Notes: New Horizons. 83 minutes. "Driven to extinction. Back for revenge."
Dr. Jane Tiptree: Diane Ladd
Doc: Raphael Sbarge
Thrush: Jennifer Runyon
Sheriff: Harrison Page
Friar: Clint Howard

Executive Producer: Roger Corman
Produced: Mike Elliott
Written and Directed: Adam Simon
Based on a Novel by: Harry Adam Knight
Special Effects: John Buechler and Magical Media Industries, Inc.
Music: Nigel Holton.

Summary: During the credits we see footage of factory "farming": assembly line chicken slaughter, right to the drain. We read miniscule data printout: "Sample Species: Ostrich. Target Species: Chicken." Other sample species include iguana, vulture, albatross, pelican, crocodile, turkey. This is all baffling.

A Washington agency wants to find out what geneticist Dr. Jane Tiptree, the "fairy godmother of military biotech," is up to lately. She is sequestered doing research for Eunice Industries, working on chickens. There, a newly hatched "chick" slashes the face of a worker and escapes. A poultry plant truck is allowed to leave the compound and when the driver stops along the road, he is mauled and killed. The local sheriff is called to the scene and suspects a bobcat. "I think they're extinct." "Well, maybe they're making a comeback."

We meet a drunk with a gun who chases some people away from his machinery at night. This is Doc, who we're supposed to cheer later. He captures at gunpoint a young woman dressed in black around the bulldozer. We find out later she has conked him on the head a run back to her commune. The sheriff drives Doc there, past the sign reading "Major corporations are killing our earth," but Doc refuses to identify the woman. She later thanks him, revealing her name as Thrush. She speaks of the area being a "dinosaur highway" 60 million years ago. He is sneeringly anti-environmental, but he insists he just maintains the machines.

In Washington, the Agency is feeding blueberry pie to officials, then revealing the secret is the goat embryonic fluid coating. They're also trying to push through an allowance for silent marketing of cows with turnip DNA. Meanwhile, three young idiots go drinking and driving in the Nevada desert and get killed by the "carnosaur." The girl's father is distraught and Dr. Tiptree promises him he can see his daughter: "Our children are all that matters. What are we anyway except a set of instructions for the reproduction of the species?" But she lied; she feeds him to another dinosaur instead.

Doc finds "Earthfirst" "hippies" chained to the dozers. He doesn't shoot them but sneers, "Can I get anyone a uh tofu burger vegetarian sprout wheatgrass sandwich with some herbal tea?" At night a T-Rex comes, is met with a friendly "Greetings, green brother." It eats the chained people--lots of gore. Thrush is unharmed inside the dozer.

Cut to the diner where people are eating chicken and chicken salad, into which we later will learn Tiptree introduced a virus which makes women feverish. After various shootings at dinosaurs, Doc pretends to be a worker at Eunice and brings a supposedly drugged dinosaur to Tiptree. She admits him through security but he has brought a human corpse and a gun. She explains that she designed the fever, that the body is a "revolutionary battlefield" where the "genetic text is being rewritten." Her assistant Susan has the fever and gives birth to a weird lizardine thing. Tiptree insists the earth was made and scaled for the dinosaurs and that she intends to give it back. Doc sneers, "That's really fascinating. Make a great theme park." Tiptree harbors guilt for her government and industry developments which have made the world a mess. "The earth isn't ours to destroy," says this completely insane madwoman. "Which came first--the chicken or the egg. . . . The cosmic egg. I don't want to destroy the earth. Just one unruly species. . . . The human species is a disaster. . . . Well, as my mentor Dr. Moreau said, 'In the study of nature, one must become as remorseless as nature.'"

The sheriff shoots a dinosaur but dies himself with the Pet Village sign in the background. With women dying (often giving birth to dino-things), Eunice tells Washington agency reps that they've been developing an artificial womb and could eventually breed female replacement humans--all very Dr. Strangelove. From then on, men in protective suits appear, kill people, and flametorch all evidence.

Doc threatens Tiptree's eggs and shoots one to get the antidote. He escapes a dino while running to Thrush, and Tiptree goes into labor. The baby dinosaur rips through her abdomen. Doc reaches Thrush, who has gone into fever. They get into bulldozers and attack a dinosaur, which they succeed in killing with Doc's final remark, "I hate wildlife." He then contacts the authorities, "the Cavalry," who arrive, shoot him, and burn the two in their shack. The antidote bottle bursts in the flames.

Commentary: According to catalogue descriptions, this is "Roger Corman's tongue-in-cheek answer to that other dinosaur movie" Jurassic Park. But really, Carnosaur is the most depressing and darkest dinosaur film currently in existence. Too many evils pervade the film for us to side with anyone or anything, especially our "hero," and so after disgust cannot be worn thinner, we can only despair. Brilliance = apocalyptic insanity; everyone is poisoned with a nauseating fever; even "real" food is disgusting; and anyone expressing concern over these matters is portrayed as idiotic.