(1995)
1
Brian J. Dillard
Another movie in the Carnosaur franchise, another Hollywood blockbuster to knock off. This time, it's Aliens that gets the Roger Corman treatment, as a ragtag group of paramilitary commandos storms an isolated research base only to find that slumbering predators have awoken and left only one young survivor. Of course, instead of a beautifully H.R. Giger-designed alien world, a screaming blond moppet, and a shadowy corporation pulling the strings, we get a drab terrestrial hideaway called Yucca Mountain, a cataleptic teenager and a standard-issue government cover-up. The original Carnosaur was nothing but a low-budget Jurassic Park also-ran, but it did have its moments -- Diane Ladd's sinister pronouncements and John Carl Buechler's cheap but effective visual effects. For this sequel, new screenwriter Michael Palmer jettisons the spooky mutant-baby/virus angle and hones in on endless scenes of dinosaurs -- midget rubber dinosaurs, no less -- skittering down industrial corridors. To compensate for the less-resonant visuals, director Louis Morneau ratchets up the queasy violence. He seems fixated on the idea of severed human limbs and takes several opportunities to run with that concept. Low-budget horror films have often matched and frequently surpassed mainstream Hollywood fare in terms of wit, style, gore, and sheer fright. The best that can be said of Carnosaur 2 is that it gives good gore.
Carnosaur 2 on AllMovie
Carnosaur 2 (1995)
