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A series of five Creator/RogerCorman-produced [[BMovie B]] horror films. The first film received a limited theatrical release, whereas the remaining four were DirectToVideo.

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[[DuelingMovies Several weeks before]] ''Film/JurassicPark'' premiered, in 1993, ''Carnosaur'' [[TheMockbuster hit]] [[DirectToVideo video stores]] and a limited theater release. [[InNameOnly Loosely based]] [[FilmOfTheBook on the]] [[Literature/{{Carnosaur}} novel]] of the same title by John Brosnan (a.k.a. Harry Adam Knight), the film stars Diane Ladd as Dr. Jane Tiptree, a MadScientist who has been fiddling around with the DNA of chickens, thus causing them to lay dinosaur eggs. When one of the egg hatches into a [[strike:cheap hand puppet]] ''Deinonychus'', it escapes and starts tearing up the local countryside. The attacks lead local security guard Doc (Creator/RaphaelSbarge) and hippie Thrush (Jennifer Runyon) to Jane's hideout, where they find out she is planning to wipe out humanity by unleashing a virus that will make all women in the world become fatally pregnant with dinosaurs, whereupon they will take over the earth.

Creator/GeneSiskel gave the film the thumbs up. Make of that what you will.

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''Carnosaur 2'', released in 1995, takes place a little after the events in the first movie. A special team is sent to investigate an underground laboratory that has apparently shut down. When they arrive, they discover that the crew has been reduced to nothing but bloody limbs; obviously eaten. Then after finding a young boy who survived the carnage, they begin getting taken out one by one by the remaining Carnosaurs that were being held down there. The dinosaur effects in this one are improved since the first one, but it is nowhere near as interesting. The end Carnosaur Vs. Bulldozer scene is basically a rehash of the Carnosaur Vs. [[ForkliftFu Forklift]] scene from the first movie. Not the best but decent. By the way, plotwise, it's [[{{Expy}} a shameless rip-off, erm, that is, somewhat inspired by]] the [[Film/{{Aliens}} second Alien movie]]. Watch the two back-to-back and you'll understand.

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''Carnosaur 3: Primal Species'', released in 1996, has a team of terrorists hijack a top-secret military convoy, thinking they have captured weapons-grade plutonium. Instead, the convoy was carrying dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs attack and kill the squad of terrorists. A military recovery team learns the convoy is stopped in a warehouse on the local waterfront, and immediately goes out to retrieve it. The dinosaurs attack the squad, leaving only three soldiers. Back at their headquaters, their captain refuses to go back unless they kill the dinos, but the scientist in charge of the operation orders them to merely capture the dinos. Heading back out to the warehouse, the team gets additional help with a Marine Task Force. Together, they still can't control the dinosaurs. They finally find a way to get them under control: luring them out to a ship, sailing them out to sea and blowing the ship up.

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Composed largely out of stock footage from the previous three films, ''Raptor'', released in 2001, features Sheriff Jim Tanner and his assistant Barbara trace a series of unexplained vicious animal attacks striking his community back to a Dr. Hyde, a former military researcher whose government funding for a dinosaur cloning project was cut. When the Pentagon discovers Hyde obtained foreign backing to continue his experiments, they send in a strike team to save Tanner and Barbara and stop Hyde.


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In 2007, the series received a new installment, ''The Eden Formula'' (''Tyrannosaur Wrecks'' in Australia), also a Film/SyfyChannelOriginalMovie. Jeff Fahey stars as Dr. Harrison Parker, a scientist who invented the titular formula, which is capable of resurrecting any corpses it comes into contact with. The Calgorin Industries tests the formula by reviving a T-rex, much to the chagrin of Parker. Then, James Radcliffe (Creator/TonyTodd) and his henchmen raids Calgorin trying to get their hands on the formula and accidentally releases the now revived T-rex, which escapes and runs amok at the (empty) streets of UsefulNotes/LosAngeles. Parker, joined by Calgorin's exec, Rhonda Shapton (Creator/DeeWallace) attempts to stop the dinosaur while escaping from Radcliffe's men. The movie is perhaps notable for featuring a leaping T-rex.

Curiously, despite being meant for Syfy, the film has yet to debut on the channel, at least in the US.
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!!These films provide examples of:

