Killer Snakes is very strong and mean spirited stuff, but great film for fans of sleaze and ultra weird cinema. A young boy has suffered all his life. He had a traumatic childhood as his parents fought and had sick sex games in front of their child. After his childhood, he was nothing but a loser in some lousy job kicked in the head all the time. He was beaten, cheated, humiliated and laughed at all the time and everyday, and he definitely didn't have any friends. Friends of human beings, no, but soon he found himself different kind of friends, very slithery ones. He started to communicate with snakes, cobras mainly, which were plenty in his neighborhood and its restaurant's kitchen, in which the snakes were horribly mutilated by chef in order to remove some parts of the creature and feed them to customers. Our protagonist starts to make friends and talk with snakes, and starts to protect them. Then he starts to use them against his enemies, practically against everyone..
This film is weird and very dementedly disturbing. I'm almost sure the film makers (well, the director at least) was in some kind of dope during filming since there are so outrageous visions and use of lights that create an atmosphere one would probably feel after taking hard drugs. There are many different colors and strange soundtrack, but the settings are also very dirty and off putting, and this is the first Hong Kong movie, I saw the city depicted this dirty and loathsome. There are poor people, prostitutes and pimps and all kind of scum that live in big cities. The widescreen photography is not too inventive, but since the over all tune is so unique and hallucinatory, I cannot but appreciate this sick little gem.
And then the snakes, which are of course real and plenty. If you scare snakes, DO NOT even think of watching this film since you will faint if you try. There are big snakes and little snakes, fat snakes and thin snakes, slow snakes and very fast snakes, so there are all kinds of snakes in the film. I don't know how they shot some of the scenes since it seems like the actors just lay in the floor as hundreds of snakes were on and next to them, so I don't know were they tricks or were the actors so desperate they really did all these things with these creatures.
There are many over-the-top scenes, most notably the most infamous in which this guy ties a girl like in some s/m session, and lets snakes free on her naked body, and some of the snakes, of course, find the most valuable and sensitive body part of the girl, and crawl there and I'm sure female viewers (if there are any) will cringe in that scene, since even I did. The cruelties committed at snakes are unsettling to watch, as real snakes are mutilated and burned alive in the film, but that was the film makers' moral that time (and in some cases, even today, unfortunately), but at least the snake abusers get something back in the movie, so maybe the film is a statement again about humans' and nature's relationship and how humans exploit everything we get our hands into.
The final scene is again very memorable and makes me wonder how they attached the snakes on that standing fellow, or were they real snakes in the first place? This film has so much outrageous elements, scenes and ideas, this is a must for fans of Asian demented and twisted horror/sleaze cinema, and worth tracking down. There are many other similar films made in East, and it is just one example of what separates their cinema from Western cinema. Again this film proves how unique Eastern cinema is in many ways. 8/10
