User Reviews

Take "Aliens." Replace the far-flung planet with a military base in the middle of Nevada. Replace the xenomorph Alien creatures with Velociprators and a Tyrannosaurus rex. You now essentially have "Carnosaur 2." That's not to say this a bad movie or that Roger Corman & Co. should go to jail for plagiarism. Every movie is derived somehow from an older movie. For all the talk about plagiarizing "Aliens," nobody remembers that the original "Alien" was sued by the creators of the old '50s horror movie "It! The Terror from Beyond Space" because they felt like the essentials of "Alien" were lifted from their movie. "Carnosaur 2" is your basic "mosnters-run-amok" movie that doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from any other "monsters-run-amok" movie. The characters are goofy and you can tell pretty early in the flick who's going to make it and who won't. But for what it is, "Carnosaur 2" is an entertaining watch if you have nothing else to do, or if you're with friends and you want to play "Mystery Science Theater 3000." It's not quite as dark and gloomy as the original "Carnosaur," and has absolutely nothing to do with that movie either. But I give it a 5 out of 10.

This movie went into production before Carnosaur was even done. That's how it works in Corman world, because this was going to be a big direct to video success. It's still Aliens with dinosaurs and ends the same way as the first one, as a T. Rex battles a forklift.

What starts as a nuclear meltdown turns into a storage facility packed with cloned dinosaurs. Along the way, you'll see the boom mic, tape marks on the floor and puppeteers in frame, but the dinosaurs are a little better as the team had a week of post-production this time.

Director Louis Morneau also made some other sequels, like Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead and The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting. Michael Palmer, who wrote it, also was behind another Corman sequel, Watchers III.

You can make fun of these down and dirty sequels all you want, but the crew worked 16 hour days for 18 days in a row, which is a huge effort to deliver a movie under budget and way ahead of expectations. So if some things go wrong, well, so be it. It's incredible that any movie gets made.

Carnosaur 2 starts with a special team of underground engineers headed up by Ben Kahane (Don Stroud) being hired by military defence bloke Tom McQuade (Cliff De Young) to fly into a Government uranium mining facility to fix it's apparent electrical problems. The helicopter pilot Joanne Galloway (Neith Hunter) fires the engines up, Tom, Ben & his team consisting of Jack Reed (John Savage), 'Monk' (Rick Dean), Sarah Rawlins (Arabella Holzbog) & Ed Moses (Miguel A. Nunez Jr.) board & they all fly off deep into the Californian desert where the facility is hidden. Once they get there they discover the place completely deserted apart from a traumatised teenage boy named Jesse Turner (Ryan Thomas Johnson), they question him but Jesse is in shock & refuses to say anything. The team find widespread damage throughout the facility & soon discover that it has been overrun by genetically created Dinosaurs who slaughtered all the workers & proceed to kill everyone in the team. With the helicopter pilot dead & the chopper blown to pieces the team are stuck at the facility which is crawling with flesh eating Dinosaurs...

Directed by Louis Morneau & produced by Roger Corman Carnosaur 2 is a massive Aliens (1986) rip-off much more so than the original Carnosaur (1993) was a Jurassic Park (1993) rip-off, the script by Michael Palmer basically is Aliens but with the setting changed. Lets detail the similarities shall we? There's the isolated complex that has had everyone running it slaughtered except for one child. There's the unruly bunch of outsiders including the selfish & uncaring company man whose only bothered about money. There's a scene in which a monster is waiting in the back of the getaway vehicle & attacks the pilot causing it to crash, Carnosuar 2 even has the shot of blood splashing on the windshield. There's the way the survivors have to barricade themselves into the facility & even check blueprints of the buildings on a computer while discussing what to do. There's the plot development that something has happened to the facility & it will be destroyed by a nuclear explosion in a short amount of time just to add to their problems & force them to make a daring escape. There's the scene in which the cowardly character is trapped in a corridor with the tough one who is injured & they find themselves surrounded by Dinosaurs at which point they light some dynamite & hold it together as it explodes killing lots of Dinosaurs allowing the hero & teenage brat to make their escape. There's the electronic facility voice who warns of impending danger & starts a countdown. Neither can we forget the climatic fight between the large Dinosaur & the hero who uses a huge yellow mechanical crane. Every single aspect, idea, theme, character, set or situation could be seen as ripped-off from Aliens, I'm surprised James Cameron hasn't sued & I think Cameron deserves as much credit for the screenplay as Michael Palmer. On it's own Carnosaur 2 is average entertainment, at least it moves along at a nice pace plus there's a fair amount of Dinosaur attacks & on screen action. I've sat through a lot worse.

Director Morneau is no Cameron even though he tries to be. Even the lift they use looks exactly like the ones in Aliens right down to how they open with that mesh type grill. The film feels very Aliens & looks it. The special effects are slightly better than the original but that's because the Dinosaur scenes are quickly edited & they only appear on screen for a few seconds at a time. Again it's a mixture of hand puppets, mechanical models & guys in rubber suits, none look particularly convincing. There is a funny scene when the obligatory black guy has a mini boxing match with one of them! The gore is toned down compared to the first film, there's a gory bit when someone has her arm torn off & her guts pulled out but apart from that it's mostly just a bit of fake blood splashed around.

