to see it changed up. And for those turned off by that, have no fear as it does return to both night time scenes and low-lit cramped claustrophobic areas once they get on the boat and out into the ocean so those scenes aren’t entirely absent.

When all is said and done, I really loved how they tried to change so many aspects in this entry instead of just copying the previous two movies, and I loved how they really upped the ante here to a level not reached by the first two movies. After all, by Part 3 you kind of have to start doing some things differently to make it stand out above the other two, so I can really get behind those changes and appreciate them. And despite not really remembering much even 15 minutes after its ended, it kept me entertained while I was watching and I never once looked to see how much time was left on it. It also never shies away from showing those addictive low-budget dinosaur effects; I'd say this movie shows them off better then the others, mainly due to lots of bright daylight scenes, and the Tyrannosaurus gets the most screen time here then out of the other movies in the series. Unfortunately, it's also filled with really boring and forgettable characters, a real lack of gore, no plot to speak of, and it's just an all around forgettable entry in the series, which all combines to really stop it from being quite as good as the first two.

On top of that, I feel they really dropped the ball with the lack of plot; you finally have these dangerous creatures that are getting more dangerous by the minute, loose in a damn city...and they just stay in the one building the entire time. What they should have done was had these things running loose around the city while the Special Ops team tries to covertly re-capture or kill them. That would have been an excellent third and final movie, especially with the Carnosaur's version of the Tyrannosaurus Rex standing among skyscrapers and roaring, or the Raptors sneaking into people's houses while they sleep to kill them in their beds or something. Alas, that idea alone is better then almost anything we actually ended up getting.

Despite my over-all disappointment with this entry, two out of three ain't bad and I still enjoy the series as a whole, and even this weaker entry has enough good stuff in there that if you're a fan of the first two then I still suggest you check this one out anyway. If you didn't like the others though, then nothing in this one will change your mind any. If the dinosaur suits and models hadn't gone into unfixable disrepair shortly after this movie was made (or during the making of it in the case of the Tyrannosaurus), I would love to see a 4th movie if for nothing more then to see the classic Carnosaur dinosaurs back on screen again, especially since the end of this movie sets up another movie so perfectly. Hell, with Roger Corman recently having returned to making campy low budget Direct-to-DVD flicks (Dinocroc, Supergator, Dinocroc vs Supergator, Sharktopus, Dinoshark, the upcoming Piranhaconda) maybe there's a little sliver of hope that he may do a Carnosaur 4: Extinction Revenge or something. Just maybe... (but really honestly not likely)

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Carnosaur 2 (1995)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizon

RUNTIME: 83 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: After the U.S. Government looses communication with a top secret plutonium facility out in the middle of the desert, they send in a team of technical specialists to find out what happened, but none of them are prepared for what they discover – surviving Carnosaurs from the events of the first movie had attacked and made the base their new nest.

REVIEW: After I was finally able to see the first Carnosaur way back in 2001, after a life-long journey of trying to obtain it, I ended up having to wait even longer to see Carnosaur 2. See, the small town I was living in at the time, the video store there had only the first Carnosaur and there was no such thing as Ebay or Amazon back then (or at least not popular and not on the mind of a 16 year old with no credit card), so it wasn't until 2005 that I was able to finally see the sequel, which was by way of ordering the VHS version off Ebay (which I had to get a friend to order for me as back in those days, you had to have a credit card to order on Ebay as there was no such thing as paypal). So how did I find it when compared to the first?

Even better.

Whereas the first was a Monster-on-the-loose in a small town kind of movie, this one is much more of a cramped low-lighted enclosed-space survival horror along the likes of the video game Dino Crises. To start off, I want to make it clear that Aliens is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi/horror movies, and this movie is Aliens. It's as if they took the exact same script but turned Ripley into a male, Newt into a male, set it at a facility in the desert instead of another planet, and replace the aliens with Raptors, and then you've got this movie. I am not kidding when I say it's the exact same movie as Aliens. Even some of the dialog is word for word the exact same. And you know what? I'm fine with that, because it ended up making for a damn entertaining movie. I always say that if you're going to rip something off, rip off something good.

The robotic effects and rubber man-in-suit props used for the Raptors in this movie, as well as the animatronic and model effects used for the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the end (filling the Queen Alien role) are quite different and much more advanced then the puppet and man-in-suits they used in the original. Sure, compared to something like Jurassic Park they may not look very good at all, but for low budget B-movie sequel of the early 90's, and especially when compared with the first movie, they look great. Adding to that are the new creepy-sounding clicking noises the Raptors make while they're hunting their prey. This movie actually used the sound of the Raptors to create some awesome tension that the first movie never even attempted to do. You know there's one or more Raptors around due to being able to hear the clicking noises they make, but the character can't see them anywhere...that is until they attack and take him out.

