Carnosaur 2 is the low budget sequel to the 1993 horror-film Carnosaur.
Two months after Tiptree's failed attempt to eradicate humanity using a dinosaur-breeding virus, a horde of Carnosaurs resurface at an isolated uranium mine. A team of engineers and the sole survivor of the ensuing massacre must work together to hold off the creatures long enough to escape.
Plot[]
Deep within an isolated military owned uranium mine within Yucca Mountain, Nevada, a batch of dinosaur eggs hatch, starting an ominous chain of events.
Some time after the hatching, an officer named Walker is ambushed and killed while investigating some damage that occurred in one of the underground hallways. At the same time, two teenagers, Jesse and Dave, his reluctant friend, goof off by breaking into a storeroom containing industrial-strength dynamite used to build new tunnels, but Jesse's uncle Joe catches them in the act while looking for the missing Waller. He angrily sends Dave on his way and takes his back up to the surface before anyone else can see them. While Joe takes a moment to discuss the mysterious, extensive damage with another employee, a forklift driver named Ed shows Jessie how to drive the vehicle, including the lever which opens the door to a wide shaft over 150 feet deep.
Joe takes Jesse to the diner, where he firmly lectures his nephew on the potential consequences of his actions; they live in a government facility, and breaking into restricted areas as Jesse has repeatedly done could land him with jail time. While Jesse apologises for his behaviour, the caterer, Zeb, hears noises outside and goes to deal with suspected coyotes, only to be attacked and killed by another creature. Chaos ensues as the creature subsequently breaks into the diner by throwing Zeb's corpse through a window, proceeding to kill Joe and everyone else in the room. Only Jesse survives by hiding in an alcove out of the creature's sight.
The next morning, at a military outpost eighty miles across the desert, a team of technicians are unexpectedly given an early wake up call and summoned to the outpost to await their assignment. Engineers Jack Reed and Sarah Rawlins, and computer technicians Monk Brody and Ed Moses meet up in the locker room as their leader, Ben Kahane, and a man named Major John McQuade arrive to debrief them. Contact was recently lost with the Yucca Mountain mine, and their team was the closest one available to deal with whatever had caused the problem. McQuade is to oversee the operation, but his demanding, impolite attitude leaves the group displeased at the prospect, especially Monk, who is quick to get on the major's bad side.
With pilot Joanne Galloway at the helm, the team travels to the facility via helicopter. As they near the mine's location, the helicopter's radio begins to suffer interference, inhibiting communications. Upon landing, they're confused to find no-one on the surface waiting to greet them, and split up to investigate. While McQuade and the others head to the control room to assess the damage, Reed, Rawlins and Monk are ordered to search the area for the missing staff. By the time they reach the diner, it becomes apparent that everyone has inexplicably vanished. The diner itself is trashed and covered in blood, and in the corner they find a catatonic Jesse. They bring the teen back to the control room's adjoining infirmary and relay their findings, prompting Ben to order an immediate evacuation; though deeply perturbed by the situation, McQuade overrules him, even threatening to end Galloway's flying career if she ferries them out. The team are left with no choice but to continue the operation, leaving Galloway to tend to Jesse.
Monk attempts to contact Control, but something has completely blocked communications, leading them to believe that a short out has occurred. While Moses works with the computer-chair hybrid in the centre of the room they uncover some unusual signs: the control room is unusually high-tech for a mine, Moses is blocked out of accessing the maps for Sub-levels D and E, and Monk comes across a monitor depicting radiation emission levels with D and E omitted. After ordering Monk away from the monitor, McQuade discreetly checks the levels of the bottom two sub-levels and is dismayed to find they're 'unsafe.' Before the team heads underground to investigate the damage, Reed returns to the infirmary to check on Jesse, having developed a protective instinct toward the youth, and gently tries to encourage him out of his catatonia. Jesse gradually begins to return to his senses, suffering a flashback to the massacre and his uncle's death, and Reed assures him that he'll be safe before leaving. Jesse eventually recovers enough to be brought to the control room, where Moses remains to continue fixing the network while the team heads below ground, bringing with them some radiation sensing equipment as a precaution.
