John Brosnan's 1984 science fiction novel
Carnosaur first came to the attention of
Roger Corman during a signing tour for his 1990 autobiography. Brosnan was first approached to write the
screenplay in mid-1991 by Corman's wife, Julie, who agreed to meet and they formalized a deal at a bar, written on some napkins. Although Corman secured the rights to produce
Carnosaur, the project advanced only when he learned that
Jurassic Park was entering production. According to co-producer Mike Elliot, Corman "felt that now was the time to shoot our movie, because he knew he could make the movie faster than anybody else and get it out there first".
Adam Simon, a frequent collaborator with Corman, was tasked with directing
Carnosaur and writing its screenplay. The crew was allocated more time to carry out their work than was typical for a Corman production, with Simon having six months for research and writing. On a small budget, his screenplay ignored key plot elements of the novel and reduced the large variety of dinosaur species to two. According to Corman, the main antagonist Dr. Jane Tiptree was originally envisioned for a male actor who had a "great deal of strength and at the same time an intelligent person". With no one available, Corman rewrote the character as a woman and offered it to
Diane Ladd, who had previously worked with him on the 1966 film
The Wild Angels. Other cast members included
Raphael Sbarge and
Jennifer Runyon. Filming began in late 1992. Corman later claimed the budget was $4 million but it is likely this was inflated.
Special effects with his
Deinonychus puppet.
Carnosaur's special effects were largely designed by
John Carl Buechler. Because Corman felt that
stop-motion techniques and optical effects would interfere with filming, Buechler agreed with him that all the creatures would be "real-time" models. In constructing the dinosaurs, he hired Mike Jones to sculpt the
Deinonychus and Jeff Farley to sculpt the
Tyrannosaurus rex. The first creature constructed for the film, Farley's three-foot
T. rex animatronic puppet, served as the basis for an unused suit model and the full-scale prop. A system of hinges and cables was used to operate the creature and radio-operated eyes. With seven weeks of pre-production spent sculpting the puppet, the special effects team was left with three weeks to construct a life-size
T. rex model. The design of the creature was reminiscent of classic
B movie T. rex of the 1950s. The crew cut and pasted sheets of L200, a sturdy, light
polyurethane, for its innards, which were then covered with polyurethane foam skin; the final creature was tall, long, and weighted . In
Carnosaur's penultimate fight scene, with Doc Smith fighting the creature in a
shiploader, the production used both the puppet and life-sized model. Buechler later commented the scene was "nearly shot for shot modeled on the finale of
Aliens". Some shots were accomplished with the puppet being filmed in a miniature set which featured scale models of Doc Smith and the shiploader. Buechler and his crew designed the scaled
T. rex in order to use
forced perspective camera techniques, but only a few forced-perspective shots were actually included in the film. ==Release==