Bullet Points: Carnosaur 3: Primal Species

I will pretty much watch any movie that shares similarities with Aliens. It’s true now and it was especially the case back in the mid 90’s when Carnosaur 3 came out. It isn’t loaded with amazing actors and isn’t helmed by any director of the caliber of James Cameron, but the Carnosaur series did something that the Jurassic Park series refused to do; show the gruesome deaths of humans at the hands (teeth, claws?) of the deadly dinosaurs. Of all the films in the trilogy that was released in the years following Carnosaur in 1993, the third and final one gave us enough head-chomping action to fill a dozen Spielberg films.

Synopsis: After a group of terrorists accidentally steal a truck full of dinosaurs (yep), a group of elite soldiers are sent in to recover the man-eating dinos before they learn to open doors and walk out into the open air. It’s really that simple….

• DTV Unisols: The introduction to our elite soldiers is what I would call the “direct to video Universal Soldier opening”. They wear cool camo, rappel down shit, and sneak up behind dudes like they’re part ninja. The only difference is that these troops are only training and we don’t get to see Dolph Lundgren shooting anyone between the eyes.

• The Return of Rick Dean: The best part of Carnosaur 2 was the brilliance of actor Rick Dean. Lucky for us, the filmmakers realized that and brought back Dean in a completely different but better role for Carnosaur 3. If they ever decide to make a fourth film in the series they absolutely have to call Rick up for a role of some kind.
• Diversity of Death: In one fell swoop the team lost their only black member and their only female. It was a devastating turn of events to the team’s diversity initiative.
• Cute and Cuddly Dinos: The dinosaurs used in Carnosaur 3 look to be the exact ones used in the previous two films in the series. They aren’t exactly the most realistic looking dinosaurs. But then again, I’ve never seen a dinosaur so maybe they were super fake looking and rubber in real life. The raptors have definitely mastered the art of silently creeping through dark hallways and jumping out to rip the heads off of unsuspecting walkerbys. The T-Rex, that sad and lonely mama, is left to gently stroking her tiny little eggs with her massive head.

• Bobby Flay Special: Forget the fact that the T-Rex sounds almost exactly like Chewbacca. Forget the fact that they move slow enough to give even the most disabled person an opportunity to escape. The carnosaurs have certainly taught us that the tastiest part of the human anatomy is the head.
• Not Michael Bay: The end of the film gave us a couple of explosions which looked like they may have been part Claymation, and part 7th grade science fair project. I wasn’t sure if the exploding dinosaur was worse or the exploding ship.

• Gore! Gore! Gore!: The movie had a serious amount of gore for the amount of dead characters that it was able to show. Of course the dinos are used as sparingly as possible, jumping out from behind boxes and snatching dudes heads off, but I would consider it the equivalent of making lemonade out of lemons for a filmmaker. The military folk did their best to hit as many of the stereotypes as possible. Most of them were directly taken from Aliens and that is alright with me. Justina Vail, aka. “Proudfoot”, was a near spitting image of Vaquez and Scott Valentine did his best to be the tough guy leader of the group. Add in the lovely Janet Gunn as the scientist who tags along and you have a fun group of people to be chasing down those rubbery bastards. Oh yeah, and Rick Dean is awesome!