Venom (2011)

This is another of the films submitted to us by Kevin at MTI Home Video.  We've done our share of snake films here at the DTVC, including another one called Venom, a Klaus Kinski thriller from 1981.  In fact, our first ever review was a snake film, Boa vs. Python, so the snake film had a special place in my heart.  Let's see what this edition brings.

Venom is about a mother and daughter, Jessica Morris and Oliviah Crawford respectively, who go on a trip to the desert after Morris finds out her husband cheated on her.  Taking a turn off to an outlook, Morris runs over a snake, and all hell breaks loose.  She's bitten, the car's starter is jacked up, and now they're wandering the desert with some angry snakes chasing them.  At the same time, there's some bad drug dealer stuff going on, with one guy running off with another guy's cash (the other guy played by Roberto "Sanz" Sanchez).  So not only do the ladies have to deal with the snakes, they have drug dealers now too.



I was trying to figure out why this one wasn't working for me, because it didn't seem so horrible for a low-budget snake thriller.  It wasn't really one major issue, but a few that came together.  First, we never had a consistent threat.  The snakes came and went, but there wasn't a sense that they had to run and hide from them, or that they were always going to strike.  They could take time to sit on a rock, check the mother's wound, hash out their mother-daughter issues.  And the mother's sickness from her wound seemed to come and go as it seemed convenient to the plot.  Also, the drug dealers never posed a constant threat either, and when they finally meet up with our heroines, their threat is resolved rather quickly.  I think it would've worked better had they met up with them earlier, and then had to elude them.  Then there was Jessica Morris as the mother.  We had this element of her as a recovering addict, also that perhaps she was more big sister to her daughter than mother.  The problems here with that were two-fold: first, she was compelling in that part, and on some levels I wanted more of that, and didn't get it as this devolved into snake movie; and second, it's hard to watch a character that's consistently making bad decisions.  We want resourceful heroines overcoming impossible odds, not heroines who throw their cell phones in the middle of the desert, then decide it's faster to walk many more miles into the desert instead of a few miles back to where the phone was after the car breaks down.  And when she compounds her bad decisions with more bad decisions, it's even harder to watch.  But moreover, because she's compelling as this broken character, any schlock fun horror factor this might have had goes away, because I don't want to laugh at her.  All that said, I think for someone who likes the snake sub-genre of thrillers, this might be worth looking at.

Continuing on Jessica Morris's mother character, because she was an interesting one.  There were definite inconsistencies.  She's maybe or maybe not a famous singer, and that's only discussed at a very surface level.  Morris's imdb lists her as my age, but she looks younger, and I think the character she was playing was younger, and that element isn't really explored either: is her husband older, is he her manager, was the pregnancy planned if she was younger, how much did she do in raising her daughter, or did a nanny do most of it?  All of these things are slightly more than hinted at, but not delved into enough leaving me wondering what was going on; yet seemed to impact the way Morris and Crawford are supposed to be interacting.  There's also the mother's addiction, which she's either recovering from and relapsed the night before, or she's not really taking recovery seriously.  Again, another element that isn't delved into, but brought up enough that it's there.  The problem with all of these, is that Morris really sells the mother, especially the fact that she's young and doesn't know what she's doing.  We always see these bad horror movies where the girl goes down to the basement to check on some sound, and gets (as my old anth professor used to say) her hair parted in a most unusual fashion, and we laugh.  Here, it's hard to laugh at Morris's character because of who she is, even when she's doing silly things, and in a movie like this, that's kind of what we want.  While I enjoyed the snake aspect of the film, and the tension of the looming drug dealers, I almost would've rather had a film about the mother and daughter making sense of their relationship, and all the things that were just hinted at in passing could've been explored further.