As they head deeper, the sensors pick up an increase in radioactivity, though McQuade insists that it's nothing to worry about, and eventually find that the system problems were being caused by a mass of wires that had been ripped out of the ceiling. Their efforts to asses the full extent of the damage are prohibited when McQuade blocks them from entering the bottom two sub-levels. Fed up with his obstructive behaviour, the group defy him and head downstairs, discovering what appear to be massive containers and a large tooth entangled in more wires, the latter discovery causing McQuade to recoil in horror as he realises what has happened. Ben, having separated from the group to get a better signal on his headset, is suddenly ambushed and dragged down a hatch to his death.
The remaining team members flee the scene, while the people in the control room are alerted to the situation via the radio. Realising that the group wouldn't outrun the creatures in time, Jesse runs off to assist them, just as a carnosaur infiltrates the control room and attacks Moses. Galloway watches in horror as Moses is mauled and flung into a large computer server, where the carnosaur mauls his further before dragging him into the ceiling. Galloway flees the room in terror, making her way back to the helicopter outside while Jesse shows the others the way out via a shortcut. Before they can reach the helicopter, a carnosaur sneaks onboard and attacks Galloway, causing the helicopter to rise into the air. Galloway eventually succumbs to the gruesome mauling and releases the controls, causing the chopper to crash and explode. Faced with the prospect of an eighty-mile trek that would inevitably kill them with exposure, the group are forced to return indoors, seeking refuge in the control room.
Reed furiously demands answers from McQuade, who tells them about Dr. Tiptree's genetic experiments going awry two months ago. A week after the incident, they discovered a nest of eggs, put them on ice, and hid them within the facility, only for the carnosaurs to hatch and wreak havoc. Though disgusted by the government's disastrous course of action, the group focuses their efforts on finding a way to escape before the carnosaurs come after them. Having spent his time hacking the system for the last few months, Jesse helps Reed to access the network, and subsequently remembers the storeroom full of dynamite he had broken into the night before. They swiftly form a plan to blow the facility and kill all the dinosaur in one stroke, a plan McQuade furiously tries to forbid. His protests fall on deaf ears, with Reed and Monk venturing out to collect the dynamite.
They make their way down to Sub-level B, discovering that the carnosaurs had blocked a doorway with debris as if to keep something out. McQuade tries to order them to stop through the radio, but Reed and Monk disobey him as they enter the storeroom and begin gathering all the dynamite they can carry. With D and E's radiation emissions now at dangerous levels, McQuade steps up his efforts, using a computer to remotely lock the storeroom door with Reed and Monk inside. Rawlins and Jesse are unable to unlock the door, but Reed manages to break free by smashing the control panel with a mallet. His attempt having failed, McQuade panics and heads out after them, knocking Monk unconscious with a steel pipe and ambushing Reed as he's setting the charges. As an alarm warns of a containment failure occurring in two hours, Reed and McQuade violently brawl, with McQuade getting the upper hand and nearly strangling Reed to death before Monk recovers and knocks out his attacker. Monk is almost immediately attacked by a carnosaur, but Reed saves his life by shooting the creature dead with a flare gun.
The three men return to the control room, where Reed confronts McQuade over his actions. McQuade is left with no choice but to reveal the facility's true nature: the uranium mine is a front for a top-secret repository of unused weapons grade plutonium located in levels D and E. Had the plan to blow the facility gone ahead, it could have triggered a catastrophic explosion. Worse, the carnosaurs had somehow damaged one of the containment units during the initial massacre, the leaking radiation being responsible for the communication problems, and when the repository fails in two hours, it could cause the warheads to blow. Though furious that McQuade hadn't been honest with them from the start, the team must nevertheless alter their plans accordingly, and Jesse proposes a solution: they crash the entire emergency system, in the hopes that Control will spot the crash through the network, realise the facility is in trouble and send an evacuation team.