One of my main complaints I had about the first movie were the characters and the fact that every single one was totally unlikable and you couldn't get behind any of them. I'm proud to report that is not the case this time, as you tend to care for almost every character this time, though admittedly, that may be due to the fact that all of them are carbon copies of the characters from Aliens; there's the wise-cracking scaredy-cat, the tough-as-nails command-barking leader, the female pilot who ends up getting munched on as she tries to warm up the copter for their retreat early-on, the sketchy company man with his own agenda, the kid that survived the initial massacre (though why there are kids living at a top-secret Government facility, I'll never know), and of course our average everyman hero that becomes a kind of father figure to the kid. There are a few others, but you get the idea; far better then the first movie's mad scientist, law-breaking hippie, and always-drunk construction vehicle maintainer, that's for sure. This time, I never got tired or bored of any of these characters and it wasn't hard to actually root for them instead of the Carnosaurs. In the last movie when it came down to the drunk hero fighting off the Tyrannosaurus in a construction vehicle, you really didn't give a shit if he won or not, but this time when in the exact same scenario (yellow construction vehicle taking the place of the Aliens' load lifter in a throw-back nod scene to the first movie), you actually want the hero to win.

As for the gore factor, there is a bit less then the previous movie as most people are dragged away to be killed off-screen, however the things we do get remain quite faithful to the style of the original movie (an arm being ripped off, a stomach being gouged out, a head gorily detached from the body, mutilated body parts strewn around, and some good splashes of blood).

Now, after all that praise I suppose you're wondering if I have anything negative. Well the answer is Nope, not really. It's a bit slow at first and takes awhile to really get going, which may turn some people off, but it didn't bother me at all as it used that time to set up the characters well and set up some good tension, both things that the previous movie was lacking. And some people may not like the fact that the Tyrannosaurus only comes in for the final 10 minutes, and while it would have been nice to see more of it during the movie like in the first, I loved the build-up to its reveal and wouldn't trade that in for more screentime for anything. It was an excellent 'Oh...shit...' moment (though it does beg the unanswered question as to how exactly, it got down to where it was when the characters discovered it, and how exactly it got up to the surface again afterward).

The only thing that really struck me as odd was that there's a picture on the back of the VHS and DVD cases that isn't anywhere in the movie and consists of the Tyrannosaurus Rex eating a woman in a red dress that's nowhere to be seen in the movie. Not sure if it was a cut scene from towards the beginning of the film when the Carnosaurs first attack, or if it was made purely for advertising reasons, but neither that scene nor character is anywhere in the movie. I can't fault the contents of the actual movie itself though, just because the advertisers dropped the ball on one small picture on the back of the box.

There's not really a whole lot more I can say on this movie, as like I said above this movie IS Aliens, but with dinosaurs instead of aliens. You want to go into the specifics of the plot and the various character arcs? You already know them. Read a review on Aliens because anything I'd have to say on this would just be rehashing what you already know from that movie. Fans of Aliens should like this movie for the simple fact that it's the same movie, but with dinosaurs. Fans of the first should like this movie for the simple fact that it keeps what you like from that movie, and improves upon the rest. This is one of those rare movies that not only can I watch it over and over again whenever I so much as look at the cover art, but it's also one of those movies that as soon as the credits start rolling, I could easily go back to the beginning and start it over again right after. It's just that much fun for me.

While the first will always hold a special place in my heart due to my past history with it, this one is without a doubt the actual better movie.

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Carnosaur (1993)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizon

RUNTIME: 83 mins

FORMAT: Special Edition DVD

PLOT: A mad scientist brings carnivorous dinosaurs back to life to set them loose on the world in a bid to destroy humanity and give the world back to the Dinosaurs. To help them along, she also unleashes a deadly dino-virus to infect the women half of humanity.

REVIEW: There are many movies that solidify themselves into your mind as being associated with a particular time in your life. For me, one of those movies is Carnosaur. And the time of my life it always reminds me of? Grade 10 of High School when I first started getting into low budget B-movies. Actually, this is was one of my all-time first low budget B-movies, and for that, I'll always hold a special place in my heart for it.

I've been a huge dinosaur nut ever since I was 3 years old. Possibly even before that, but my memory of being one goes back to when I was 3 (Yes, I actually remember this) and I saw my very first look at a dinosaur – a rubber (and I've since been told a very annoyingly squeaky) toy Triceratops. My parents bought it for me and from that moment on, my life's biggest passion was born – Dinosaurs. Growing up (and still to this day), I have to see anything that has dinosaurs in it, no matter how good or bad. As a kid, that wasn't really a problem – until 1993 when my 8-year-old eyes befell a little VHS tape on the video store shelf called Carnosaur. The dinosaur on the cover looked just awesome (again, at the time and to my kid eyes), as I had never before seen a live-action dinosaur beyond old black and white movies (side note: When I saw Jurassic Park for the first time later that very same year, it blew my friggin' little mind). I looked at the pictures on the back of the box and instantly knew I just had to see this movie. However, when I went to go bring it to my parents to rent it for me, they had forbidden it because it had the dreaded R Rating that has a long and evil history of stopping many young kids in their tracks. Now, to my young mind, I couldn't understand why a dinosaur movie - something I had thought was a topic that was always kid-friendly - was R Rated. Over the years, I kept seeing not only Carnosaur but it's growing number of sequels – first Carnosaur 2 and then Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, always checking out the pictures on the back and thinking how awesome these movies must be. Then in 2001, once I entered Grade 10 in High School and I was able to go out and rent what I wanted, the next time I saw the Carnosaur VHS tape sitting in that video store, I snatched it up and watched it.