* ActionizedSequel: ''Carnosaur 3''.
* AdaptationInducedPlotHole: One of the few scenes lifted from the novel into the first film was the ''Deinonychus'' attacking two teenagers inside a car. In the book, it makes sense as it happens at night and involves a man-sized, fully grown dinosaur. In the film it's in broad daylight with a juvenile who's barely bigger than a schnauzer, making the teen look like idiots for just standing there as what looks like a demented Kermit T. Frog rips into them.
* AdaptationSpeciesChange: The ''Tarbosaurus'' from the book is now a ''Tyrannosaurus rex.''
* AgonyOfTheFeet: One of Thrush's hippie friends who's chained herself to some machinery and apparently PrefersGoingBarefoot starts kicking away frantically when the ''Deinonychus'' approaches her. Guess which of her body parts get chewed on first.
* AlasPoorVillain: The ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' in the first movie, despite being a vicious killing machine, has its final moments after being [[GuttedLikeAFish gutted by Doc’s Bobcat]] being played over somber music while it makes some really sad-sounding whines as it slowly dies from its injuries.
* AnArmAndALeg: At least one character per movie in the first three has either an arm or a leg brutally torn off before dying. It gets taken up to eleven in the fourth film due to StockFootage.
* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: The American military uniforms in ''Carnosaur 3'' are absolutely nowhere near accurate. Perhaps the most {{JustForFun/egregious}} example is the convoy soldiers at the beginning of the movie, with the T-shirts, M1 helmets, etc.
* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Featuring an upright T.rex with a weirdly skinny tail, alongside "velociraptors" and deinonychus who are really closer to LizardFolk than anything found in the fossil record.
* BMovie: Par for the course from Roger Corman.
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Oh boy is it ever! For the record, "tarnished" in this case means anything from violently giving birth to live dinosaur hatchlings that are eating their "mother" alive from the inside out to being dragged into an elevator shaft, disemboweled, and having limbs graphically bitten off.
* BehindTheBlack-NoPeripheralVision: a particularly ridiculous example in movie 2, when a Velociraptor somehow manages to silently sneak into the computer control room and get right up in front of Moses with no one noticing until it makes its signature trilling noise.
* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Averted in the first movie- the sheriff is the last character to die before Doc and Thrush. Played straight(er) in 2 and 3 where the black characters aren't the ''first'' to die but don't exactly make it past the first act either.
* BloodlessCarnage: In the ambush scene in ''Carnosaur 3'', no one bleeds at all. A rather interesting example, since the rest of the film is soaked with blood.
* BrokenAesop: The first movie tries to preach a GreenAesop about the dangers of man destroying nature with machines and that nature belongs to the animals but it is undermined by being a movie about killer dinosaurs and Dr. Tiptree's solution of eradicating the human race through artificial means.
* ChestBurster: Women impregnated with dinosaurs are killed because the dino babies, rather than wait to be born, try to tear their way out through the abdomen as if it were an egg.
* CliffHanger: The third movie's ending reveals that [[spoiler:not all of the dinosaurs were on the ship; the sole surviving terrorist gets killed by a raptor]].
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: The raptor that kills Rawlins in ''Carnosaur 2'' must have been taking notes from [[Film/JurassicPark Dr. Grant's]] lecture on its species' killing methods. Particularly the part about its victims still being alive when it starts to eat them.
* CompositeCharacter: Jane Tiptree is a loose composite of Darren and Jane Penward from the book, sharing the latter's first name and the former's desire to destroy humanity and repopulate the world with dinosaurs.
* DangerTakesABackSeat: In ''Carnosaur 2'', by means of OffscreenTeleportation, no less.
* DisneyVillainDeath: The ''T. rex'' in ''2'' dies when it falls down on an elevator shaft.
** The ''T. Rex'' in ''Raptor'' dies the same way, via StockFootage
* DownerEnding: The first film ends with [[spoiler:Doc and Thrush getting shot and burned, because the GovernmentConspiracy had decided that wiping out women via Tiptree's virus and replacing them with {{Uterine Replicator}}s was superior to just curing the disease. Had they went with the original ending, DARPA's actions would have been AllForNothing when an unnoticed pterosaur survives the whole ordeal, ready to continue the virus once more]].
* DumbDinos: Played straight, unlike the book - the dinosaurs are dumb, murderous monsters.
* EveryHelicopterIsAHuey
* FilmOfTheBook: The first film.
* ForkliftFu: The first film.
* GaiasVengeance: Of the ''Gaia's avenger'' variety.
* {{Gendercide}}: Jane's plan involves having all women die so that men cannot mate and humans go extinct.
* {{Gorn}}
* GuttedLikeAFish: The ''T.rex'' in the first film is killed by Doc using his Bobcat to tear it’s stomach open, causing its internal organs to spill out, eventually leading to the ''T.rex'' bleeding to death.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler:Jane Tiptree is infected with her own "DeathByChildbirth to dinosaur" virus and killed when her "child", the most physically developed infant dinosaur seen in the film, tears its way out of her guts.]]
* {{Irony}}: Out of the three dinosaurs used in the film, none are carnosaurs, at least by the modern definition. The book is slightly better in this regard, in that it has one (Altispinax).
* KarmicDeath [[spoiler: Dr. Jane Tiptree in the first movie dies giving birth to a dinosaur which is how she planned to wipe out out the world's women and repopulate the planet with dinosaurs.]]
* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:As far as the first movie is concerned, anyone involved with the GovernmentConspiracy besides Tiptree get away with their actions, with it strongly implied that the soldiers who killed everyone in the town were either KilledOffscreen themselves or forced into silence, not as punishment, but to keep the military's involvement secret.]]
