Plot
An expedition to the Amazon discovers
the remains of a man they later determine to be over 300 years old. A second
expedition is sent down there to find out why he managed to live so long and to
locate a remote tribe who may be his modern day ancestors in that hope that they may also
possess this seemingly eternal youth. However the expedition is beset by
problems and the helicopter crashes during a thunderstorm. Stranded in the
jungle with little hope for escape, the expedition then comes across a giant
multi-headed snake that the tribe worship as a God and protector of their
secret. When the expedition begin to get closer to the secret, the snake god Naga begins to kill them off.
Review
Don't have any sympathy for me, please. I
just can't keep myself from watching such abominations as this. It's like an
addiction. Some guys get addicted to cocaine. Some are attracted by the lure of
cheap hookers. For me, it's an unhealthy obsession with watching as many monster
flicks as possible within my lifespan. So is it any wonder I start to rant and
rave once I've watched another turkey. It's not like I'm surprised to find out
that the film sucks. Like driving past a car crash, you can't help but take a look
and see what has happened. Well put a giant snake on the front of a DVD cover
and that's my car crash right there - I can't help but look and either rent or
buy.
A giant multi-headed snake would have been a kick ass monster had it been done
properly. I keep saying multi-headed snake because depending on the scene, the
snake has an indifferent number of heads and grows more throughout the course of
the film. At one point it has three heads and then in the finale it has about
eight or nine! It's also THE SINGLE WORST SPECIAL EFFECT EVER. I mean I've seen
some clunkers in my time but this CGI monster is the worst thing to crawl out of
a computer since that annoying fat plumber Mario! Words can't describe how
utterly poop this monster is. Worst is to come during the attack scenes where
the snake heads have to pick people up and start tearing them apart in mid-air. Again words
can't describe how bad these scenes are. You know, I'm just going to recommend
this film to everyone just so that you can understand words will fail you upon
viewing this monstrosity. I'd rather we all be struck in silence than just me having to
rant on here about how bad it is. The snake has an ability to change shape and
size at any given time, usually depending on the scene. Need it to tower about
the tree line to show how huge it is? Right we'll make it super-huge for this
scene. Need the snake to hide in a small river? Cue the reduction on the
computer. Or how about chasing some people in underground caves? You've got it,
let's make it lean and mean. Computers have a lot to answer for but surely
anyone in their right mind would be able to pick these silly inconsistencies out
during post-production? The snake is also rewarded with it's own POV shots ala
Predator with the camera simply having a lime green filter stuck over the
top to make it look like the snake is zooming in on it's kill.
The film blows when the snake is
on the screen so spare a thought for the scenes in which the snake isn't around!
They're unbelievably boring and dull. I guess they need a story to pad out
around snake attacks so the whole tribal thing is mainly nonsense. The tribal
leader speaks perfect English even though his tribe has never been in contact
with humans. At least they can further the story quicker by having everyone
communicate with each other. The tribe mainly consists of white guys in fake tan
or at least the guys with speaking parts. Everyone else looks like they live in
the jungle. Stephen Baldwin yawns his way through the film. If he's the best
"action man" that they can get for these terrible films, then they're really
scraping the barrel. He was never a great actor to begin with an was always
overshadowed by his brother Alec. But between this and Shark in Venice,
he's slowly turning into my nemesis! If I see his name on a future sci-fi
horror, then I'll be sure to skip it.
Verdict
Snakeman is terrible. I'm actually glad that the CGI was rubbish because
a decent multi-headed giant snake would deserve better than a low grade
straight-to-TV movie. Alas that is not the case so the snake, Baldwin and the
rest of the cast and crew deserve to get the mythical zero star score I'm giving
it.
