Clint Howard, Diane Ladd, Harrison Page, Jennifer Runyon, Raphael Sbarge

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

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16% liked it

5,777 ratings

R, 83 min.

Directed by: Adam Simon, Darren Moloney

Release Date: May 21, 1993

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DVD Release Date: April 18, 2000

Stats: 147 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (147)


  • July 7, 2009
    Roger Corman and his B-Movie pals make the world a much better place to live. Carnosaur is unashamedly bad. From the wonky crooked dinosaur puppets, to the acting which stumbles between remembering lines and confusion as to where they are. Rather than going for the simplistic tak...( read more)e of cloning dinosaurs (Spielberg, I'm looking at you). Carnosaur favours a convoluted science experiment involving chickens that give birth to dinosaur eggs...??? Maybe? And ends in human women laying dinosaur eggs. If they'd had a budget then the finale, where a construction vehicle takes on a T-Rex, would have been impressive. The ending is very downbeat and depressing, not really what you want after 82 minutes of awful cinema, but very brave.
  • November 2, 2008
    In 1993, two dinosaur movies came out. Jurassic Park was one of them. But a month before that film was released, out came Carnosaur, a ridiculous B-movie with effects comparable to the Godzilla movies. A mad scientist decides to wipe out humanity and return dinosaurs to the ki...( read more)ngs of the world by releasing a virus that impregnates all the women in the world with dinosaur eggs, which will kill them when they give birth. Sound nuts?
  • September 21, 2009
    Crappy movie. Its two saving graces are that it has dinosaurs and that it is so bad that it is funny.
  • January 11, 2009
    I once started watching all 4 films on TV. but after this one i quit right away! im a b-movie fan but this was crud. the best thing was the dinosaur created by John Carl Beucheler
  • September 9, 2008
    Look closely at the movie cover that is what you are getting into a cheesey corny B movie with a dinosaur modled out of seemingly a kids Play Doll! Recommended disposal of movie lead a pack of trucks in stock of every copie of Carnosur to the Grand Canyon and toss the cargo into ...( read more)the deepest gorge, in time the movie will fossilize and convert into fossil fuels for later generations.
  • August 13, 2008
    C class movie. Best part was watching the dinosaur hand puppet terrorize people.
  • August 7, 2008
    despite of its terrible special effects value, it still has an enjoyable B-Movie feel to it and has a great story behind it!
  • July 25, 2008
    I baught this from one of those $5 bins at Zellers and I still havent watched it yet..lol
  • June 10, 2008
    This movie is hilarious for all the wrong reasons.
  • June 1, 2008
    Pretty terrible movie despite the great gore.

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  • pinhead554
    December 7, 2007
    This is my favorite guilty pleasure! I liked the book a lot better, but lately, every Friday after work, Ive been watching this movie. Call me crazy, but it's a fun bad flick!

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Carnosaur Trivia


  • Which movie has this tagline : " Driven to extinction. Back for revenge " ?  Answer »
  • Is this a real movie title? Carnosaur (1993)  Answer »

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