With less than two hours remaining before the repository fails, the team sets about laying explosive tripwires to kill off as many carnosaurs as possible so they can escape, steering clear of the lower levels. With no more secrets left to hide, McQuade assists the group in the endeavour while Jesse searches for a way to crash the system. In the control room, Jesse and Reed have a heart to heart over their respective losses. When Jesse lost his parents, Joe was the only one who would take him, and he feels guilt over being unable to prevent his uncle's death. As for Reed, he reveals that he lost his son to a fire a long time ago. Jesse manages to crash the system just as the carnosaurs finally begin to close in on the control room, triggering a series of explosions. At first the explosions hold the creatures at bay, but they quickly get past the traps by pulling pipes from the wall and dropping them on the tripwires.
The team races to the elevator to escape as the carnosaurs begin to break in, but one of them manages to smash through the roof of the elevator, dragging Rawlins out and gruesomely dismembering and disembowelling her. The remaining survivors escape the elevator and struggle to get to the surface, using dynamite and the remaining tripwires to evade the carnosaurs as much as possible, only for Monk to be seriously injured when a carnosaur trips a wire right next to him. As the dinosaurs close in, McQuade stays behind to try and assist Monk, but he is too badly hurt to be moved. Rather than suffer a grisly demise, McQuade lights his last stick of dynamite, sacrificing himself and Monk to kill the remaining creatures.
The resulting tremors cause Reed to tumble over a railing to the bottom of a large room. Though a pile of junk breaks his fall, Reed is badly injured, and Jesse is forced to head to the surface alone just as the evacuation helicopter arrives. Refusing to lose anyone else, Jesse races back underground to retrieve Reed. With minutes remaining until the repository failure, he reaches Reed, and as they head back to the elevator they are confronted with one last unpleasant surprise; a full grown Tyrannosaur Rex. They manage to outrun the massive dinosaur and return to the surface, only for the T-Rex to follow them and devour one of the rescue crew. Reed and the remaining crew members retreat to the helicopter, but Jesse stays behind to prevent the dinosaur from coming after them. Utilising the forklift Ed had shown him the previous night, Jesse battles the T-Rex and manages to wound it with the forklift's arms before pushing it over the edge of the deep shaft to its death.
With seconds remaining, the survivors take off in the helicopter; once they are safely in the air, Jesse and Reed blow the remaining explosives, destroying the facility and the warheads before they can detonate. With a major crisis averted, Reed assures Jesse that everything will be okay as the helicopter takes them away from the forsaken mine.
Cast[]
- John Savage as Jack Reed
- Ryan Thomas Johnson as Jesse Turner
- Rick Dean as 'Monk' Brody
- Cliff De Young as Tom McQuade
- Don Stroud as Ben Kahane
- Arabella Holzbog as Sarah Rawlins
- Miguel A. Núñez Jr. as Ed Moses
- Neith Hunter as Joanne Galloway
- Guy Boyd as Joe Walker
- Christopher Darga as Hal Mosley
- Jason Adelman as Davey Lewis
- William G. Clark as Ed O'Brien
Release[]
Carnosaur II was released on DVD on April 18, 2000. Special features included cast biographies and the original trailer. It was released on February 6, 2001 as part of the Carnosaur Collector's Set, which packaged together the original DVD releases of all three Carnosaur movies.
Sequels[]
- Carnosaur 3: Primal Species- Soldiers investage a warehouse full of terrorists that have stolen bombs from the United States and Discover raptors and a T-Rex.
- Raptor- A sherrif and an animal control officer investigate several murders and find out it's a pack of raptors and a T-Rex
- Raptor Ranch- A small texas town is attacked by bloody thirsty raptors