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annathepiperSo this was going to be an all-snake Movie Suckoff Marathon, thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kathrynt alerting solarbird and me to the snake movie marathon that the Sci-Fi channel ran this past weekend. However, we wound up getting a bonus non-snake contender as well, to round out the list to an even six. Our contenders were:
House of Frankenstein, which was apparently a miniseries of all things. This almost disqualified it from the running, but our panel of judges let it in anyway on the grounds that a miniseries was close enough. This steaming pile featured a surprisingly talkative Frankenstein's monster who had been found at the North Pole (da hell?) by an expedition financed by vampires (excuse me?) who were committing murders in L.A. and trying to set the monster up for it. I think. I'm pretty sure that that's a more coherent description of the plot than what I was actually viewing. Oh yeah, and there was a chick who got turned into a werewolf and kidnapped by the vampires. What really sold Dara and me on this one for the Stupid, though, was the solarization filter that they used to show "Vampire POV" every time the vampire was in vamp form and airborne. Extra bonus stupidity for the winged demon-esque prosthetic/costume used for said vamp form, as well as occasional vampires trying very hard to look like they escaped from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Why they would have fled Buffy to get into this film, I'm not sure, except that maybe here they'd die slower.
King Cobra very quickly established itself as quite capable of matching the previous contender's level of Stupid. In fact, it had Dara gaping and proclaiming "That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen!" before the opening credits even rolled, all thanks to the sequence where Jackass Scientist Du Jour has his lab go splody when his jackass assistants decide to speed things up because they think he's researching too slow. We're talking Superfriends-level Stupid here, folks. Pat Morita as a snake expert is the only actual character in this movie (as opposed to walking stock cliche), and once or twice comes close to actually acting. However, he gets what's very possibly the cheesiest death scene Dara and I have ever had the pleasure to chortle over, complete with Spinny Cam, Triple Exposure, and Slow Motion.
This also established for us what seemed to be a distinct pattern of Giant Snake Movies, to wit: 1) giant snakes bred for dubious research purposes, 2) snakes escape, 3) snakes have to be hunted down, 4) at least one snaky offspring will survive OH NOEZ!
Snake King wanted very much to be a better movie than it actually was. And for the longest time, its chief crime was more than it was boring, really, rather than suckful. Stephen Baldwin as the hero du jour was mostly a non-entity, and the blonde scientist babe was actually more of a contributor to the plot than he was. However, the big selling point of Stupid here was the huge multi-headed CG snake.
Obligatory Research Reason for Snake in Movie: Longevity.
Boa Vs. Python had, hands down, the highest number of extremely annoying characters. The plot (such as it was) this time around was Hunter Jackass shipping up a giant snake from Giantsnakeistan (or wherever the hell one gets giant snakes) so that he and other Hunter Jackasses can hunt it down under controlled conditions. The snake escapes, of course (not that one can blame it for trying to flee into a better movie). So what does the FBI do but go get another giant snake, on the theory that they can use it to hunt down this one. Da hell?
Obligatory Research Reason for Snake In Movie: Because it's large and territorial and will presumably go beat up the other snake.
Vipers is newly minted as of this year, so gets to bring in plot points like Homeland Security to use against the threat of mutant snakes about to overrun an island town. Which is all well and good until one realizes that Tofino is in Canada. Snerk.
Of the lot of movies we watched, this one actually sucked the least. Like Snake King, its chief crime was mostly being boring rather than suckful. And in the movie's defense I'll grant it that even the mostly boring characters were more or less trying to behave sensibly in response to the situation. Don Davis (who I mainly remember as the guy who played Scully's father in X-Files but who folks also know from Stargate, and who died earlier this year) was the best actor in the lot--so his character was competent and occasionally even funny. I also give the movie points for having the young hero jury-rig a snake-killing thing he called the Mongoose, and for the obligatory Whiny Young Teen keeping her whining down to a minimum and actually contributing to the plot.
Obligatory (and for me personally, this time around, teeth-gritting) Research Reason for Snakes in Movie: Curing breast cancer with the venom. Fun how these research projects in these movies always involve genetically altering the snakes to make 'em bigger, meaner, and more aggressive!
Last but not least, oh my no, we have Anaconda 3. In this one we have not one but two giant snakes, and for bonus lulz, David Hasselhoff!
