Carnosaur

The first Jurassic Park spin-off. Stupid plot, silly dialogue, cheap special effects, gratuitous gore, over-the-top acting, dinosaurs eating politically correct environmentalistswhat more could you want? Roger Corman produced, which at least gives it the right kind of bad-movie pedigree. (Corman based his earliest cheapo efforts for teenagers on the principle that no matter how dumb you think you are, you can still feel superior to his movies.) Diane Ladd plays the mad scientist who wants to give the world back to dinosaurs and eliminate mankind while she’s at it, which should be a lot funnier than the movie makes it. Adam Simon of Brain Dead fame wrote and directed, basing his work on a novel by Harry Adam Knight and a treatment by John Brosnan. His taste for images of women giving birth to baby dinosaurs shows his clear indebtedness to David Cronenberg, and his apocalyptic finale seems straight out of Night of the Living Deadbut neither reference seems worthy of its source. With Raphael Sbarge, Jennifer Runyon, Harrison Page, and Clint Howard. (JR)

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