Carnosaur 2 (1995)

In case you haven't seen Carnosaur, or have been lucky enough to wipe it from your memory, here is my review of it here (0 out of 4 people found that useful, oh woe is me). For those wanting to get up to speed without going through any unnecessary pain, here is the briefest synopsis - someone went out of their way to recreate dinosaurs and that led to a number of scenes in which a puppet was shown with lots of fhasling lights behind it whenever it would attack someone. Things built up to a finale in which the puppet had to be dealt with, of course.

Carnosaur 2 might follow on from the first movie but you wouldn't really know that while watching the film. It works just fine as a standalone film - there's a throwaway line or two explaining the science behind the thing but that's about it. In fact, I can't even recall if the main character mentioned anything that linked specifically to the first movie so perhaps the only link would be dinosaur puppets.

Okay, okay, I'm being a bit harsh there. The dinosaurs are made to look a bit better this time around but that's the only improvement. The plot sees a bunch of folk that it's hard to care for investigating a mystery that isn't a mystery at an abandoned facility. People start to get picked off and then the truth comes out that there might be some dinosaurs in the facility. Oh dear.

Directed by Louis Morneau, and written by Michael Palmer, Carnosaur 2 loses the sense of fun that the first film had. Oh, the first film was bad but it was bad in an enjoyable way. This one even misses that mark and is just bad. We get the usual low-budget setting with no invention to provide any variety, an awful script and a cast of far-from-A-listers.

It's always good to see Miguel A. Nunez Jr. onscreen, no matter how small his role, so that's a small plus that makes up for having to spend time with John Savage, Cliff De Young, Don Stroud, Rick Dean, Ryan Thomas Johnson and even the pretty Arabella Holzbog. They're not awful but the individual below-average ability seems to join together and form one great pool of soul-sapping . . . . . . . . rubbish.

If you fancy seeing something that has some cheap dinosaur effects in it, a mixed bag of actors and a number of moments that will provide you with unintentional hilarity then see the first movie. If you fancy torturing yourself, as I often do, then see this one.

3/10

http://www.amazon.com/Carnosaur-2-John-Savage/dp/B000087F29/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1351025266&sr=8-2&keywords=carnosaur+2