Mega Snake – DVD Review

Tibor “Mansquito” Takács is back again, this time with the Sci-Fi Channel Original picture Mega Snake. That box looks exciting, huh? Kinda like a highschooler made it using only Microsoft paint and public domain images. It warrants mentioning that the bottom half of that box-art has nothing to do with the movie. There are no big cities in the film, no hummers, no military response, and none of those people are in this movie.

So what is Mega Snake about? Is it a treatise on the dangers of illegal abortion? Is it about a woman who must find the strength to leave her abusive husband and become a single mom? Surprisingly, no. It is about a really big snake. According to my press release from First Look, “Chaos ensues when Les’ brother accidentally unleashes a rare, and extremely mythical snake.”

It’s not just a little mythical mind you; it is legendary TO THE MAX!

Any road, Michael “Dr. Daniel Jackson” Shanks stars as Les Daniels. Les is terrified of CGI snakes because when he was a boy, his father was killed by a CGI snake, during one of those weird Christian CGI snake-handling church meetings. Flash forward 20 years. Les is an EMT whose relationship with a sexy lady cop is on the rocks, forcing him to have a fling with his sexy lady EMT partner. Les’s brother Duff is still a snake-handler.

Duff goes to an Indian tattoo parlor looking for some exotic snakes. There, Indian mystic/tattoo artist/ amateur crypto-herpetologist Screaming Hawk spends all Duff’s time talking up his little snake in a jar, Unteka. Mr. Screaming Hawk tells fables about the creature, offers its 3 Gremlins style rules, then promptly leaves the room so that Duff can steal the tiny reptile without any problems.

Naturally, Duff breaks the Gremlins rules, and the aforementioned chaos ensues. The snake very quickly grows from 7 centimeters to 70 feet by “eating flesh and devouring fear.” We get some standard snake fu, some kitten eating, chicken thieving, thumb chewing, a novice makeout duel, the world’s lamest bar fight, goat regurgitation, homemade flamethrowers, a motor vehicle-reptile chase with an AC/DC ripoff soundtrack, gratuitous county fair attack, multiple decapitations, and girlfriend swallowing. Quote of the movie goes to Michael Shanks for his horrifying delivery of the horrible line, “It’s some sort of Native North American symbol!”

Mega Snake is a fairly lousy movie. Don’t get me wrong; it is shot competently. The lighting is pretty good. The acting, on the other hand, has two speeds: Over and Non. Mega Snake is the sort of film where it is just accepted that the small town girlfriend/Sheriff’s deputy just happens to have a Ph.D. in zoology, even though she cannot properly pronounce zoology. The sort of movie where the main character barely notices that his mom and brother have been eaten by a giant and extremely mythical snake. It’s the sort of flick that feels the need to throw in an epilogue with the main characters holding a baby.

It looks and sounds fine. There is some bad looping, but that isn’t the transfers fault.

English and Spanish subtitles.

Mega Snake seems to aspire to be a mix of Squirm and 8 Legged Freaks. Like the former, it’s excessively Southern, with pick-ups, shacks, big-bellied good old boys, and awful accents highlighted by sub-par looping. Like the latter, it is an awkward mix of horror and camp that ends up being neither funny nor scary. If that doesn’t scare you away, you’d probably enjoy the flick with a group of drunk friends. If you liked Slither but wanted it to be noticeably worse in every conceivable way, then Mega Snake is the film for you!

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First Look Studios presents Mega Snake. Directed by Tibor Takács. Starring Michael Shanks, Siri Baruc, Michal Yanai. Written by Robbie Robinson and Alexander Volz. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R. Released on DVD: March 04, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.