"The earth was not made for us, she was made
for the dinosaurs."
Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd)
This review meanders...
go down just past the Carnosaur trailer
should you not enjoy verbosity.
Let's hear it for mad scientists (cum
doctors): where would the world be without them? The staple of bad films
everywhere, the prototype of course comes from literature, namely the good ol'
doctor Frankenstein (1818), with the
next mad docs of note arguably being the eponymous ones of Robert Louis
Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896).
All three mad-to-misdirected men have been portrayed on-screen many
times, the earliest versions being, for Moreau, neither Charles Laughton (1 Jul
1899 – 15 Dec 1962) in The Island of Lost
Souls (1932) nor Erich
Kaiser-Tilz (7 Oct 1875 – 22 Nov 1928) as Prof. McClelland in the unauthorized
German version Die Insel der
Verschollenen a.k.a. The Island of
the Lost (1921), but someone unknown in a lost British film from 1913, The Island of Terror; for Dr Jekyll, neither
John "I Need A Drink" Barrymore (14 or 15 Feb 1882 – 29 May 1942) in John S. Robertson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920 / full movie) nor King Baggot (7 Nov
1879 – 11 July 1948) in the 1913 short of the same name (full short), but Hobart Bosworth (11
Aug 1867 – 30 Dec 1943) in a lost version from 1908; and for Dr Frankenstein, not
Colin Clive (20 Jan 1900 – 25 June 1937) in the undisputed classic must-see
Frankenstein (1931 / trailer) but, some three
or five film versions earlier, Augustus Phillips in James Searle Dawley's silent short Frankenstein (1910, our Short
Film of the Month for May 2021). [In a total
aside: John Barrymore's fourth and final wife, Elaine Barry, starred in our Short
Film of the Month for March 2016, Dwain Esper's How
to Undress in Front of Your Husband (1937).] The archetypical filmic
portrayal of the mad scientist is probably Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge of Hexen
[1949 / full film / poster below]) in Metropolis
(1927 / trailer), but
the generally male stock character itself comes in many shapes and sizes in fun
and not-so-fun films throughout film history.*
* Of the films we've
reviewed here, the mad doctor/scientist films that promptly come to mind are The Brain that Wouldn't Die (USA, 1959),
Maniac (USA, 1934) Re-Animator (USA, 1985) and The Monster Maker (USA, 1944), but as little as a two-minute perusal of
the list of reviewed films found to the left finds: Alien Lockdown / Creature (USA, 2004), The Asphyx (Great Britain, 1973), Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (USA, 1952), BrainWaves /
Mind Games (USA, 1983), Corpses (USA, 2004), Corruption (Great Britain, 1968), The Curse of Frankenstein (Great Britain, 1957), Dante 01 (France, 2008), Devil Species (2004), Dr. Chopper (USA, 2005), Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (Great Britain, 1971), Dr. M (Germany, 1990), Event Horizon (USA, 1997), Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy / Sharkman (USA, 2005), the surreal gore porn Hardgore (USA, 1974)...
Trailer to Tod Browning's
The Devil-Doll (1936):
As probably to be expected in this perfect world of omnipresent equal
rights and universal equality, female mad scientists (like Afro-American ones*) are a far rarer breed. In
literature, perhaps the earliest of the "lunatic ladies in the laboratory" is the titular protagonist of George Griffith's long out-of-print
1894 novel, Olga Romanoff (aka
The Syren of the Skies),
who has never made the jump to the silver screen. On screen, the first might be
housewife-turned-mad-scientist Malita, played by an immensely enjoyable Rafaela
Ottiano (4 Mar 1888 –
18 Aug 1942), in Tod Browning's The Devil-Doll (1936 / trailer above, starring John Barrymore). Thereafter, the first
"real" (mad) female scientists to promptly come to our mind are Dr
Myra (Katherine Victor) of the no-budget anti-classic Teenage Zombies (1959), Dr Lil
Stanhope (Renee
Harmon) of Frozen Scream (1980), and Dr. Pamela Isley aka Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) of the mega-budget, ultra-campy
critical flop, Batman & Robin with Nipples (1997 / trailer). A name
that we now know must be added to that illustrious list of three is that of Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd), of this Roger Corman
production, Carnosaur.