This movie managed to hit the sweet spot where the level of suck is just right to bring mighty amounts of Funny; the first five minutes alone, in which most of the members of a hunting team in the jungle are wiped out, had Dara laughing out loud. We had John Rhys-Davies hissing out every single line as if he was personally pissed off at his own participation in this movie. We had Emergency Backup Hunter Guy who was trying very, very hard to be Russell Crowe in his general delivery, and who got stabbed through the chest by the spike on the tail end of one of the snakes before he could Russell it up too much. We had the blonde research scientist chick who presumably has no background whatsoever in hunting, fighting, or anything athletic display sudden ability to knee the Hoff in the groin in the last ten minutes of the movie and proceed to kick his ass; sadly, she displayed none of this competence through the first 110 minutes.
And oh yes, the Hoff, Hoffing it up through the amount of time he actually spent on camera. Which was to say, surprisingly not much for a movie in which he got first billing; he has about five minutes total in the first hour and doesn't show up for real until after Backup Hunter Guy gets killed. He was generally lollertastic and deserved every bit of asskicking the heroine gave him, as well as dying in a bloody tangle of baby snakes and a bomb about to go off.
Obligatory Research Reason for Snakes in Movie: Curing cancer and longevity, as the Sekrit Research Project this time around was apparently to let John Rhys-Davies' character live longer.
Winner and champion: Boa Vs. Python! For combining the least interesting and stupidest plot with the highest count of characters you wanted to punch before throwing them to the snakes.
kathrynt alerting solarbird and me to the snake movie marathon that the Sci-Fi channel ran this past weekend. However, we wound up getting a bonus non-snake contender as well, to round out the list to an even six. Our contenders were:House of Frankenstein, which was apparently a miniseries of all things. This almost disqualified it from the running, but our panel of judges let it in anyway on the grounds that a miniseries was close enough. This steaming pile featured a surprisingly talkative Frankenstein's monster who had been found at the North Pole (da hell?) by an expedition financed by vampires (excuse me?) who were committing murders in L.A. and trying to set the monster up for it. I think. I'm pretty sure that that's a more coherent description of the plot than what I was actually viewing. Oh yeah, and there was a chick who got turned into a werewolf and kidnapped by the vampires. What really sold Dara and me on this one for the Stupid, though, was the solarization filter that they used to show "Vampire POV" every time the vampire was in vamp form and airborne. Extra bonus stupidity for the winged demon-esque prosthetic/costume used for said vamp form, as well as occasional vampires trying very hard to look like they escaped from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Why they would have fled Buffy to get into this film, I'm not sure, except that maybe here they'd die slower.
King Cobra very quickly established itself as quite capable of matching the previous contender's level of Stupid. In fact, it had Dara gaping and proclaiming "That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen!" before the opening credits even rolled, all thanks to the sequence where Jackass Scientist Du Jour has his lab go splody when his jackass assistants decide to speed things up because they think he's researching too slow. We're talking Superfriends-level Stupid here, folks. Pat Morita as a snake expert is the only actual character in this movie (as opposed to walking stock cliche), and once or twice comes close to actually acting. However, he gets what's very possibly the cheesiest death scene Dara and I have ever had the pleasure to chortle over, complete with Spinny Cam, Triple Exposure, and Slow Motion.
This also established for us what seemed to be a distinct pattern of Giant Snake Movies, to wit: 1) giant snakes bred for dubious research purposes, 2) snakes escape, 3) snakes have to be hunted down, 4) at least one snaky offspring will survive OH NOEZ!
Snake King wanted very much to be a better movie than it actually was. And for the longest time, its chief crime was more than it was boring, really, rather than suckful. Stephen Baldwin as the hero du jour was mostly a non-entity, and the blonde scientist babe was actually more of a contributor to the plot than he was. However, the big selling point of Stupid here was the huge multi-headed CG snake.
Obligatory Research Reason for Snake in Movie: Longevity.
Boa Vs. Python had, hands down, the highest number of extremely annoying characters. The plot (such as it was) this time around was Hunter Jackass shipping up a giant snake from Giantsnakeistan (or wherever the hell one gets giant snakes) so that he and other Hunter Jackasses can hunt it down under controlled conditions. The snake escapes, of course (not that one can blame it for trying to flee into a better movie). So what does the FBI do but go get another giant snake, on the theory that they can use it to hunt down this one. Da hell?
Obligatory Research Reason for Snake In Movie: Because it's large and territorial and will presumably go beat up the other snake.
