Notes: New Horizons. 1 hour 25 minutes. "Terror will never be extinct."
Colonel Rance Higgins: Scott Valentine (doofus boyfriend on Family Ties)
Dr. Hodges: Janet Gunn
Polchek: Rick Dean
General Mercer: Anthony Peck
Sanders: Rodger Halston
Proudfoot: Justina Vail
Rossi: Morgan Englund
B.T. Coolidge: Terri J. Vaughn
Furguson: Billy Burnette

Produced: Roger Corman
Directed: Jonathan Winfrey
Story: Rob Kerchner
Special Effects: Magical Media Industries, Inc.
Visual Effects: Anthony Doublin
Music: Kevin Kiner.

Summary: An army convoy is attacked by terrorists with Irish accents who discover they have stolen a truck of seemingly frozen "fuckin' reptiles" instead of uranium. The dinosaurs attack them. One terrorist gets away; police capture him and gag this "Eurotrash" for "mumbling something about monsters." They then enter the dockside warehouse to find what they expect are drug smugglers. After blood discoveries and racist comments, the police get eaten.

An anti-terrorist special force led by Colonel Rance Higgins is called in by General Mercer and they too find pieces of bodies and a refrigeration truck rather than uranium. They maneuver through warehouse boxes until two get slashed to death by "lizards on steroids."

The survivors learn from Dr. Hodges that these are the last three "carnosaurs" in existence: two male velociraptors and one female T-Rex left from the genetic reconstructions of the prior Carnosaur movies. Higgins is peeved that they're "risking our asses for a research project?" For some spurious reason, the dinosaurs need to be caught alive--it has something to do with the potential for curing major diseases. The soldiers bitch about this assignment, but Rance says tellingly, "Quiet, this is not a democracy; we have orders."

A massive meat shipment resides at the dock, so the three hunt in that area, meeting up with a unit of Marines who have come as backup. Army soldier Polchek ("Monk" in Carnosaur 2) mocks Hodges and arm wrestles female Marine Proudfoot who, after barely losing to Polchek, turns out to be left-handed. Polchek is given drugs to shoot into the dinos, "enough to stop a white rhino." They set up a lure and net trap with "the only piece of meat left inside the perimeter." "Except us." One of the dinos reasons through the situation and almost succeeds in dragging off Polchek, but is shot down. "You sayin' they're getting smarter?" Hodges theorizes that the T-Rex is breeding since Polchek was being dragged off, perhaps to hatchlings. The presumed-dead dinosaur gets up and rips off a head, which we see mostly through a subjective shot in black-and-white.

The next plan is to set off whatever structure they're on into the Pacific and freeze the dinosaurs somehow. When time comes to explore the lower decks of the ship, Polchek is happy to "go down into Barney Central and play in that sandbox." But the dinos knock out the lights and kill a couple more soldiers. The rest get to an elevator, but a dinosaur chews the cable through and they crash on the bottom level, discovering the nest of eggs which they begin to shoot. The T-Rex is mad and rips out Polchek's arm. Rance and Proudfoot rejoin Dr. Hodges and Marine Rossi, split up again and rig dynamite. Rossi is eaten by the Rex; Proudfoot's head is ripped off; and the remaining two shoot two of the dinosaurs. Hodges senses the T-Rex is close. She and Rance hide behind lockers which the dino head-butts. Rance throws an explosive in the mouth of the dinsosaur and its head blows off. The two race against time to jump in the ocean before the ship explodes. Hydro-smarm.

Back in the police car at the Port of L.A., the terrorist is still gagged in the back seat. A dinosaur appears and he gag-screams.

Commentary: Like Carnosaur 2, this film is also a sort of D&D vision, but here the dungeons aren't very intricate. The science makes no sense; since the value of the dinosaurs involves their DNA, dead dinos would actually be preferable, for obvious reasons. I have a military plan! Let's not keep sending people down where dinosaurs live; it just feeds them.

Male-female dynamics make no sense here, and we get just a vague but choking cloud of misogyny. The Polchek/Proudfoot arm wrestling is intercut with scenes of Rance vs. Hodges debating the operation. Hodges' "women's intuition" is partly credited for her sensing the mother T-Rex is close by. And why we're supposed to think that Rance and Hodges will now emerge from the Pacific and have a deep relationship just because no one else survived is peculiar.

The nauseating horror of the first Carnosaur film has been excised so that now the scientific characters merely discuss the DNA reconstruction of the dinosaurs. That this film freely uses the term "velociraptors" also suggests a Jurassic Park influence.