Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92297 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-04-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Customer Reviews

What did this movie have against donkeys?
When the words "Roger Corman presents" comes on the screen, you know you're in for some thing. Unfortunately, what you're in for here is a bad plot and incomprehensible writing. The movie starts off with some European terrorists (we have to be politically correct, after all) attacking a military convoy guarding a truck carrying what they think is uranium and take it to an abandoned warehouse in a harbor. What's actually inside the truck are two genetically built velociraptors and a female T-rex. Incidentally, the great method of keeping these three animals secure is to blow cold air on them - and thats it. I guess defense budget cuts took away cages.

So a team of army special forces are sent in to recover the three dinosaurs. But they aren't TOLD what they're looking for because "That's classified" - which is like saying, "OK boys, we need you to kill this guy. Nope sorry, we can't tell you who, that's classified." Of course, it's not until AFTER the carnosaurs have killed two team members that the higher-ups say, "Oh yeah, by the way, you're up against three dinosaurs." By the way, they can't KILL the carnosaurs because apparently these things were bred to help stop disease. However, at no point in the movie are ever told WHAT disease these carnosaurs can cure, or WHY the government chose dinosaurs in the first place. The sharks in "Deep Blue Sea" were forgivable because the super-IQ was an unknown side-affect, but this is just ridiculous.

After many deaths, the characters say, "Hey! Here's an idea! Let's put them on a boat AND THEN try to capture them!" instead of saying, "Wait a minute, it's not the method that's failing us, it's the whole LOGIC." As predicted, this doesn't work either, and so they must resort to using C-4, which they suddenly have. I guess the C-4 fairy paid a visit or some thing, I don't know...

Usually a film like this can get by with a bad storyline, but this had some atrocious writing in it as well. The marine Johnson is a black marine, so he gets to say stereotype things like, "Take dis mutha fugga!" When the police storm into the empty warehouse and see five small body parts scattered around a big room their sergeant says, "Looks like a plane crashed through here!" And by the way...what was with all the donkey references?! You think I'm kidding? The colonel calls Polchek a "dumbass donkey" at the beginning of the movie, then there are two more donkey remarks while they're hunting the carnosaurs, and then at the end of the movie the girl marine says, "Johnson, if you see any thing bigger than a donkey, shoot it!" Did the writers have a thing for donkeys? What is this!?

There is ONE good scene though: while the female scientist is blabbing on about the features of the three carnosaurs, Polchek and Sanders are passing notes to each other and snickering the whole time. They were taking the film about as seriously as I was.

MY FUNNY VALENTINE
Alright, just how many lemon sourballs did they have to give Scott Valentine to make him keep that Stallonish type sneer throughout the whole movie? In an obvious effort to shed his sitcom/family type roles, Valentine plays Rance like he just had two or three enemas and can't wait to get to the pottie. His performance is so ludicrously bad, he's enjoyable.
This third in the series was obviously tired, as they've never done the fourth. It' not grossly bad, just not as good as it could have been with a little more regard to plotting, pacing, and credibility. Janet Gunn tries to outdo Valentine in her role as the doctor determined to take the dinosaurs alive to study them and make unbelievable progress in curing diseases? Then halfway through the movie, she's a gun-toting soldier, obviously in heat with Valetnine, and she doesn't need her glasses either. Rick Dean's Polchek tries so hard for comic relief, but delivers his lines with such lethargy, you wonder what kept him propped up. Fortunately, Juliana Vail and Morgan Englund, as two marine grunts, give the picture some strength and credibility.
Roger Corman took over the helms of producer for this one, and his standard tacky touches are oh so evident.
It's a fun little movie in its own deranged way; the arm wrestling between Vail and Dean is so ridiculous, you can't help but laugh; here they are in the midst of killer dinosaurs and they want to show who's tougher, he or she.
Rent--don't buy, though.

Believe Nothing: Plot, Script, Logic
In CARNOSAUR 3, Jonathan Winfrey resurrects the same plot mechanisms and rubbery special effects that marked the first two in the series. Unfortunately, since the plot and special effects of CARNOSAUR and CARNOSAUR 2 were laughably bad, in this third go round, nothing of note has been added, with the possible exception of two good looking females who interact romantically with their male counterparts at the drop of a hat.

There is no real connection story wise with either of the first two so the opening scene of a terrorist hijacking gone awry is only to give the carnosaurs (actually a trio of Velociraptors and a T-Rex, all of whom for some reason cooperate rather than turn on each other) their cue to go on a rampage. And on a nonstop rampage it is, much to the consternation of an anti-terrorist SWAT team who quickly find out that the carnosaurs' reptillian skin is every bit as bullet proof as their own body armor. The killing starts in a warehouse, and then inexplicably shifts to a sea freighter. The climax races toward who will kill whom first. The plot holes are big enough for well, a T-Rex to walk through. Ever since Robert Cornthwaite as the mad pacifist scientist from THE THING (1952) shouted that the military has no right to kill an alien species that plainly seeks to kill as many humans as it can, Hollywood has continued to insert such an off the top character. Here, it is Janet Gunn, the lovely blonde who exhorts the military to find a non-lethal way to subdue the creatures. I could almost see a political subtext operating with Gunn taking the leftist attitude that the military must discover what the good guys have done to warrant being chomped on by flesh eaters who deserve our understanding more than our enmity. Films like this one are not to be taken seriously. We see them. We are shocked by a few scenes of heads being ripped off. We laugh at a few incongruous romantic pairings. And then it is over. Thankfully.