Techncially Carnosaur 2 is OK, it's not the most polished film I've ever seen but it's competent most of the time. The acting wasn't great, no one stood out & I thought most of the character's were bland & dull.

Carnosaur 2 is basically Aliens set on earth with Dinosaurs instead of aliens, it's as simple & straight forward as that. It's an alright way to pass 90 odd minutes but it's nothing original or special. Sequences from Carnosaur 2 were edited into Raptor (2001) & was followed by Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996) which is the final Carnosaur film to date.

First off this comment is more of a review and contains a lot of spoilers. This movie is called Carnosaur 2. But there are almost no actual Carnosaurs. They are all raptors and the only Carnosaur comes out at the end for 2 minutes and get's killed by a kid with a fork lift. Need I say more? When the woman gets her arm ripped off, it's slow and she screams as if she was pinched. The blood is the wrong colour and the blood isn't leaking but it's sticky! The Raptor looks very fake and when it kills the first dark-skin guy it slaps him twice then kills him. The acting is extremely poor and is very cheesy. The kid is annoying and is a crappy actor. The blood is sticky when a workman gets his head bit off and his legs are still moving. I can't believe how bad this movie is. In the beginning when the raptor comes, you don't see it and all you see is some people throwing them selves on tables and screaming. However to some degree its funny because of how bad it is and is actually quite entertaining and for that it doesn't get a 1/10.

My Rating: 3.6/10

Movie fans usually scoff when they hear the words "direct to video", since a film would not fall into that category if its budget and production values were capitalized on by major studios, but sometimes a few of these little flicks can become hidden gems due to an experienced producer such as Roger Corman, and a cast that puts their heart and sweat into it regardless of its profit or notoriety.

The sequel to the campy B-movie, "Carnosaur" is obviously inspired by the big box office hit sequels of yester-year such as "Aliens", Terminator 2, and "Predator 2". Creators use the technique of not introducing the identity of the creatures for the first third of the film, and the creature stalks its prey through corridors and ventilation ducts, disposing of the cast one by one in gory ways. This time, the head of US Defense, Cliff De Young hires a mercenary squad of hotheads to investigate electrical malfunctions at a classified military mining facility that happens to be inhabited by the prehistoric monstrosities that killed off the whole staff as a result of their shady genetic experiments and cover-up of nuclear weapons. Now the cast must either fight or become lunch. Sound familiar?

By now you should know what to expect. The dinosaurs look just as plastic and fake as before, but an energetic cast of underrated character actors including John Savage, Don Stroud, and Rick Dean keep it lively and entertaining. Combined with some witty dialog and nice directorial touches, C2 should be a crowd-pleaser amongst B-movie genre fans thats up to par with if not better than its predecessor. Its followed by another sequel, Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, believe it or not.

Why did I say "The Best in the Trilogy". Here is the explanation: This movie, is no more, no less a horrible and disgraceful copy of James Cameron's "Aliens" (1986). When you saw "Aliens", you can easily see it again in some different fashion. And here it is. The story is very, very similar. Even characters… Well, where to start, a group of technicians arrives in a giant power plant, or mine, or whatever the f**k is it, that happens to be a large nuclear reactor, and of course, we expect it to go boom… The place is crawling with raptors that enjoy to kill everything in their way, including one large (laughable) T-Rex (OK, In "Aliens" we have a bunch of drone aliens (raptors) and a big, nasty bitch – the queen (T-Rex)). The characters were also the same Jack Reed (John Savage, who… how the hell did he get here?), is a fine mixture of Corporal Hicks from Aliens (there played my Michael Biehn ) and somewhat of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), next we have Tom McQuade (Cliff De Young), a similar character to Burke from Aliens, and then we got Jesse (Ryan Thomas Johnson), a mixture of Newt and Ripley from the "Aliens", why Ripley? Because Jesse kills a T-Rex with a forklift on the end of the film, just as Ripley pushed out alien queen from space ship, The character of 'Monk' is no one else, but Hudson (Bill Paxton from "Aliens"), who makes jokes and get most scared when the things go out of control, other characters as Moses is a original, by the looks of things, but he did a bypass on the large doors, just as Hudson did in "Aliens", and by his looks, he bears a resemblance to Pvt. Frost from "Aliens". Ben Kahane (Don Stroud) is of course, Sgt. Apone and the girls (oh, I left the girls for the end, how rude of me… but I don't give a damn, frankly, my dear), first Sarah Rawlins had nothing to do with "Aliens" character, so it's free to say, that she is quite original, but gives us a resemblance to Pvt. Vasquez… maybe for a moment, or not, but she dies like Hudson... in gore and pain, and finally we have Joanne Galloway the pilot, very similar to "Aliens" pilot Ferro, also a female pilot, that dies in the same way. Killed off behind the pilot chair inside the aircraft. So much about those things, there is a lot more to say about connections between "Aliens" and "Carnosaur 2". In short… one big "copy/paste". The acting, atmosphere, script, special effects (especially gore and dinosaur effects), are just plain funny. The dinosaur puppets are the same and their movements are also the same – Lame! And for the end, guess what? I do recommend this film! Watch it, it is funny and entertaining, more different that the original, or the even more funnier "Carnosaur 3". Enjoy!