CARNOSAUR 2

(1994)


Notes: New Horizons. 1 hour 23 minutes. "Back for another bite"; "Extinction is a thing of the past."
Jack Reed: John Savage
Major Tom McQuade: Cliff DeYoung
Monk Brody: Rick Dean
Jesse Turner: Ryan Thomas Johnson
Sarah Rawlins: Arabella Holzbog
Ben: Don Stroud
Ed Moses: Miguel A. Nunez, Jr.
Joanne Galloway: Neith Hunter.

Executive Producer: Roger Corman
Produced: Mike Elliott
Directed: Louis Morneau
Screenplay: Michael Palmer
Special Effects: John Beucher and Magical Media Industry
Miniature Effects: Anthony Doublin
Music: Ed Tomney.


Summary: During opening credits we see sterile landscape intercut with violent hatchings and glass breaking. In a subterranean system check at a classified military compound a worker is killed. Another worker, in contact with a gumchewer foregrounded by an iguana, investigates and discovers his nephew Jesse and Jesse's friend stealing dynamite. Upstairs at the mess hall, Zeb complains about coyotes, goes out back, and is killed. Jesse witnesses everyone else in the place get thrown around and killed.

A group of technicians--Jack Reed, sleazy Monk, Moses, and a woman Rawlins--are called on to investigate the power shortage in the secret mining facility. Their eyepatched boss announces that Major Tom McQuade is in charge. When Joanne Galloway copters them in, they find only a catatonic Jesse and some blood. McQuade is edgy about sublevels D and E, and after they find a large tooth, the boss is snatched and dragged away. Moses is then mauled and the others run to the copter, but a dinosaur has gotten into it and causes Galloway to take off wildly and crash. McQuade fesses up partially: a biotech firm was messing with DNA and brought back dinos, but the military thought they "got 'em all," except for a nest that they put on ice thinking it wouldn't hatch. Jack announces: "We can't just lie down and be chow for some prehistoric iguana" [vegetarians]. Jesse gets hacking and remembers the dynamite so Jack and Monk go, but get locked into a storage room electronically by McQuade: they disobeyed his orders. They break out, get attacked by McQuade, and get attacked by a dinosaur, which Jack shoots. Monk says "Shit!" a lot.

McQuade reveals more: this Yucca mountain site is a repository for high-level nuclear waste and contains warheads: "nukes and dinosaurs . . . holy shit." Dinosaurs must have damaged the containment units. Jesse says if they crash the system, an evacuation squad will come for them. The crash succeeds but the dinosaurs move through the dynamite set for protection. They make the elevator in the nick of time, but Rawlins is snatched through the roof. We see (inappropriately, since we never witnessed anything unseen by other characters before) her arm get ripped off and her guts chewed out.

The rest blow up another dinosaur. In explosions, Monk gets trapped under some bars. McQuade stays with him a few moments, but dinosaurs come and McQuade sets off explosives suicidally when they attack the two. In the explosion, Reed falls over a railing and land hurt several levels below. Jesse hears that the evacuation team has arrived and goes for help. When it's clear the evac dudes don't intend to go inside, Jesse runs back for Jack, whose ribs are broken. They witness an enormous T-Rex stomping along. They run to the chopper, the kid goes back again for a remote! The Rex breaks out and Jesse battles it with a forklift, opening a pit and ramming the dinosaur backwards into it, saying, "Eat this, Barney." He gets to the chopper, they fly away, the nuclear explosion is blinding, and Jack idiotically is dead wrong when he says, "It's gonna be okay."


Commentary: This is a lighthearted romp compared to the first Carnosaur film. What happened to the fact the the world had contracted a feverish virus which made women give birth to weredinos? In fact, except for the ubiquitous radiation and a nuclear explosion to "make Hiroshima look like a campfire," this film operates like a D&D adventure (Dungeons and Dinosaurs).


Dinofilms
Dino-Source