Rating: D+
Dir: William Fruet.
Star: Peter Fonda, Oliver Reed, Kerrie Keane, Al Waxman.
This might be the film to which all subsequent giant snake movies owe a debt. While hardly as successful as Jaws, the film which inspired authors Michael Maryk and Brent Monahan to write their novel Death Bite, it does appear to be the first movie to feature such an oversized reptile. There’s a fair amount of loopy insanity here, not helped by a troubled production. The original plan to use live snakes was scrapped, the makers switching to an animatronic creature instead. However, Fruet was dissatisfied with the results, and opted to use as little of it as possible. Matters weren’t helped by production studio Filmpro Limited going bankrupt in the first week of shooting, or Oliver Reed being Oliver Reed. [He was arrested for a bar-room brawl just after filming ended]
He plays millionaire Jason Kincaid, whose brother was killed by a massive serpent in Papua New Guinea. Kincaid was bitten but survived, and now has a telepathic connection to the snake. [This would be the loopy insanity I mentioned] He contracts with psychiatrist Tom Brasilian (Fonda) to help him, after paying a big-game hunter to capture the snake and bring it to his San Diego mansion, where a lab is being built to study it. However, a reptile-worshipping cult intends to make use of the beast for their own purposes, hiring former CIA agent Warren Crowley (Waxman) to snake-nap it. Naturally, this does not go as planned. It instead escapes, and starts attacking local residents – such as showering sorority girls, of course.
While you have to respect what was, at the time this came out, an original premise, it’s difficult to see how it could have passed muster, even at the time it was originally released. The most horrific thing here might be the number of close-ups of Reed’s twitchy and sweaty face. And he only gets twitchier and sweatier, the closer the snake gets to Kincaid. In the alleged absence of credible snake effects, Fruet opts instead to slap a blue filter on and film the attacks from the beast’s point of view, in Snake-o-Vision (top). I was thinking I d have preferred the crap animatronics. Then you see the oversized glove-puppet in question, and I must admit – Fruet might have had a point.
The attack on the sorority house is really the only sequence where there’s adequate energy, one resident in particular being tossed around like a rag doll. Oscar winner Dick Smith worked on the snakebite effects – not that you’d mistake this for The Exorcist, though there is some nice bladder work at the end – and Tangerine Dream provided some music for the score. But if you watch only one movie filmed in 1981, where Oliver Reed goes up against a killer snake… Skip this one (which sat on the shelf for two years before release), and go watch Venom instead. While the reptile there is only standard-sized, at least you get Klaus Kinski as well.