Last week we reviewed the film Wild Girl Waltz for writer/director Mark Lewis, and in that I discussed how the film met the Bechdel Test, and how we don't get many films like that here.  Now two out of our last three meet it.  Again, it's: at least two named women, having a conversation together, about something other than a man.  Doesn't seem that hard, but it's very rare.  I just watched Fast Five a few days ago, and it was listed as a Bechdel film, but it didn't meet it, even by the hairsplitting standard the person used to classify it.  This film has long stretches, like Wild Girl Waltz, that met the test, and again, my head didn't explode, I didn't run from my DVD player crying, and if I found any issues with the film, it had nothing to do with the fact that we had so many scenes with two women talking about something other than a man.  Hollywood, stop being so afraid of movies that meet the Bechdel Test.

Do we count the evil snake that was chasing them as a man?  Even then, there were other scenes where Morris and Crawford talked about other things, but still, it's an interesting construct to have an animal as the main antagonist when discussing Bechdel criteria.  The snake as a villain in itself is an interesting one, because a large part of it depends on how much one is afraid of snakes.  I'm not, but I grew up with ones in my yard that weren't poisonous, so that's different.  Our heroines don't seem to have any specific fear of snakes either though.  They fear being bitten, but as the film goes on, they seem okay with the idea of snakes themselves, as long as they're not being bitten.  For me, I love the idea of anthropomorphizing the snakes, inserting my own dialog when we see them on-screen.  The only thing better than snakes are CGI dinosaurs for that kind of thing.  And cows.



I want to go back to the opening credits scenes, where we have Morris's character out partying, drinking, doing coke, and eventually finding herself close to passing out on a curb in Hollywood.  This just felt like a different movie.  The sets, the cinematography, Morris's acting, this was very 90s indie film about a woman who parties too much or is dealing with addiction.  We find out after that this is actually a relapse because she found out about her husband's indiscretions.  I guess it was necessary to set the stage for who Morris's character is, but it wasn't a snake movie kind of thing.  It was good, I liked it, but it didn't fit, and it had me wondering what I was in for, and later, wondering where this part of the movie was.

I know this review is a little all over the place, so I'll wrap it up here.  You can get it at RedBox, so if you're looking for a snake film, maybe give it a try through that.  For me, it just had too many disparate elements for me to latch onto anything; and while it had its tense moments, there were also lulls with no sense of impending danger, and often the danger that was there was resolved too quickly to have the impact it wanted.  I feel like it would be a better bet on Netflix Instant, but it's not on there, and it's not like RedBox is that expensive either.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1931601/

Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011)

I've been waiting for this to come out for some time now, since SyFy first aired it, and fortunately Netflix sent it on the day it was released on DVD. Tiffany and Debbie (Deborah) Gibson in an Asylum schlockfest featuring CG pythons and alligators? Do you need to ask?

Mega Python vs. Gatoroid takes place in the Everglades, where Gibson is a scientist/activist who is obsessed with pythons, and releases a bunch into the Everglades, where they wreak havoc on the local ecosystem. Park ranger Tiffany decides the best bet to counter them is to make the local alligators larger, so she pumps them full of steroids. Bad move, and now we have Armageddon in southern Florida.



Though this started out slow, overall it was pretty fun, and in spots was really fantastic. It did a great job with Tiffany and Gibson, really playing up their time as pop icons, and poking fun at the supposed rivalry the two had, going as far as a sweet cat fight. The Asylum amps up the silliness as well, with enormous CG snakes and alligators crashing into buildings and blowing shit up and eating people. You can see above that a snake jumps up and takes a blimp out of the air with "The Asylum" written across it. If you're looking for a good time, this will definitely fill the bill.

Anyone growing up in the 80s knows Tiffany and Debbie (now Deborah) Gibson. Of course, as a boy, I didn't like girl music, but now that I'm older, I enjoy it for the nostalgia factor. The sense I got here was that both women knew that they were best known for work they did when they were teenagers, and while they had accepted that, they had also moved onto other things in their lives and their careers, but the fact that they weren't trying to run from their teen idol success, that they embraced it here, made it all the more fun for us. It helped too that they embraced the bad Asylum movie concept, though we can't be too surprised considering they've each been in an Asylum flick before.



