MrPaull0324

While none of the Carnosaur movies were very good, this one makes them look like Jurassic Park. I don't even consider this an actual movie; it's just a pitiful, incoherent, and sloppy mess created from re-used footage on the prequels with barely any original story or setting to speak of.

The film focuses more on the unwanted romantic sub plot between Sheriff Tanner (Eric Roberts) and Barbara (Rocky DeMarco). The dinosaurs hardly even appear. Even when they do, none of the footage is new. It's all recycled footage clumsily put together, showing off the creatures portrayed by horribly outdated foam latex and rubber suits or puppets.

While the prequels had some decent characters here and there, like Monk and Reed in Carnosaur 2. But here, all the characters are all lame, cardboard cut-outs. All of the acting and dialogue are atrocious and wooden. Eric Roberts couldn't save this film especially so long after his peak in the 80s. He must have been desperate for a paycheck to sign on for this dumpster fire.

Finally, the biggest flaw: recycled footage. I guess the budget was so tight, they couldn't afford to make enough original footage for a full-length picture. They even dressed up some of the nameless extras in outfits only vaguely similar to victims in the prequels. We see some guy named Benny who is obviously substituted with Moses from the second movie, then we got Karen in place of Rawlins as she's killed, and finally Dr. Hyde (Corbin Bernsen) is one of the rescuers. And you wouldn't even have to watch the prequels to tell, because they're clearly being played by different actors in different locations. It was so obvious and laughably bad, I find it insulting the director thought it would fool anyone, especially viewers who already saw the prequels.

Essentially, this movie is like three separate turds mushed together into one big turd that's almost unwatchable, so stay away from it.

Back when I was a kid, I didn't know that Rampage: World Tour was actually a sequel to an earlier 80s game until years later when I discovered it at a bar. I tried it out, and I learned just how it turned into a remarkable game series. It was old fashioned, sure, but for the time it was great. What kid wouldn't want to control a giant monster and cause all kinds of mayhem?

The games formula is awesome. You get to control three giant mutants based off famous Hollywood monsters, George (King Kong), Lizzie (Godzilla), and Ralph (Wolfman), go on a titular rampage across the United States, destroy major cities, smash vehicles, and eat people. Any kid who loved old fashioned Kaiju movies must have been super hyped to play this game at the arcade.

But despite how large and powerful the monsters are, they're not invincible. Soldiers, tanks, and annoying helicopters constantly shoot at you, so you must dodge projectiles as much as you can and eat people and food items inside buildings to replenish your health as you demolish the buildings.

While this was was probably due to limitations to game software at the time, but the levels felt repetitive and bland to me. The building layouts are different, but the building models are more or less the same no matter what city you're in. There's no Empire State building in New York, no Sears Tower in Chicago, and no Aon Center in Los Angeles. Besides that, only the skylines in the background make the levels distinct from one another.

If you happen to stumble onto this game, give it a try, because I still find it enjoyable almost 40 years later.

Years ago, after hearing this was a mix of "Jurassic Park" and "Aliens", I just had to give it a watch on VHS. True to its word, this isn't just "Aliens" with dinosaurs, but some, like me, also consider it the closest thing to a live-action adaptation of the video game dino "Dino Crisis".

Anyway, a team of engineers are sent to investigate a top-secret nuclear waste repository in California after contact is lost, only to discover it deserted. Soon, they learn why: vicious dinosaurs have overrun the facility and killed all the workers. Making matters worse, their chopper is destroyed, stranding them there. Now the team must escape before they all become dinner for the beasts.

First off, the acting and dialogue is cheesy, but surprisingly fun. Despite being reportedly drunk during production, John Savage still gives a solid performance as the Ripley stand-in action lead. Monk makes a decent Hudson stand-in with his wise-cracking and vulgar attitude, and McQuade (Cliff DeYoung) is the suspicious Burke figure, right down to the identical outfit, even though he turns out to be a decent guy in the end and pulls off a heroic sacrifice. As for the dinosaurs, the raptors play the Xenomorph warriors that attack in packs and pop out of vent shafts while the -T-Rex is the alien queen substitute who is killed by a construction vehicle in the grand finale.

But there's no denying that the special effects were horrible. The Velociraptors are obviously cheap puppets or men hunched over in rubber suits. And the sounds they made included high pitched Dolphin screeches that sounded more irritating than scary. The T-Rex model wasn't any better, being the same one they used for the first movie, and there's reused footage for its fight and death by Jesse's forklift. To top it all off, it's clearly a toy when it gets pushed down an elevator shaft. It even used the same roars from the T-Rex in "The Land Unknown" in 1957. Apart from that, the helicopter that crashes in the first act was obviously a toy too.

The scenery was admittingly decent, with the Yucca facilities, computer rooms, industrial corridors, and dank, rocky underground tunnels. As I said earlier, it reminded me heavily of "Dino Crisis". The lighting could have been better though. And true to its R-rating, there's plenty of blood and gore to be seen. Rawlins (Arabella Holzbog) death at the claws of a raptor was the most gruesome and horrifying of all as her arm is bitten off, and then her guts get chewed up! Ugh!

While I can't say this was a great film, it's still plenty of cheesy fun and still worth watching at least once on a rainy day.