Bit Men and Hitmen

by Tom Barr | Published April 7, 1994

You know they’re part their prime when a Roger Corman movie receives a degree of critical acclaim, Diane Ladd ends up in a Jurassic Park rip-off and James Coburn plays third lead to the likes of Jeff Fahey and Yancy Butler.

About the time of Jurassic Park's release there was a report that the old king of the exploiters, Roger Corman, was busily preparing his own dinosaur movie called Carnosaur.

Somewhere between postproduction and the video store Carnosaur (New Horizon Home Video) won something called the Golden Scroll Award from the Academy of Science Fiction and Horror. Worse, according to a box blurb, none other than Gene Siskel said: "Terrific! 1 liked this movie." Respectability and critical acceptance are the last things an exploitation movie needs.

This being a Roger Corman production, we know right away that there, isn't going to be a lot of money wasted on expensive sets or computer generated dinosaurs and that it's probably going to contain ideas borrowed from better movies.

Scientist Diane Ladd has concluded that the earth isn't ours to destroy; that it was made for dinosaurs. She decides to give it back to them by injecting chickens with Tyrannosaurus Rex DNA. When the eggs hatch, the dinosaurs grow by leaps and bounds. Rex starts eating up the cast, which includes some teenagers romping around the desert in a jeep and a hippie commune left over from the `60's.

While Steven Spielberg had the good grace to leave the gore to our imagination, Carnosaur never misses a chance to show entrails being ripped out, severed arms and legs, and Rex with a mouth full of blood. After a while the real horror comes from the thought of having to endure more of the same.

It also borrows from Alien. People have been eating the eggs and soon dinosaurs are popping out of stomachs and bodies. The theory seems to be that if it was shocking to see a monster come out of a body once it would be really terrific to see it several times. Throw in a death squad running around machine-gunning the egg eaters, and you've got a continual blood bath.

Tyrannosaurus Rex attacks only at aright, probably because it was easier to hide the cheesy model and its jerky movements. Unlike dinosaurs in other movies, this one is hardly invincible. It can be knocked down with a single shotgun blast and killed by a backhoe that looks suspiciously like a Tonka toy.

As for Diane Ladd, she really doesn't have much to do except wear a black wig, put the plot in motion, and talk to her associates on television monitors. It's hardly a taxing part, but then Carnosaur is a far cry from her glory days in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

Still, it's more of a part than James Coburn's in The Hit List, Westwind Video which was made for theaters but went directly to cable TV.

Although Coburn prepares the hit list, he has little to do except answer the phone and show up for an occasional meeting with hitman Jeff Fahey. One of Fahey's assignments is to contact Yancy Butler, whose husband has died. Seems he cheated on his taxes and substituted inferior equipment which was sold to the government. His partner found out, and now someone is following Butler and puts a bomb in her car which ends up killing the housekeeper instead.

She gives Fahey a photograph of the partner, and Fahey kills him. Soon he's being followed by corrupt cops and a team of hit men. When he finds out that the partner was really a government official, he begins to suspect she's set him up. But since there are several others who could have set him up, he's really not sure. Unfortunately just about everyone will have figured it out about 15 minutes into the movie, which is stretched out with a lot of darkly lit love scenes and a few shoot-outs.

Hit men are also the central characters in Red Rock West, a much better film with twists and turns that aren't nearly as obvious. Nicolas Cage, whose star seems to be rising rather than falling, has driven 1,200 miles from Texas to Red Rock, Wyoming, and is down to his last five dollar; when he stops for a drink at the local bar. The owner, seeing his Texas license plates, thinks he's someone hired by phone who was due the week before.

Cage plays along and gets a hefty advance and the job of killing the owner's wife, Lara Flynn Boyle. Instead he looks her up and warns her of the plot. He's about to take the money and run when the real hit man, Dennis Hopper, shows up. The film becomes a cat and mouse game filled with unexpected plot twists as Hopper and the owner, who is also the town sheriff, try to catch Cage and Boyle.

Hopper has one of his better parts as a folksy likable lunatic, and Cage is fine as the none-too-bright drifter trying to find a way out of this rural nightmare. Country singer Dwight Yoakam contributes an excellent bit as a grungy truck driver.

Director John Dahl keeps the story moving at a brisk pace, and lends some film noir touches with lots of night shots, dark shadows, and shady characters. MM

COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Comment by new mexico tours on 1/15/08 at 3:02 pm

Hitman is one of my favorite movies ever! It reminds me of the game Assassin.

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