One thing that struck me about Deborah Gibson more here than in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, is that she looked almost like Britney Spears. Her hair, her clothes, her make-up. Don't get me wrong, she's very hot, but it's kind of ironic that she was a teen idol when Spears was in elementary school, and now with the shifting trends in fashion, it's Spears that she now models her style after-- or at least her character here. As far as the acting goes, I think this role suited her better than the previous one too. It allowed her more room to have fun with it, which she definitely did.

I was worried about how they would treat Tiffany's character, after the frumpy soccer mom clothes they dressed her in in Mega Piranha, and though her park ranger outfit was more flattering, that still wasn't saying much. Later, though, at a party scene, she's in a really hot dress, so they made up for it. If you look at the pics of her at the premier on the imdb page, she's really smokin' there, and I wonder if it's just a Hollywood thing, that they have trouble fitting women with curves into flattering outfits, because in real life, it doesn't seem to be as hard. Also, there's a bit of a joke made about her weight towards the end, which you can decide for yourself whether or not it's below the belt (I don't want to say exactly what happens, because it gives away the ending).



And yes, that's Monkee Micky Dolenz next to Tiffany in that picture above. He played himself, and was supposed to perform at Tiffany's fundraiser for the Everglades, until the snakes and alligators come and break up the party. I'm surprised they stopped at Dolenz. Why not see what Leif Garrett is up to, or David Cassidy. They could've made the whole band out of teen idols. Hell, they had Barry Williams in Mega Piranha, why not call him back.

You can get this on DVD from all the usual suspects. As I mentioned above, it has a slow start, but is worth it overall. Everyone involved had a lot of fun, and that fun translates into the movie. This is what you came for when you saw the title, that The Asylum made it, and it starred Tiffany and Deborah Gibson.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1680138/

Snake Island (2002)

I've had this in the can for quite some time. The problem was it starred William Katt, which in and of itself isn't exactly a problem, but I didn't know he was also in Cyborg 3, and I couldn't have too many William Katt films too close together, so I had to shelve this bad boy to post it later.

Snake Island has William Katt as an author doing research for a new book. He goes to a resort on Snake Island, and things go from bad to worse. A tourist group is stranded there, waiting for supplies to get them away. The snakes don't want them there, and they make that clear. Can Katt and the tour guide survive the night and get off the island?



This wasn't too bad. Pretty silly. It tried intentionally to be silly, but that didn't hurt it as much as it might have in other cases. The first half of the film was all close calls, which was kind of frustrating. You gotta start the body count quick in a film like this. There's a party scene where two women inexplicably take their tops off, which is fine with me, but might annoy some. One thing I found was the African feel-good music they played during the credits sounded just slightly like Erasure's "A Little Respect", which put that song squarely in my head for days afterward.

This is the second William Katt film we've reviewed where he plays an author (third film overall). Here he's an established author, while in Alien vs. Hunter he's trying to make it work. Is there something authorial in his demeanor? For me I can only see a man who gains superpowers when he puts on a special outfit. Though this film didn't have him don the suit and save the day, they did the next best thing and had him wear a cricketer's gear.



Cricket's awesome, and I think more movies should be based on it. Don't ask me how cricket works, it's just the idea of the sport I like. What about a dude who goes around Casey Jones style beating the crap out of baddies? Or a group of English terrorists posing as a traveling cricket team? The possibilities are endless. If they can make a movie based on Modern Pentathlon, they can make one based on cricket.

A man named Wayne Crawford wrote, directed, produced, and cast himself as the hero in this. He also got to hook up with the hottest chick in the film. No shame in his game, apparently. I guess if he didn't hook himself up like that, all his friends would be giving him a hard time. Just the same, it's smells a little Woddy Allen-ish. Maybe Wayne Crawford is going to marry his wife's adopted daughter too.



This will be the sixth snake movie we've reviewed here, and I'd say it's up there as one of the better ones. The worst snake film we've covered was Snakes on a Train, and I'd say the best was Boa vs. Python, which was also the first film we've ever done. In that range, Snake Island was much closer to the latter than the former. The further any film can be from Snakes on a Train the better.

