Snake Island

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 tour-boat operator (Crawford) inadvertently leads his horny human cargo into the den of an island inhabited by ferocious snakes. Party member and author (Katt) discovers that not only is there an over-abundance of snakes on the island (a fact that should have obviated from the name of the resort, which shares the film's somewhat conspicuous title), but a hex on any human who has trespassed. So, after some sight-seeing (an elephant threesome being the highlight), a disco-party complete with drunken three-way striptease and some sexual content (butt-in-the-moonbeam-walk), our peripheral characters become prey, and Crawford, Katt and Connor are left to contend with the aggressive asps.

Director, producer, co-writer and co-star Crawford dons many hats for this picture, which looks like it's shot on a hand-held home video camera. Despite some apparent TV-movie production values, the dialogue is mostly realistic, the core cast is professional and the special effects aren't bad. Post-production editing effects create the "illusion" of the plethora of snakes converging on characters, and is done effectively. There's an occasional shock, and some mild gore (is that a tongue protruding from that cadaver's gaping orifice? – no, wait, it's just a baby snake waking up), and perhaps more critically when faced with tired ideas and cheap-looking set design – nudity.

When everything else is dear, there's still inexperienced actresses willing to bare all for the sake of art, and their career. Most of the female cast here reveal themselves to some degree, and actor, director, producer, writer Crawford, naturally, scores some residual benefits of such titillation. One could only postulate that Katt was lured into this production with the promise of the African safari holiday, and although the picture was shot on location, the savanna isn't always realistic looking, but perhaps that's the Super-8 camera lens cheating the eye of natural wonders. Aside from the occasional lame joke (the snake hallucination scene is admittedly quirky and unexpected, but ultimately, it's a dud gag) and plot hole, "Snake Island" delivers on its promise of lots (and lots) of snakes, cheap thrills and a conventional narrative to satisfy the average punter. Noteworthy, is the surprisingly clean screenplay with not an f-bomb in ear-shot (nevermind, it's the T&A that earn the R-rating, anyway).

Snake Island is one of those films that, whilst one sits and watches its amazing level of stupidity, makes one wish the film camera had never been invented. The real reason why Plan 9 From Outer Space will hold onto its honoured title of Worst Film Of All Time for a while to come is not so much because of how bad it is. It is because of the fact that it is the most entertaining bad film you will ever see. Snake Island is the other kind of bad. Snake Island is just so bad that it is excruciating. A stupid premise combines with a script that was written by monkeys tapping one-key typewriters onto transparencies that were then overlapped in order to resemble dialogue to make the most obvious problems here. Filmed entirely on location in South Africa, the environments in which the film takes place are about the only element that can truthfully be considered well-realised. Many shots involving snakes consist of close-ups so surreal in appearance that one begins to wonder whether said snakes are CGI, puppets, or real snakes that have been fed really hard drugs.

William Katt stars, if you can call it that, as an author traveling to an island resort on what appears to be a river ferry. Coming along with him is an assortment of very generic, poorly-defined characters. It is all a matter of random screen writing as to who survives to the end, but Katt certainly appears to be contemplating firing his agent. The rest of the cast seem to be from the Home And Away acting school, where any contemplation of an unpleasant plot point is accompanied by open-mouthed gaping and darting one's eyes about in every direction. The foley effects are often worse, with one memorable scene where a double-barreled shotgun sounds like the rather flat sound effects that used to accompany gunshots in such games as BioForge. Meanwhile, snakes continually explode or jump about at random. It would have been more accurate to call the film Snake Holocaust.

Of course, no Z-grade horror or sci-fi film is complete these days without gratuitous scenes of nubile women in a state of undress. As every woman in the cast, almost, gets their clothes off, the film starts to become less Snake Island and more Snake Island Orgy. But like all the worst piles, all there really is in this case is a lot of setup with no real payoff. The sex scenes never eventuate, and the deaths of characters are so flat, so uninteresting, that the entire film becomes pointless. Unless you consider watching William Katt running through a muggy forest wearing ill-fitting cricket gear and smashing snakes in all directions with a cricket bat a payoff. For the record, I don't. I used to think that Anaconda was the worst film ever made about predatory snakes. I was so very, very wrong. At least Anaconda had a snake one could be afraid of if they suspended disbelief for quite some time. Some of the snakes shown killing the human cast are no bigger than the shoelaces from some pairs of combat boots I have worn.

So we so far have the checklist for bad horror films running along nicely. The unrecognisable, lame cast are accounted for, as are poor audio and visual effects. The dialogue is so wretched, so ill-timed, that I have seen better writing and delivery during some of the school plays I have acted in many moons ago. Unfortunately, where Snake Island falters in this respect is the area fatal to all bad films. In essence, it forgets to be so bad that it is funny. It is so bad that it stops being good after the opening credits and becomes painful the second that the cast start to speak. Compared to William Katt's performance in Snake Island, Jon Voight's performance in Anaconda was as Oscar-worthy as Russell Crowe's in Gladiator. Not that Voight or Katt are necessarily bad actors, but with material like this, you're hard-pressed to say a single word naturally. Listening to some of the lines here was like being the victim of a violent crime. One's mind tends to blank out the experience, primary as a self-defense mechanism.

Because of the aforementioned failure to be entertainingly bad, I gave Snake Island a two out of ten. My special score for films that are so bad they cannot possibly be good, but not bad enough to entertain. It is all just so boring or pointless that one might as well be watching the test pattern. The proper way to spell "crap" is S-N-A-K-E-I-S-L-A-N-D.

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.

A group of tourists, resort workers & guides in South Africa struggle to survive after getting stranded on an island with a profusion of deadly snakes. William Katt (Malcolm), Wayne Crawford (Jake) and Kate Connor (Heather) emerge as the main protagonists. Crawford also directed and co-wrote the script.

"Snake Island" (2002) is a low-budget South African production with a few American actors; it probably cost half of what the typical SyFy flick costs. But it gives you what you pay for (although I hope you watched it for free): a plethora of snakes, authentic African locations, a mildly entertaining survival situation with an okay cast, a subdued sense of humor and some decent horror. It helps that most of the snakes appear to be real rather than CGI.

But it's overall pedestrian, unfortunately. I guess it doesn't help that I don't find snakes particularly frightening. Director/writer Crawford tried to perk things up with a tiki party sequence wherein the group lets their hair down and some of the females start dancing topless. But the women, while okay, aren't anything overly alluring, although Kate Connor eventually won me over.

The film runs 1 hour, 30 minutes and was shot in South Africa.

GRADE: C/C-