* KickTheDog: Before being killed, the raptor in the first film kills and eats an adorable dog that was in a pet shop window; though the killing takes place off-screen, we still see the gory aftermath.
* EverybodyDiesEnding: The first film. [[spoiler: None of the characters who matter anything to the plot outside of the DARPA agents survive, and it's hard to tell if even [[AmbiguousSituation that's the case.]]]]
* LargeHam: Radcliffe in ''The Eden Formula''. Tony Todd was clearly having fun with his role.
* LaserHallway: Not so much a hallway as a laser grid cage used to contain the T-rex in the first film. A guy that Jane feeds to it also loses some fingers to it before Jane turns them off.
* LighterAndSofter: Every subsequent sequel after the first film, which was fairly dark while its successors turn up the camp and comedy. That said, the second movie in particular isn't a cakewalk; a female member of the team has her arm torn off and is brutally eviscerated on-screen.
* HellishCopter: The crashing helicopter in ''Carnosaur 2''.
* MenAreTheExpendableGender: Heavily averted in the first three films, two of which have absolutely ''no'' female survivors. In fact, it's flat out inverted in the first film, with the main human antagonist wanting to [[{{Gendercide}} wipe out the human female population by having them fatally give birth to dinosaur infants.]] Number four gets it as well but this is thanks to StockFootage from those first three films.
* MisanthropeSupreme: Jane, who hates humanity so much she wants to engineer a virus that will simultaneously wipe out humanity and repopulate the earth with dinosaurs
* TheMockbuster: One of the earliest deliberate examples. The first film and the fourth coincided with the release of [[Film/JurassicPark the first]] and [[Film/JurassicParkIII third]] ''Jurassic Park'' films while the third film was released not much earlier (roughly two months) before ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark'' hit theaters.
* NearVillainVictory: The antidote for the quickly spreading virus was destroyed in the first film's DownerEnding, so it would seem Jane's plan was a success.... but the fact that there was a sequel meant it was averted ''somehow''.
* PoliceAreUseless: The police are no match to the T-rex in ''Carnosaur 3'' and ''The Eden Formula''.
** Subverted in the first one. A policeman is able to [[spoiler: kill the Deinonychus, albeit at the cost of his life. This accomplishment is made a moot point by the aforementioned downer ending]]
* PoorCommunicationKills: Both Carnosaur 2 and 3. In 2, McQuade keeps his knowledge about both the dinosaurs and the true purpose of Yucca Mountain a secret from the repair crew for much longer than would be reasonable given the situation. And in 3, the anti-terrorist squad sent in to retrieve the stolen truck are told it was simply carrying uranium, and are not warned about the real danger posed by the cargo until after they encounter the dinosaurs face to face, and lose several of the unit in the process.
* ProductPlacement: The first film features inexplicable ProductPlacement for Coca-Cola.
* RaptorAttack: The raptors in these films aren't remotely realistic.
* RecycledInSpace[=/=]WholePlotReference: Carnosaur 2 is ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' WITH DINOSAURS! And it's blatant enough to almost cross the line into direct rip-off ([[spoiler:researchers killed by hostile lifeforms with only one kid survivor? Check. Backup is called in to investigate and nearly get killed on their first trip into the facility? check. Their pilot is disabled by hostile lifeform just as they are about to takeoff? check. Survivors hole up in the command center and set traps to keep lifeforms out? check. Facility will blow up soon? check! Lifeforms attack the command center and Heroes escape through the air vents, where two of their own are left behind to suicide bomb the lifeforms?? One member of the group is left behind and the hero has to go back into the facility to get them? Final showdown between the hero and a giant hostile, using construction equipment? Check check check!!!!]])
* SemperFi: Averted terribly. [[spoiler: The marine task force from ''Carnosaur 3'' got killed off along with the remainder of the spec ops team save Rance]].
* ShoutOut:
** ''Carnosaur 2'' throws one to ''Film/ApocalypseNow''; when the team is on board the helicopter "Music/RideOfTheValkyries" can be heard.
** Inverted; the raptor killing and eating a dog in the first ''Carnosaur'' may have inspired the similar death of a dog via a T-rex in ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark''.
* SlidingScaleOfAdaptationFaithfulness: a clear level 1. The only way this could have less to do with the book is if it wasn't about dinosaurs at all.
* StockFootage: Used throughout the first two sequels and ''The Eden Formula''. ''Raptor'' is almost completely made up of it, making it a borderline ClipShow.
* StupidEvil: [[spoiler:For no particular reason that can be discerned, in the first film, a GovernmentConspiracy backed by the military industrial complex decides it would be preferable to encourage Tiptree's virus to spread and wipe out women, envisioning a male-dominated future and police state enforced by strict violence and propagated by artificial wombs, creating a new world order under their control. Then they decide to LeaveNoSurvivors as they kill anyone, regardless of age or gender, to keep their intentions covered-up under the guise of a town-wide quarantine.]]
* VasquezAlwaysDies: Subverted in ''Carnosaur 2'', where Rawlins, who is basically a [[Film/{{Aliens}} Vasquez]] {{Expy}}, outlives the more feminine Galloway only to get horribly mauled to death near the end of the movie. Played straight in ''Carnosaur 3'', with soldiers Coolidge and Proudfoot getting killed while scientist Hodges becomes the first woman to survive a ''Carnosaur'' movie.
* WesternTerrorists: The terrorists in the third film, also Radcliffe and his men in ''The Eden Formula''.
** Jane Tiptree arguable counts, although her means are a tad more batshit.
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