This isn't a bad deal. If you see it on Sci-Fi (Sy-Fy?) late at night, give it a go. I wouldn't spend any real money on it, unless you're having a snake film film fest, then you can add it in. I think it's best kept on Sci-Fi at 3 AM, personally.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320483/

Anaconda 3: The Offspring (2008)

I guess this was originally a Sci-Fi channel movie. I first got wind of it when Netflix suggested it to me. The Hasselhoffian implications were enough to give it a shot. I saw the end of an episode of the new Knight Rider at a friend's before one of the presidential debates, and I was shocked that Hasselhoff wasn't reprising his old role. In my mind if you can't get Hasselhoff, you don't make a new Knight Rider, right?

Anaconda III is about some facility researching a cure for cancer and Alzheimer's using genetically altered anacondas. They break free, and it's up to mercenary hunter David Hasselhoff and some of his homeboys to track them down and kill them. The CEO of the company that owns the facility, played by John Rhys-Davies, doesn't really want the snakes killed, because he has cancer, and isn't too fond of the prospect of dying, so he sends a guy in to gain the snakes' offspring so they can make an Anaconda 4. Hasselhoff won't be around for that one.



This wasn't too bad. It was plenty silly, and the deaths had that sick humor sense to them more than the freak you out sense, which I always appreciate. The people who made it really had a thing for decapitations leaving a meaty stub on the shoulders. As a Highlander fan, I'm more into the clean cut where the head seems to still be attached except for a small red line across the neck, just before it falls to the ground. The CG snakes were awesome. Their faces take on the expressions of your average house cat, and I think that's true for all CG snake movies. It's like I can't tell if the snake wants to bite someone's head off, or is contemplating whether or not to jump on my lap.

Hasselhoff is sweet in this, but he's in it way too little. For the first 45 minutes, we see him for like a total of two minutes of screen time. Whoa, back up. Is this a Hasselhoff film, or the episode of Knight Rider where Hasselhoff's unavailable so Devin Miles is driving around in KITT? Hasselhoff is frickin' amazing, and the last thing I want is a small scale Hasselhoff bait-and-switch. I want at least 75 of my 90 minutes of movie saturated with him. In one scene he gives a guy the Hasselhoffian Head Butt. They could've sprinkled in footage of him doing that to other people throughout the first half of the film where we barely see him, and that would've been perfect.



John Rhys-Davies has lost some weight. In the movie it's supposed to be a sign of his terminal cancer. I'm hoping in real life it's just a sign of him doing more cardio. He's just one of those iconic figures in movies that I couldn't imagine not being there. He just makes a perfect millionaire bad guy, or crooked cop, or Egyptian. Crazy enough, I don't have a tag for him, despite having reviewed two of his other films (Bloodsport III, and Sunset Grill). I'll have to fix that.

I minored in German in college, so I have a solid idea of how words are pronounced. One that irks me, and I'm not sure why, is Alzheimer's. People usually say "Altimer's" or "Ol' Timer's". The "Z" in German works like an English "T" and "S" put together. Think of the "Z" in Nazi. Now, I don't have an issue with everyday people mispronouncing it, but when a herpetologist with a PhD, like the woman in this film, who's been studying Alzheimer's for years, says the word "Altimer's", it's like... really? ALTS-imers.



There was a goat in this movie. He got almost as much screen time as Hasselhoff. Anytime I see a goat, I can't help but be transported back to the Lambert/Hopper classic The Target, where Dennis Hopper asked a goat if he could drink its urine for the psychedelic properties. Hasselhoff should've done that in this movie. Even better, one of the snakes should've done that. Maybe it could've hissed at the goat, and subtitles would tell us what it said.

The only hesitation I have in pulling the trigger on an out-and-out recommendation is the lack of Hasselhoff-age. Otherwise, it's a pretty solid choice for a bad movie night: funny deaths, silly snakes, ridiculous plot. Maybe rent it on a two-for-one night, that way you won't feel as bad getting only half the Hasselhoff if you only pay half the price.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1137996/

Venom (1981)

I first caught wind of this film on Netflix when I did a search of Klaus Kinski. I rented it, then found out it was released in the theaters in 1982, and made a little over $5 million. My cut off for inclusion in the blog is either $10 million or if I could take a date to see it at the local movie theater in Portsmouth, NH. I was three in 1982, so I don't know if it played there then. I'm probably straddling the line here, and I have a feeling after putting up this post that I'll have no choice but to give into the demands for a Cyborg review...

