Snake Island (2002)

Pretty Good

Absolutely brilliant

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This film essentially begins in a remote region of Africa with a boat carrying several tourists up a river in the wilderness. However, when they stop at a small place known as Snake Island to gather supplies the crew notices that there is nobody at the dock to greet them. Curious about this, three of the crew go ashore to find out what has happened with instructions for the passengers to remain on the boat. Unfortunately, when a cobra makes its way onto the boat a novelist named "Malcolm Page" (William Katt) accidentally punctures the gas tank in an effort to kill it. This leaves everybody stranded on the island where it soon becomes clear that the snakes are quite plentiful--and extremely aggressive. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film started off well enough and appeared to have some potential. At least at first as there were a couple of scenes which had some decent suspense here and there. Likewise, both Kate Connor (as "Heather Dorsey") and Nicola Hanekom ("Ronnie") certainly added some nice scenery as well. Unfortunately, after the first 30 minutes or so many of the scenes became somewhat repetitious which caused my interest to wane a bit. That being said, while this wasn't a bad film by any means it wasn't necessarily that good and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

A wide variety of snakes stage an uprising on tourists "invading" their island due their captain's boat damage. The few remaining survivors who aren't caught vulnerable by the snakes will attempt an escape mission, their goal to flee to available boats which can get them safely off the island.Presented straight-faced with injected doses of visual humor featuring lots of snake gags, Wayne Crawford's SNAKE ISLAND features plenty of different breeds of the slithery predators, in striking position, ready to attack their prey. Star William Katt, as an author researching snakes for a forthcoming novel, has fun in his role along with writer / director / co-star Wayne Crawford(..as the tourist boat captain) as put-upon heroes who stare down a most serious crisis. Kate Connor is Crawford's attractive love interest, a lawyer on vacation. The other cast members serve as either tourists or crew, mostly fodder for the snakes. As in many other movies of this type, director Crawford features live snakes with computer generated ones, and the violence is really tame. Crawford even incorporates the point-of-view technique with the camera as the eyes of the snake as it faces the potential victim(..with the actor looking directly into the camera). Never to be taken seriously, the tongue-in-cheek approach was probably the best way to shoot SNAKE ISLAND because the premise is just too ridiculous to accept on it's own.The effects and suspense scenes rarely work because Crawford is often unable to successfully stage the sequences where humans face off with the snakes. The snake attacks themselves also never happen on screen(..one or two tops), or are so limply presented they leave little impression. That's a no-no for a genre such as this. Fans of Katt will probably want to check it out because he does provide some facial comedy that establishes the overall tone of certain scenes where he must defend himself against the snakes. The CGI scenes where we see a large number of snakes in a general area aren't very effective which remove the realism Crawford might've attempted to establish. There are plenty of better horror films featuring snakes as the aggressors than SNAKE ISLAND. Surprising moments of nudity, relegated to a scene where the tourists and crew unwind after a long day with the bubbly, not knowing what danger lie ahead.

First off, I'm not sure what the problem here most people seem to be having with this movie. I mean look, the film is called SNAKE ISLAND. It isn't called FAREWELL TO ARMS or THE GRAPES OF WRATH, it's a B grade direct to DVD/video movie about a boatload of people who get stranded on an island infested by a zillion snakes. WHAT are you people expecting?? SNAKE ISLAND was directed, written, produced, and stars my new favorite B movie icon, Wayne Crawford, a person about whom there is very little information. Mr. Crawford appears to be an opportunistic part-time genre filmmaker who surfaces every few years to helm a new little "vanity project" with himself in the starring role. He got his start in a demented little horror shocker in 1972 called AUNT MARTHA DOES DREADFUL THINGS, is perhaps best known for his work as the title character in the 80s home video detective thriller JAKE SPEED (and manages to play characters named Jake in many of his projects), though my favorite Wayne Crawford film is the 1978 JAWS ripoff and X-FILES anticipating rampaging barracuda/chemical experiment sleeper BARRACUDA (THE LUCIFER PROJECT) which SNAKE ISLAND actually reminds me a lot of.Others have done ample justice to the plot, what little there is of it: Humans trapped on an island with a zillion snakes attacking from every angle once the drunken topless lezbo techno dance party is over and everyone has gone back to their cabins to throw up. William Katt has fun as the expatriate American writer looking for something to write about, and Crawford casts himself as the somewhat grizzled tour guide who manages to find time to go skinny dipping with his female lead. Yes, making B movies can be fun, just remember to keep your day job, and Crawford is now apparently employed as a college professor, hopefully teaching film. People can learn a lot from him I am sure, as is evidenced by how much brain-dead fun there is to be had with this movie provided that one steadfastly refuses to take it seriously. ANY of it.As another reviewer pointed out, the difference between SNAKE ISLAND and the majority of the recent PG-13 oriented giant snakes on the loose movies is that this one was accomplished without relying too heavily on computer graphics effects -- they apparently actually used many actual snakes when making this movie, which makes me wonder how it slipped under PETA's usual animal watch radar. One reason might be that it's so easily dismissed as being just a load of crap, filmed in South Africa on the cheap, with no recognizable star names (William Katt??) and no real point to it's existence other than helping jaded viewers occupy 90 minutes of their lives in an entertaining manner.And it IS an entertaining little movie, especially if you can suppress both your brain and taste centers for an hour or so while the story sets itself up. One other aspect that proves useful is that the film actually has a subtle little sleaze factor going on, with some agreeable nudity, the infamous lezbo techno dance, a laugh or two about safari theme park attractions and finally the inevitable Night of the Snakes sequence, which is impressively staged. It won't make anyone forget stuff like SSSSSS or STANLEY but heck, for a few thousand dollars Mr. Crawford was able to gather an attractive cast, pick out a suitably isolated setting, and cut loose. Looks to me like the film was made in about two weeks with minimal fuss, and sent straight to the rental shops where stuff like this probably has it's most beneficial application.Genuine B movies are on the wane as of late, with the independent market being gobbled up by message movie attempts and the major distributors all looking for the next big event film package that will result in a franchise. That left people like Wayne Crawford free to fill the vacuum as far as mindless, disposable entertainment goes. Unlike JAKE SPEED or BARRACUDA I doubt that SNAKE ISLAND will gather much of a cult following and it's not the sort of film that will command repeat performances, but for a $1.50 three-day DVD rental you can do a heck of a lot worse. Which is what a good B movie should amount to.6/10; Sets it's sights low and achieves what it set out to do, and you sort of have to admire it for being true to it's nature.

If you're lookin' for a snake movie, this one's where it's at. It's got William Katt, Jake Speed, plenty of laughs and some hot naked chicks mixing it up. There hasn't been a hotter snake movie since the lesbian scene at the beginning of the first Python...check it out!