Python Island

This movie is sort of proof that the Chinese are capable of making really bad movies. First, it is dubbed, but the selection of voice actors leads one to wonder what there they thinking? Some of the scenes would have been perfectly at home in a Three Stooges movie. A father and son are fishing, and it is foggy and they get adrift and wind up on Cannibal Island. It has strange flowers, towering mushrooms, and, oh, a huge snake. A hooded python. The son get saved by a magic tree, and when they get back to their village, he has a baby golden python. The island is cursed with a superstition, so he has to let the snake go. Later, the son grows up to be a researcher, and the company he works for wants to go to Cannibal Island, as there are rumors of plants than can allow a person to live forever. The villager are totally opposed, until money is mentioned. And the company has provided security. Yes, guards armed with crossbows. In many ways it is very comical and some may enjoy it. It has a lot of lunacy. But it really is a terrible movie.

After discovering a strange plant, a group of pharmaceutical explorers travel to a remote island where it grows with one of their own workers who used to live on the island, but when they get to the island find it crawling with man-eating creatures and must get off before being killed by a massive snake.

This was a decent enough if somewhat problematic genre effort. What works best here is the solid and generally strong setup which makes for a fun time with the various setups employed here. The lengthy backstory here for the cold open sets everything up involving the connection he has with the island village, the remnants of the different flora present, and the vicious snakes that populate the island which allow for enough intriguing setups that give his purpose for going on the trip plenty of context. Taking that trip with the rest of the team and how they want to operate on the island taking the secret plants back with them which requires the rescue team to overcome the hurdles of the island in both natural and animal means trying to take them out which all works at giving the film a decent starting point. That allows for some really cheesy and enjoyable action to come about here. The extended opening shows the trouble with the islands' inhabitants as the snake taking out the villagers or the plants coming out to grab their prey take the early part of the film into a solid series of scenes to give off the kind of danger present there. The adventure-film scenarios that are present in the second half featuring the team encountering the pitfalls of the island showing them encountering the same snakes and man-eating plants throughout the island which has quite a lot of impressive work here generating the series of encounters which show the mystical properties of the flower as well as the impressive bond that has been shown the entire time leading to quite a lot to like overall. There isn't much to hold this back but it does have some issues. One of the biggest drawbacks here is the series of unnecessary and drawn-out conversations that lead to far more infighting in a group that doesn't need it. This one tries offering up twists about the true nature of the expedition trying to uncover on the island and what everyone's true motivations are that it turns into obsessively overly speechifying trying to make sense of it which drains the energy here considerably as it carries on. That goes along with the overlong finale where it tries to make an epic-feeling series of brawling, action, and other confrontations that are a part of the race to get off the island but just drags on far too much to be of the use it was intended to be. These end up causing the film to come down from what it could've been.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.