Venom is about a rich family living in London with a severely asthmatic young son. When the parents are away, the maid and chauffeur plan to kidnap the boy with the help of international criminal Klaus Kinski. Things go wrong, though, when the boy accidentally picks up a poisonous black mamba snake from the local pet store instead of the cute house snake he ordered. The snake bites the maid, and as they try to make off with the boy, a cop coming to warn the family about the snake mix-up is shot by the nervous chauffeur, leading to a deadly standoff with the police. This deadliness is only exacerbated by the black mamba.



This was a pretty blah film. It had a very Lifetime movie feel to it, which made it feel a little silly, and I think that's a good thing. There wasn't as much Kinski as I'd have wanted, but that seems to be the case pretty often. I would've liked more people getting bit by the snake, personally, especially when the movie is named Venom, and the snake features prominently on the cover. She goes missing for large portions of the film, and I can only assume this means she needed a better agent.

Kinski is pretty reserved, but pretty awesome. I didn't like that as a bad guy we knew he was going to lose the whole time, because he was a cool bad guy. That's weird, because he can make himself so unlikeable so easily, that I can't see why the filmmakers wouldn't've made him more unsympathetic. He was cooler than he was creepy, which was something I didn't know he had in his arsenal: more proof of his title as the German Marlon Brando. For those liking the Klassik Kinski, his death scene is a real tour de force. If you want to just see that without watching the rest of the film, I found it on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3WoeEQnNK8



Kinski's adversary is actually pretty cool too. He's this Scottish police commander who really knows how to take care of business. Had they built the Kinski character better, we as the audience would've had a better time watching these two play some kind of deadly game of cat and mouse. As actors, too, they both gave strong performances, so it was a waste that we didn't get to enjoy the two of them more.

The snake in this is the black mamba, and we learn that it gets its name not because it's black on the outside, but because the inside of its mouth is. Kobe Bryant's nickname is the Black Mamba, and for the most part he's pretty deadly too. Luckily for me, the Celtics are great snake wranglers, and they managed to avoid the Mamba's dangerous bite. As far as I can tell, this film was the Celtics, because it made the snake pretty innocuous by leaving it out for large portions of time. Having a camera zoom through a heating duct with ominous music in the background does not a good snake film make.



Finally, my biggest beef with this movie was how they killed off the only hot chick in the movie within the first 20 minutes or so. Why would you do that? I understand that as a baddie she needed to go, but so soon? The women watching had plenty of male eye candy, it just didn't seem fair. I guess I shouldn't complain too much, because most DTV films are rife with female eye candy for us, and the ladies are left with Van Damme's butt or Dolph's abs, which are great, but not much in the way of variety.

This wasn't too bad, but it wasn't too good either. You and your buddies aren't going to be able to yell at the screen and watch a bunch of people get bit in funny ways like Snakes on a Train, but if you ever see it on TV late at night, there's a lot worse you can watch. I just don't know that I'd spend money on it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084854/

Snakes on a Train (2006)

Most of my friends know about my blog and my penchant for bad movies, and it's usually titles like this that elicit that laugh and head shake. Snakes on a Plane is a funny enough idea, but when I tell them I'm watching a film called Snakes on a Train, I get one of those: "Only you, Poirier." Perhaps, only me.

Snakes on a Train is about a rural Mexican couple. The girl is cursed with some snake hex that makes her regurgitate the reptiles, and, if not cured, will turn her into a giant one. Her boyfriend is a pretty decent witch doctor, but this is too big for him and he needs his uncle's help-- who's in LA. So they hop on a WWII era passenger train in El Paso, and all hell breaks loose. Sorta kinda, I guess. Eventually the women turns into a big CG snake and tries to eat the plane-- I mean train. Whatever.



