King Cobra (1999)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

If you're a herper, get all your herping buddies together, pop some popcorn, put this lower-than-B-grade movie on, and get ready for a laugh a minute. From a story about cobras playing dead to lure their prey to "African king cobras" and mambas that can put their fangs through someone's hand, every single thing they say about snakes is so wrong that it's howlingly funny.It's less funny for non herpers when you have to explain the joke, but I'll try. Cobras do not play dead (Hemachatus and Heterodon do, Naja and Ophiophagus don't). King cobras are not from Africa. Adult black mambas (which are from Africa) have fangs from three to maybe six millimeters long. I'm estimating here, but I open a lot of mamba mouths for veterinary and research purposes. Elapid fangs are teeny weeny things.More laughs to follow. Holding up a shed skin of this supposed rattlecobra, and the shed includes the rattle. The whole notion of a king cobra and an EDB breeding in the first place. But hey, they do say it's done by gene splicing, which gets around the fact that introducing a rattlesnake to a king cobra would not have good results for either snake. I guess they also spliced in the genes for being 30 feet long. What did they throw in the mix, a telephone pole? Our biggest king cobra weighs eleven kilos (under 25 lbs), is a bit shy of 15 feet in length, and is no thicker around than a man's arm. Doubling that would be an impressive snake, but not exactly a man-eater. King cobras are partially arboreal, especially as juveniles, and they are small and light-bodied by design. Toss Crotalus adamanteus in the mix via hypothetical gene splicing (VERY hypothetical indeed), and you'd get a heavier bodied snake. But still not what was depicted in the movie by a long shot.The king rattlecobra does all kinds of stuff throughout that no snake could or would possibly do, increasing the laugh quotient considerably. The giggle factor is also helped along by the endless horse puckey being spewed by Pat Morita's character. And that laughable snake hook, and the ridiculous capture setup. Which is a bit of a shame, as "Haash" is an obvious homage to Bill Haast, right down to the injections of king cobra venom and the 167 bites.Possibly the funniest faux pas of all is the notion that this mythical cross between a king cobra and a rattlesnake would be the most aggressive animal in the world. Or that any herpetologist would kill this animal once it was captured. Talk about a prize specimen! I'll gladly take a breeding pair for my collection. Alas, they exist only in the realm of imagination.

Snake movies are the worst. And this one is the equal of any. A King Cobra/Rattlesnake hybrid has escaped from a lab wrecked by two of the most insane scientists in film history. The scene was brief, but possibly the most entertaining in the film. The monstrous mutation has claimed a small, rural town as its territory. Of course they are about to have a festival a beer fest no less! And will the Mayor cancel the festival because a couple of people are killed? What do you think? The acting in King Cobra is remedial at best. Even Pat Morita cannot make is role entertaining. The stoic Casey Fallo was a pretty good reason to keep viewing. She was nice to watch in what little she was given to do. Everyone else was just not in attendance.Perhaps the major problem for me in the film is that a snake was able to outsmart one-and-all homo sapiens throughout most of the film. And the two ton beast seemingly appeared and disappeared with all the velocity of a mako shark. He wafted through the delicate branches of trees with the grace of a ninety pound ballerina. A trained deputy is cornered against a tree by the rampaging reptile, and she panics, seemingly forgets she has a pistol in her hand, and screams for the hero; who drop-kicks the lightnening-fast saurian without even getting bitten.One must always suspend belief to some extent in order to enjoy a monster film. However, the director created such a "super snake", and such inept humans, that King Cobra far surpassed my ability to stretch reality.This mess eventually became boring and predictable. That is the only real sin a monster film can commit. And it is terminal in King Cobra.But it just might be that the worst faux pas of this film was the beer recipe recited by the supposed artisan brewer. If you are able to muster the gumption to watch this snake calamity, listen carefully for it. This "master brewer" is concocting a classic American mass-produced, tasteless near beer; not a sapid, artisan brew. After all, snakes are a dime a dozen, but a really good beer is sacred.I cannot recommend this film, unless one is in traction and cannot reach the remote. However, perhaps enough good beer could make it tolerable?

Is this a low budget movie?: YESIs the acting bad?: YESIs this movie a bad one?: NO DOUBTBUT, is this movie entertaining?: YES, but only in limited periods of time. If you want to enjoy "King Cobra", you have to block out all expectations of this being a great film, and just erase your memory of great films you've previously seen. Only if you do that, there's a possible that it will entertain you. One thing that helps a bit, it that the special effects doesn't look that bad. But since this is really low-budget, the big snake hasn't that much screen time. And for the opening scene, just forget that it was part of the movie, because it has to be one of the worst scenes that I've seen. Ever.

An explosion at a government lab mixes behavior modification chemicals with a gene-spliced African king cobra/diamondback rattler, leading to "30 Feet of Pure Terror!" as the highly aggressive hybrid grows to mammoth size and escapes. Two years later, just in time for a small town's "lager festival" the snake emerges in the woods with a sudden urge to sink its teeth into innocent townspeople. It's up to a doctor (Scott Brandon), a female deputy (Kasey Fallo), a snake expert (Pat Morita) and others to track to beast down, but naturally they're opposed by townspeople who don't want to cause a big commotion. There's too much blurry POV camera-work and this entire film is completely contrived and predictable (right down to the local redneck posse trying their hand at capturing the fanged fiend), but the production values and cast are good, and this is a well-crafted direct-to-video flick. The model snake (designed by the Chiodo brothers, creators of CRITTERS and KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE), raises up on it's rattling tale, breaths, consumes prey whole and is actually much better than the one used in the bigger-budgeted ANACONDA. And love that Erik Estrada cameo.