* Though we do
promptly think of The Blob
(1988 / trailer)
remake and, of course, Dr. Jekyll, Mr.
Black (1976 / trailer).
The first Black mad doctor to appear in film, however, appeared eight years
after the first Dr. Frankenstein: an unknown actor plays the unnamed mad-doctor
daddy of the "race film" Mercy,
the Mummy Mumbled (1918 / what's
left of it), a 13-minute comedy
short that is more or less a Black-cast remake of the white-cast short, The Egyptian Mummy (1914 / full film). "[Mercy,
the Mummy Mumbled]
was made by the 'Historical Feature Film Company [us]', which was a white-run
company, but distributed by the Ebony Film Company [us]' to make it appear that
it was released by a black-controlled company. [imdb]" True, but the statement glosses over the fact
that Mercy was, nevertheless, "an all-Black production in terms of
the director, writers, production crew and actors," as Scared Silly points out. But as Scared Silly also goes on to say, the film is problematic in many
ways. (Go to Scared Silly to find out more.) In turn, if one looks at the
definition of "mad scientist/doctor" loosely, the first female Black
mad doctor (actually less mad than simply misguided) is probably Dr Jackson
(Laura Bowman) of "the
first science fiction horror film to feature an all-black cast," the contentious Son of Ingagi (1940 / full film).
Trailer to
Carnosaur:
As directed and
written by scriptwriter & director Adam Simon (co-scripter of Bones [2001] and S&D of the pretty good Brain Dead [1990 / trailer]), this dino film and its mad doctor sit amidst
appropriate company when it comes to the three previously listed "mad
female doctor" films. Like the previously mentioned movies, a masterpiece this
movie is not — but then, who really expects a film named something like Carnosaur to actually be a
"good" movie? Based, in theory, on the eponymously named book from
1984 by some guy named John Brosnan (7 Oct 1947 – 11 Apr 2005), the script for Carnosaur takes so many liberties with
its source material that it could be argued that the original novel has yet to
be adapted.*
* A relatively
productive author with diverse pen names (Carnosaur
was written, for example and as you can see below, by Harry Adam Knight),
Brosnan saw three feature-film adaptations of different books of his during his
lifetime: this film here, Proteus
(1995 / trailer),
based on Slimer, and Beyond Bedlam aka Nightscare (1994 / full movie), based on Bedlam. While some see Brosnan's
novel Carnosaur as derivative of Michael Crichton's best seller Jurassic
Park, Carnosaur preceded the latter author's novel by six years.
Even if the source
novel of Carnosaur was not a rip-off,
the film itself is of course and definitely a cheap & quick attempt by
Corman's Concorde-New Horizons production house to rip off and ride on the
coattails of 1993's big budget hit production, Spielberg's Jurassic Park (trailer).
In an inspired casting turn, Corman even got Diane Ladd, the real-life mother
of that film's lead female actor, Laura Dern, to play Carnosaur's mad scientist. As might be expected of a professional
actor whose feature-film career spans back to an un-credited appearance in Something Wild (1961 / trailer) — Lane's first
credited feature-film appearance is in The
Wild Angels (1965 / trailer)* — she does an unexpectedly
professional acting job considering that she's working with a one-note stock character
("mad scientist"). Indeed, her thespian turn and that of Harrison
Page,** as the one-note stock character Sherriff Fowler, are notably miles
above the quality of the absolutely terrible acting job Raphael Sbarge (of The Hidden II [1994 / trailer]) does playing
the movie's male lead and hero, the security guard "Doc" Smith. Sbarge
is simply unconvincing throughout the film as either hero or nice guy, but it
is during his attempts at playing drunk that he achieves an almost sublime
textbook example of everything you can do wrong when "acting" a
drunkard. One can only wonder that unlike the somewhat nominally better female
lead of the movie, Jennifer Runyon***
(playing the eco-activist Ann "Thrush"), he maintained an acting career
after this film.****
* Diane Ladd and fellow
co-star Bruce Dern were already 5 years married when they appeared together in
this legendary Roger Corman movie starring Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra.
According to common Hollywood lore, their daughter Laura Dern was conceived
during the shoot of this movie. (See Dick
Miller, Pt II.)