Blah. A big ol' pile o' blah. While Snakes on a Plane was fun and goofy and had Samuel L. Jackson, this was dumb and boring and had Frank from When a Killer Calls in it for like five minutes. The plot was worthless, the acting was beyond mailed in, and I just wasn't sure why this was made. I mean, I understand they wanted to package a film with a similar title to get people to rent it. But my buddy's girlfriend and her friend suggested a better script where the snakes were banditos with sombreros and moustaches robbing the train. Why didn't they do that?

I really loved Snakes on a Plane, and I think the people at The Asylum missed what made that a great film. It's possible that they don't get what makes anything a good film. Maybe I should invite a representative of their production company or whatever up to my place for Dolph Fest 2008. If I just hit them with the Showdown in Little Tokyo Bridge of Dragons two-fer, we could eliminate all their Snakes on a Trains and When a Killer Callses. That's my dream, anyway. It's like they work from such an awesome premise: rip-off popular movies in the theater with DTV releases that have similar titles. But then they forget the most important ingredient: Fun. Well, Love, then Fun. The Asylum, I want to give you that, if you want to take it.



Peter Mervis Directed this. He's also the dirty bastard behind When a Killer Calls. In this one, he's credited as the Mallachi Brothers, and his acting part isn't credited at all. Did he not want this one on his record? The acting part was so gross and slimy, I can understand not wanting his name on that: he plays the DEA dude who gets a chick to make out with him after he busts her with a bunch of coke. Eww. He supposedly directs Da Vinci Treasure, which I may find myself watching, because it has C. Thomas Howell. We'll see what happens there.



I haven't go anything left to give you. This was a pile of suck. And something tells me it was an intentional pile of suck, which made me more annoyed. I could've spent that 90 minutes of my life watching Live by the Fist again. The Asylum is now 1-for-3, and o-fer-the last two, so it's not looking good. At this point I'm limiting myself to only Asylum pictures that have actors I know in them, until I see a couple I enjoyed, like Transmorphers.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0843873/

King Cobra (1999)

This was a late night deal I did to battle a bout of insomnia. It didn't work out so well, in that I lasted through the whole thing. It drew my attention because it had the late Pat Morita and the even later Hoyt Axton. I'm also a fan of snake movies.

In King Cobra a poor man's Carrot Top (which if you do the math out, that would mean poor man's as in guy collecting bottles to buy a forty) goes over his boss's head in a lab experiment and things go horribly wrong, leading to an explosion and the creation of a 30-foot cross between a rattler and a King Cobra. As most of the beasts are wont to do, this one terrorizes a small town. As people die, the boss scientist comes looking for it. A doctor looking to leave town and his police officer girlfriend help the scientist, along with Pat Morita, resident herpetologist. The doctor is about as close as you can get to being Jonathan Silverman without actually being him. Anyway, more people die, before Morita has a last stand with the snake. Then he dies, and the police woman tries to kill it. Just as the cobra's about to bite her, the doctor drop kicks it (I'm not kidding), and the two stick it in some device that gases it. There's a special appearance by Erik Estrada.



This movie has a built in bad movie warning in the opening credits. The moment you read "Special Appearance by Erik Estrada", you either say to yourself "sweet", or you say "this looks dumb". I'm the kind of guy that says "sweet", and as such am not scared off by such warnings. I hope you the reader aren't either. As far as the appearance went, it was just Estrada overacting as a gay guy planning a beer festival that coincides with the snake's arrival. In my mind, the actual line in the opening credits telling us there'd be a special appearance was better than the actual appearance.

The snake was of great quality. Instead of going the CGI route that most of these bad monster films are going, this one went animatronic with stop motion animation. The result was a higher quality and funnier snake than the CGI ones. It's like the CGI monster is the sweatpants of the genre, and the film maker that uses it is just telling the world that he or she has given up. Well the people who made this one haven't given up... at least not yet.