And yes...it was bad. Very bad. Horrible. Dreadful even. And I loved every minute of it.

From the get-go you know this will be a very dark movie as we open on a scene of chickens in some kind of factory being caged up and prepared for slaughter, along with images of coded DNA sequences and hints of some kind of gene splicing, all playing to very overly-dramatic dark music. We then we see living chickens from that same place get shipped out in the middle of the night on a truck, where a very badly-obvious puppet baby dinosaur hatches from a large egg in the shipment (which was created on purpose by the movie's resident mad scientist as a means to destroy the world...some how...). It proceeds to slaughter every last chicken before moving onto the driver and then escaping out into the desert.

And thus starts a chain of events that includes, but is not limited to, carnage-filled dinosaur attack of a group of partying teens, tiny baby dinosaur being found in an egg about to be cooked for breakfast, a dinosaur ripping off someone's head, women getting extremely sick from a mysterious flu-like illness, hippies that had chained themselves to construction vehicles as a statement getting slaughtered by a dinosaur, the police trying to solve the mysterious deaths, a woman giving birth to a baby dinosaur, Alien-style, a mysterious group of hazmat-wearing government soldiers killing everyone in their path, and an escaping fully-grown Tyrannosaurus Rex who's head is apparently strong enough to break down a very thick solid stone wall with no damage or pain to itself.

Sure, the script itself makes no sense in the slightest (my descriptions above offer about just as much of an explanation as the movie does for these events), and the acting is what you would expect from a low-budget direct-to-video movie of the early 90's, but there is more then enough gratuitous gore at the hands...err...claws... of the badly-animatronic and puppeted (and in some scenes even rubber-suited) Tyrannosaurus and baby Raptor, with enough horrible and useless dialog that seemed like it was just thrown in there at the last minute with no thought to it (the Jurassic Park reference FTW though), to make any lover of bad movies enjoy this one on at least some level. There's even a very awesomely-bad scene towards the end where we see the Tyrannosaurus Rex fight against the main character in a construction vehicle.

As I said above, this is one dark movie. The tone was set from the opening seconds and it kept that tone right through the entire movie. Just about the entire thing takes place either in a dimly-lit laboratory building or in the darkness of night with the exception of one or two short scenes, and along with our dinosaur killing spree, we also have women coming down with a new sickness and giving birth rather rapidly to baby killer dinosaurs, along with the Government stopping at nothing to stop that sickness from spreading, even if it means murdering everyone. There's also constant pop-up subtitle updates throughout the movie the keep track of how much the sickness has spread, which I thought was a delightfully dark and cheesy thing to do, although I'm sure it's real reason was more-so to just remind the viewer of the side-plot of the sickness when the movie was focusing on a different aspect. Even the ending is one of the most downer and depressing endings to a movie I've ever seen, and was probably the only real way they could have ended this while keeping faithful to the the tone of the rest of the movie. Any other ending would have almost felt like a cop-out.

The only real problem I have is with the characters. Nobody really gets any characterization except for maybe the mad scientist lady. Even the main character himself feels more like a side-character, which I guess isn't really that big of a problem simply because nobody at all is likeable in this movie, including that very same main character. Sure, that also helps add to the dark and depressing tone of the movie, but it was something I wish they had gone in a different direction with. A movie like this really needs a good likable lead character to get behind and root for, especially with a scene like the one I describe above where he climbs into a construction vehicle to battle with the Tyrannosaurus at the end. The only exception I could maybe give is to the town's Sheriff, but really, he was only in all of about 4 scenes, all of which were very short. However, in his very limited time he proves that he is one total bad ass, as right in the middle of town square he blows the rubber head off the Raptor after it's already struck a killing blow to him and he's holding onto his life just long enough to kill the damn thing. Now that's our true hero of this movie, and he ended up hardly being in it.

There was also one scene that went on way too long (a good quarter or more of the movie) where the mad scientist lady proceeds to explain her entire plan to our main 'hero' while he has a gun pointed at her, and the two have a nice little 20-minute chat about it all. I half-expected someone to pull up a table and a set of chairs and offer them tea and crumpets. That entire scene went on way too long and was also quite boring after the first couple minutes. It was a bit of a stumble in an otherwise well-paced movie.

That one section of the movie, unlikable characters, and 0 characterization aside, this is one really fun, albeit quite depressing, low budget bad movie that makes for an excellent drinking game movie with a room of friends one rainy weekend night.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward


A note on the Special Edition DVD: This is marked as a Special Edition DVD and thus you would think it would be different then the regular DVD, but really it's not, beyond having 'Special Edition' branded down the left hand side of the cover. That is literally the only difference, so if you already own the regular DVD and see the Special Edition version out and about, you won't gain anything by picking it up again.

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