Vipers is newly minted as of this year, so gets to bring in plot points like Homeland Security to use against the threat of mutant snakes about to overrun an island town. Which is all well and good until one realizes that Tofino is in Canada. Snerk.
Of the lot of movies we watched, this one actually sucked the least. Like Snake King, its chief crime was mostly being boring rather than suckful. And in the movie's defense I'll grant it that even the mostly boring characters were more or less trying to behave sensibly in response to the situation. Don Davis (who I mainly remember as the guy who played Scully's father in X-Files but who folks also know from Stargate, and who died earlier this year) was the best actor in the lot--so his character was competent and occasionally even funny. I also give the movie points for having the young hero jury-rig a snake-killing thing he called the Mongoose, and for the obligatory Whiny Young Teen keeping her whining down to a minimum and actually contributing to the plot.
Obligatory (and for me personally, this time around, teeth-gritting) Research Reason for Snakes in Movie: Curing breast cancer with the venom. Fun how these research projects in these movies always involve genetically altering the snakes to make 'em bigger, meaner, and more aggressive!
Last but not least, oh my no, we have Anaconda 3. In this one we have not one but two giant snakes, and for bonus lulz, David Hasselhoff!
This movie managed to hit the sweet spot where the level of suck is just right to bring mighty amounts of Funny; the first five minutes alone, in which most of the members of a hunting team in the jungle are wiped out, had Dara laughing out loud. We had John Rhys-Davies hissing out every single line as if he was personally pissed off at his own participation in this movie. We had Emergency Backup Hunter Guy who was trying very, very hard to be Russell Crowe in his general delivery, and who got stabbed through the chest by the spike on the tail end of one of the snakes before he could Russell it up too much. We had the blonde research scientist chick who presumably has no background whatsoever in hunting, fighting, or anything athletic display sudden ability to knee the Hoff in the groin in the last ten minutes of the movie and proceed to kick his ass; sadly, she displayed none of this competence through the first 110 minutes.
And oh yes, the Hoff, Hoffing it up through the amount of time he actually spent on camera. Which was to say, surprisingly not much for a movie in which he got first billing; he has about five minutes total in the first hour and doesn't show up for real until after Backup Hunter Guy gets killed. He was generally lollertastic and deserved every bit of asskicking the heroine gave him, as well as dying in a bloody tangle of baby snakes and a bomb about to go off.
Obligatory Research Reason for Snakes in Movie: Curing cancer and longevity, as the Sekrit Research Project this time around was apparently to let John Rhys-Davies' character live longer.
Winner and champion: Boa Vs. Python! For combining the least interesting and stupidest plot with the highest count of characters you wanted to punch before throwing them to the snakes.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 09:35 pm (UTC)Why was the monster in the Arctic? In the original novel, he led Frankenstein there to kill him at the end.
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Date: 2008-09-24 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-25 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-25 02:39 am (UTC)And as I think about it I think I may have actually read it in school... but I don't remember it well so it must have been quite some time ago. I don't own a copy myself. But you are quite right, I should!
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Date: 2008-09-25 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-25 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-25 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 01:58 am (UTC)Over the last many hours, since last night, I've slogged through the first seventy or so pages. It's a hard go when one is on painkillers!
Did you like Ghost Brigades then? I've got that waiting for attention on the To Read shelf.
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Date: 2008-09-26 12:04 pm (UTC)I enjoyed Ghost Brigades muchly, and have Last Colony waiting for my attention now (behind The Jinn from Hyperspace - hi, recreational math geek here, like me some Gardner even when it's not rec math...) I plan to pick up Zoe's Tale, too, but not until it's out in paperback. Cheap! Cheap!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 03:18 pm (UTC)I've got another of Scalzi's on my shelf, too: The Android's Dream. Looking forward to that. After reading his blog for all these many months it'll be fun to read more of his prose.
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Date: 2008-09-25 06:37 am (UTC)It would be cool to have a movie where a rogue hunter is trying to breed special snakes that reduce the effects of medicine, only the snakes develop a pacifistic, gentle nature and break into a scientist's lab to escape. The black-haired scientist befriends them, but then it turns out that the snakes are sterile and---since medicine doesn't work near them---nobody can help. In the end these beautiful creatures pass utterly from the earth, and we all learn a valuable lesson about coexisting with mutants.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-25 04:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, TAMPERING WITH EVOLUTION!!! really ought to be on an icon from that movie. ;)
Also, sounds like a movie to me! Though I doubt the skiffy channel would run it.