Pat Morita is fantastic in this. At three or four in the morning, by myself, I was laughing out loud at the end where he had goggles on, and was wavering as the snake kept biting him. It almost as if the animatronic snake was making an expression of "will you just die already." He just looked so silly, especially with the goggles. I guess the idea was that his blood had lots of anti-venom, so the snake had to bite him a lot. Either that, or they needed to pad the film, so they shot the snake, then shot Morita staggering as he tried to outlast the attack, then looped it over and over.

This was Hoyt Axton's last film. In it, he looked a lot like an aged Joe Don Baker, which is funny, because Hoyt did the theme song to Mitchell. For groups of people watching this, the near Joe Don-ness of him is a sweet addition. It's like I don't have to think to make jokes when he's on screen, I just go to my Mitchell well. "Bite me Mitchell".



The main character, the doctor, is almost Jonathan Silverman. When he drop kicks the snake at the end it is priceless. I've never seen anything like it in all the years I've been watching movies. I was beginning to doubt my decision to stick with the film as long as I did, but in quick succession at the very end, I got Morita's hilarious death scene, then the even funnier snake drop kick. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but whoever thought of it should get a Nobel prize in herpetology or something.

If you see this on Sci-Fi or something, TiVo it. At the very least, you can skip to the end. The drop kick alone makes it for me one of the best of the bad horror films on Sci-Fi. I'm not sure it's worth buying it or renting it for that, but TiVoing won't cost you much beyond the space it takes up on your DVR. You don't need to see the rest of the film, but you won't forgive yourself if you miss the Morita death scene, followed by the drop kick.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138797/

Boa vs. Python (2004)

I first saw this gem on the Sci-Fi Channel with some friends on a Saturday afternoon while we were figuring out what we were doing for the night. We were only casually following it, until the female lead challenged a husky Navy SEAL with a blonde mullet to see which one of them could hold his or her breath in the pool longer. Under the water, the woman unlaced her bikini top, and the Navy SEAL made the best face ever. Those who have seen this gem know that face. Our friend who was hosting us rewound the scene, so we were introduced to the wonders of TiVo and Boa vs. Python at the same time.

Boa vs. Python stars the hot blonde from Son of the Beach as the one who aced the Navy SEAL and that guy from Stargate: Atlantis that wears glasses as a nerdy snake man. They're recruited by the FBI to track down a Boa or a Python (I don't remember which) that some rich dude with a body like Fei Long's who has a plane with marble pillars in it let loose just outside of Philadelphia for some kind of hunting thing. To track it, they use their own Boa or Python, and hilarity ensues.

As you can imagine, people get eaten, they get shot by the rich guy and his hunters, and the dude and chick hook up. Also, if you rent it or buy it (my buddy bought it used for $2), a chick gets eaten out by one of the snakes. It really doesn't matter, though. The movie just can't seem to carry on the momentum it started with the Navy SEAL in the pool. If he was wrestling with one of the snakes, it might have been better.

One thing I dig about this film is its strange concept of reality. They constantly refer to snakes as the "most cunning" of hunters, when they really aren't. The rich guy, as I mentioned above, has marble pillars installed in his plane, along with a ceramic bathtub. His girlfriend is afraid of snakes, but has one tattooed on her body. At the end of the movie, the rich guy assaults US servicemen (I think it was the Army) with a flamethrower.

One thing I hated about this film was how low it was on the Man Crush factor. Who made the decision to go with the guy with glasses from Stargate: Atlantis? Give me some Lorenzo Lamas or Sasha Mitchell, please. I'd settle for Reb Brown. I just want to feel like the lead in a movie like that could kick my ass in a fair fight. Is that too much to ask? There's a reason why the guy with glasses is just that on his own show, because there's a beefier guy who does the hero stuff.

The final verdict on this film is simple: TiVo it for sure if you see it on your program guide, because the Navy SEAL's face is a can't miss. The rest of it is strictly for the connoisseur. If you're not a connoisseur, I'd avoid spending more than $2 on this, and catch whatever movies are on Sci-Fi or Encore Action instead.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412523/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/