Carnosaur 3: Primal Species

Primal Species (1996, Dir. Jonathan Winfrey)

International terrorists get a surprise when their cargo turn out to contain living dinosaurs. The army commando team now have to think fast, if they want to prevent the extinction of the human species, instead of the reptiles.

You look at the cover and you gain your first impressions of the film. That is pretty much it. The acting is only just acceptable from a few characters. The story is poor, with the whole film based on the army and the marines trying to kill the dinosaurs. This film came out three years after 'Jurassic Park'. Instead, this film looks to have come out 13 years before 'Jurassic Park'. The dinosaurs costumes are so poorly made, and i do mean costumes. There are obviously people dressed up, and this film makes no attempts at hiding this. A scene when a dinosaur runs down a corridor is created in a way, in which it looks like someone is riding the creature. The is one good thing, which comes out of this film. The short running time. At only 1 hour and 15 minutes, it doesn't waste too much of your life, but still try to avoid it altogether.

"It's like a Friday the 13th Nightmare." - Officer (Brian Currie)

What makes the Carnosaur so frightening is that it kills for the sake of killing. The army kills and destroys for national security. The terrorists kill for their own personal benefit. But the Carnosaur... it just kills! If the carnosaurs killed exclusively for dietary purposes (i.e. they were hungry, they didn't get enough protein/calcium/fat/B-vitamins), they wouldn't necessarily eat humans. The scene in Carnosaur 3, in which the soldiers bait the dinosaur with non- human meat and the Carnosaur instinctively attacks the humans exemplifies how Carnosaurs do not follow their stomachs. If the Carno were hungry, it would have just went for the leg of ham (or whatever the hell the soldiers used for bait), but instead it went for the far inferior human meat. They are called Carnosaurs not because they eat meat, but because they are far different from the reptiles that walked the earth eons ago. They are much more unscrupulous, depraved, stealthy, sexy and cunning than the large clumsy animals seen in Jurassic Park. The Carnosaur is the chthonic species of what we refer to as Dinosaur. Beware their wrath.

"CARNOSAUR III: PRIMAL SPECIES" (1996, Winfrey) is the third instalment in the gory film series and the best of the five.

John Carl Beuchler's dinosaurs are infamously rubber and waddling/rolling. The chemistry between Scott Valentine and Rick Dean is good and the cast are actually okay.

The film is an editorial nightmare. Doors opening and closing in the background, hats on hats off, corpses vanishing and reappearing etc. It's hilarious.

Rubber dinosaurs, blood and gore, tension, humour and really strange (sometimes successful) directing, is "PRIMAL SPECIES" in a nutshell.

This is one of the most hilariously bad movies I have ever had the privilege to see.

I watched this on DVD with a bunch of friends one Friday night and we just couldn't stop laughing from start to finish.

The story is simple enough: terrorists hijack a convoy they think is carrying weapons grade uranium, but it's actually carrying a bunch of man-eating dinosaurs. Easy mistake to make. Cue a startlingly incompetent team of Army Special Forces to tackle the prehistoric beasts. They are led by Colonel Rance, played by Scott Valentine; a man who seems to have perfected 'Smell the fart' acting, as advocated by Joey in Friends.

There's plenty of gore and an awful lot of shooting, but unfortunately Rance's team seem to have a problem aiming their weapons in the general direction of a horde of giant, lumbering monsters. Also, the lights always seem to flicker and go out whenever a Velociraptor attacks (preumably so we can't see how bad the creature effects are).

Having said all that, we all had a great deal of fun betting on who was going to get their head bitten off next.

As a Jusassic Park / Aliens style action adventure this movie stinks worse than a dinosaur's crotch, but as ludicrous, tongue-in-cheek entertainment it's a roaring success.

My friend and I have this gag going on that we each buy horrible DVDs for eachothers birthday. Well, this was my present. We watched it together and could not stop laughing at the terrible acting. It even came to the point where we had to rewind and repeat a portion of the movie when the terrorist(whatever?) is in the back of the cop car and the cop calms him down by pointing a finger at him and scolds him telling him to stay calm and wait there. You must see the scene to realize the pathetic atempt at any sort of story. The dinosaurs appear to be on wheeled carts. The filmwork is absolutely pathetic and to a point funny. Adding special effects for no reason other than the movie is horrible. IT was quite a gag gift... but don't ever rent this with the expectations of seeing something that won't make you laugh.