Now Playing: SNAKE ISLAND
Went over to the Cohens for a little while last night for a crappy movie that dialed up On Demand. Hey, you know me, the words "crappy movie" trigger a Pavlovian response in me, and I'll go just about anywhere. Especially when it's something about killer snakes that stars The Greatest American Hero and Jake Speed.
Of course, William Katt was THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO on ABC during the early 1980's, and JAKE SPEED is the title of a terrible RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ripoff that I actually saw theatrically upon its mid-'80s release. Besides featuring the most embarrassing role of John Hurt's career as the fey villain, JAKE starred an actor and producer of low-budget exploitation movies named Wayne Crawford. I saw it again about a year ago, and it's still bad. But not bad enough to keep me away from SNAKE ISLAND.
As long as a film shows me something I’ve never seen before, I’m usually content. But I certainly wasn’t prepared for what SNAKE ISLAND writer/producer/director/star Crawford tossed at me--talking snakes. Wait, let me amend that--singing, talking snakes. Granted, it only happens in a dream sequence, but the scene where a woman awakens to find a pair of reptiles swaying to the sounds of their own singing, complete with animated lip-synching, left me a little slack-jawed. Incongruous, ridiculous and just plain stupid, at least the scene is memorable, which is more than one can say for the rest of the film.
A bunch of tourists, on their way by boat to a resort along a South African river, stop off for a moment at the abandoned Snake Island resort to drop off Malcolm Page (Katt, who looks a lot like Bruce Davison these days), an author researching a horror novel. The boat conks out, however, and the entire party, led by grizzled guide Jake (Crawford), has to spend the night there. I don’t know how anyone could relax at a place called Snake Island, where seemingly thousands of slithering killers lurk in every tree, patch of grass and corner, but the party has little problem drinking, showering, sleeping and having sex. That is, until the pissed-off little snakes, which are somehow versed in the concept of revenge, start chomping on them.
Crawford, who has been writing, producing and appearing in junky exploitation films since the ‘70s, delivers the goods as well as he can, even throwing in a gratuitous striptease to assure an R rating. He and Katt share the hero honors, although neither of them takes their job--or the project--very seriously. But, then again, how could they? The snake effects are pretty bad, usually alternating between obvious CGI and rubbery fakes on strings. And it was good to see Kate Connor again. She played the hottie Army rocket scientist in porn-movie-librarian spectacles and a short skirt in the terrific U.S. SEALS II and happily provides eye candy in SNAKE ISLAND, along with Dawn Matthews (who does the nude dancing and showering) and Nicola Hanekom as Jake’s estranged wife.
Posted by Marty
at 7:42 PM CDT
