King Cobra (1999)

Just perfect...

Excellent, a Must See

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The Hillenbrand's present one of the most frightening and intensely horrifying reptile films ever made. With incredible suspense and unrelenting thrills, the story of a huge hybrid snake wreaking havoc simply explodes across the screen. Pat Morita is superb as Hashimoto, the snake expert who recognizes pure evil in the unholy beast. Scott Hillenbrand is also excellent and certainly proves his acting prowess. Hoyt Axton is especially powerful in the role of the town's mayor and gives one of the best performances of his career. The entire cast is quite good in this terrifying motion picture and the direction is taut and creative. The sudden attacks by the snake, its stealth and menace, are almost to much to endure and represent some of the most frightening moments ever committed to film. Overall, this is giant snake cinema at its most visionary, epic in scope yet intimate in its moments of personal terror.

Yeah, how many times do we ever get to have the chance to see movies like this, huh? A movie about a big snake escaping and attacking a town? And not like "Godzilla," either! This movie has quite possibly the most unlikely plot in bad movie history!!!!! I know that most people would never sit on down to this (instead watching that really exciting "Snakes on a Plane" movie), but I'd watch that and this movie as well! This movie gets the ultimate, the best of the best in my book.....10 stars! A ten star movie and that's no lie! But don't keep your hopes up, because if "Mystery Science Theater 3000" came back out of the grave, then it'll be going to 1 star! Seriously!

I saw this movie after reading plenty of the negative reviews on IMDb so I had low expectations.The good; -this film had the scariest and most realistic snake of any snake movie I've seen including the Anaconda and Python movies. I've seen people slam it because the snake didn't look real enough but even the shark in Jaws looked rather fake (not claiming this is equal to Jaws or even in the same class but people need to cut films some slack and realize that not everything is 100% factual). -a fairly good musical score -scares: a few scenes where the snake pops out of nowhere to attack really sends chills up your spine -Pat Moriata: I have never seen the Karate Kid so I have no bias but he definitely played a cool characterthe bad: -several Jaws rip off scenes; the scare at the beginning (though to be fair all giant predator movies seem to have attacks at the start) except done inferiorly due to breaking the rule of showing the creature on the first attack. The blatant ripoff line "we're going to need bigger guns" and the plot line of a money hungry mayor not wanting to close down an event to protect the civilians from the monster and eventual hiring of an expert of the monster in question -some of the death scenes were long and drawn out and predictable. The director did a good job with a false scare early in the movie with using the attacker as the camera peering up to a little girl only to realize that it was her brother sneaking up on her with a rubber snake (though this may be a copy of the Jaws scene with the pranksters swimming with a a shark fin on to scare the people on the beach), we then get a long drawn out stalking of the King Cobra on the little boy. It would have worked much better to have the snake pop out of nowhere. -we end with an unresolved cliffhanger; Seth is still alive but likely no sequelFinal grade: 7 out of 10

It's true. Pat Morita ("Happy Days;" the "Karate Kid" series) plays a herpetologist* recruited to help capture a genetically-engineered reptile. Why genetically engineered? Well, Joseph Ruskin plays a biochemist trying to find a neurochemical cure for hyperviolent aggression (like that exhibited by serial killers, I guess).But, he can't experiment on humans, right off the bat. And, normal wild animals aren't aggressive enough (unless, of course, you cruelly provoke them). So, he creates Seth. And, here is where the zoological accuracy goes out the window even worse than it did in "Anacondas!" The Eastern diamondback is a genuine species of rattler . BUT, THERE IS NO SUCH SPECIES AS THE African KING COBRA!! Oh, the scientific name (Haemachates haemachatus) was pronounced, correctly. That belongs to a _very_ aggressive species of South African spitting cobra known as the "ringhals." The proper scientific name for king cobras, however, is Naja hannah. AND, THEY ARE NATIVE TO SOUTHEAST ASIA! So, was Seth's biological daddy a gene-spliced hybrid, himself?Perhaps. In any case, before you become a professional snake handler (like Dr. Hashimoto), maybe you should take out a life insurance policy with Mutual of Omaha. *Herpetologists, btw, study reptiles _and_ amphibians, in general. A zoologist who specializes only in snakes is technically an ophiologist. "Here endeth the lesson." (Sean Connery, "The Untouchables")