Basilisk: The Serpent King

BASILISK is your standard giant unkillable snake movie with one difference: two recognizable actors keep things moving along when the focus is not on the so-so CGI snake. Stealing its basic plot from KING KONG, the movie has some adventurers bringing back from ancient lands an artifact, which comes to life in front of a very large audience, and proceeds to kills a ton of people. The Army cannot seem to stop it. Jeremy London and Yancy Butler costar, and the lovely Ms. Butler gets to play a comic villain for a change. London is always easy to take, and handles the dumb dialogue with just the right amount of tongue in cheek fervor. He is given lines like "Come back here with that scepter!" Both get a fair share of screen time, which helps keep the focus away from the monster, which is absolutely dumb-looking. It's a snake with a dragon's head, if you care to know. Mildly entertaining. Shot in -- where else? -- eastern Europe. You will know immediately;y it ain't New York, L.A., Toronto or Vancouver. It's just too strange-looking to be on U.S. soil. Have a beer or three and enjoy. Especialyl enjoy Ms. Butler, who runs around in a tight little red dress and looks terrific.

Highly debatable quality, a low budget production worthy of a trash, the effects are watchable, but it would fit well in the B movie which attracted me deeply... Adorable...

When I stumbled upon this 2006 TV movie in 2021, I must admit that I wasn't really harboring much of any great expectations as the movie had that particular SyFy or The Asylum aura to it. But still, I hadn't already seen the movie, and the basilisk is an interesting mythological creature, so of course I sat down to watch it.

Writers Will McCarthy and Chase Parker actually managed to churn out a storyline and script that was actually wholesome enough and provided me with sufficient entertainment. Sure, this wasn't a great nor top of the line creature feature, but it proved to be enjoyable and entertaining enough for what it was.

Visually then "Basilisk: The Serpent King" was adequate. The CGI used to bring the basilisk alive was okay for the most of the movie, which definitely helped to make the movie watchable. However, you should not be expecting to be in for a grand spectacle of impressive CGI effects here.

The movie does have an okay enough cast ensemble. I think Jeremy London is actually a fair actor and he does carry "Basilisk: The Serpent King" quite well with his performance. And he was joined by the likes of Griff Furst and Yancy Butler.

"Basilisk: The Serpent King" provides sufficient entertainment for a single viewing. However, this is hardly a movie that you will be watching more than just once.

My rating of the 2006 TV movie "Basilisk: The Serpent King" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Basilisk wasn't as bad as some of the other Saturday night Sci-fi Channel offerings. The majority of the budget was obviously spent on CGs. While there were scenes where the CG effects weren't great, there were others that it was.

My big complaint about these movies are little details. These movies are filmed in Eastern Europe, where the buck can be stretched further than in the states. That's fine, but at least if you're depicting the U.S. military, use American-issued weapons, not weapons fixed to look like them. Would it be too hard to scrounge up some decent-looking M-16s?

As a veteran aficionado of the SciFi originals, I had my usual expectations going into "Basilisk". Laughable special effects, transparent characters and formulaic situations clumsily stumbled into by unwitting victims of the CGI beast-du-jour; all comprising a solidly entertaining and heartily enjoyable experience. While "Basilisk" dutifully fulfilled many of my preconceptions, I have to say that it was a cut well above the standard Saturday night fare.

This creature flick can rightfully take its place among such greats as "Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy" (Jeffery Combs can't make a bad movie), "Frankenfish" and many of the other SciFi offerings but I have to put "Basilisk" into its own category all together. The effects are of the same caliber as its worthy cousins, but I think that what lifts this one for me is the script. It is witty without being contrived and never leaves a slow moment or the feeling of awkwardness that comes with so many screenplays that try too hard to be hip (see: Lucky Number Slevin. Actually, don't see it, it's terrible). Cleavant Derricks does an outstanding job as the weekend warrior Colonel and his bantering exchanges with Jeremy London are the stuff of high theatrical art.

So all in all, this one is not to be missed. Next time SciFi decides to air it, set the TiVo and prepare to be entertained. You will not be sorry.