** Harrison Page might be
not be in all that many feature films, but he started his career with two roles
of note: he made his debut playing the Afro-American draft dodger Niles in Russ
Meyer's classic Vixen! (1968 / trailer) and then
appeared in Meyer's camp masterpiece Beyond
the Valley of the Dolls (1970 / trailer / see R.I.P. Charles Napier) as Emerson Page, the good-guy beau of the bodacious
Petronella Danforth (Marcia McBroom) versus her hotly muscular and violent one
night stand, Randy Black (James Iglehart). Iglehart may have had the muscles,
but Page got the acting career.
*** Runyon, aged 33, who made her film debut in David Hess's slather To
All a Good Night (1980 / trailer / see R.I.P. Harry Reems Pt. V), retired from acting after this movie. In the teens
of the 21st century, she returned to make special appearances in three
films: Silent Night, Bloody Night 2:
Revival (2015 / trailer),
Terror Tales (2016 / trailer) and Bloodsucka Jones vs. the Creeping Death
(2017 / trailer).
**** The only other actor of
note, whom we fail to mention in our review, is everyone's favorite Republican,
the cult actor Clint Howard. He does a typical Clint Howard turn, if perhaps a
bit more subdued than normal, and then dies.
As a rip-off of a blockbuster, Carnosaur comes nowhere close to being as good as the best of earlier Corman blockbuster
rip-offs like John Sayles's Alligator (1980) and Joe Dante's Piranha (1978 / see R.I.P. Dick Miller Pt V). The flaw lies not just in the uneven acting, but
far more in the substandard episodic script, atrocious editing and dearth of
humor. Not that there is no humor present in Carnosaur, just that too much of it is budget-related (the
"big showdown", with its obvious toy trucks and dinos, is pretty
funny) or is lost amidst the bad acting and editing, the latter of which causes
the movie to come across as if swathes of the narrative were inexplicably
ripped out and left on the editing room floor. The result is that the narrative
often feels like a bunch of scenes strung together but lacking the bridge
between them. Not that these gaps make the movie hard to follow, they merely
make the narrative extremely inconsistent and full of "Huh?" moments.
On the whole, the
movie is as much a mad doctor and dinosaur-on-the-loose film as it is — fitting
to the times we chose to finally watch it — a pandemic movie. If we got the
plot right: Dr. Tiptree (Ladd), hired to biotech-pimp chicken, instead creates
a virus that infects everyone but also specifically causes women (including,
one would suppose, post-menopausal women) to self-fertilize and give — in
belly-bursting homage to Alien (1979
/ trailer) — birth to
chicken-based carnosauria.
Prior to this mass fertilization, however, one baby carnosaurus (born to a
chicken) gets loose and lays waste to almost everyone introduced anywhere in
the movie. The government is then called in to handle the situation, but as to
be expected it basically lays everyone else to waste in their typically SNAFU
fashion...
Anti-big business, anti-biotech, anti-government and
oddly anti-woman (the ability to get pregnant definitely feels like a
biological flaw in this film), Carnosaur is definitely
third-rate Corman trash, far closer in its entire id to the ineptitude and lack
of intelligence of Piranha II: The Spawning (1982 / trailer) than the film
that that slice of Italo-trash followed. But much like that Z-film, there is a
lot to be found in Carnosaur for fans of cinematic flotsam to enjoy: you
name it, but for Diane Lane and Harrison Page and most of the practical gore
effects, it is all laughably terrible. And to crown off all that badness,
screenwriter/director Adam Simon has the cahonas
to pay a direct homage to the ironic, hard-hitting and extremely bleak ending
of the original George Romero version of The Crazies (1973 / trailer). (Kudos, dude!)
Yep, Carnosaur is pretty crappy, but in a
fun way. It goes well with pizza and beer. That said, the less you expect the
more you'll probably be able to enjoy it.
A success during its
theatrical release, Carnosaur went
on to spawn two direct-to-video sequels: Carnosaur
2 (1995 / trailer), with the great John Heard, and Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996 / trailer). Roger Corman, being the legendary penny-pincher
that he is, also reused Carnosaur footage
in Raptor (2001 / trailer) and The Eden
Formula (2006 / trailer) — the last wreckage of a film with Dee Wallace, Tony
Todd and Jeff Fahey!
Cinema Dinosaurs (1920-2015):
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