Jaws of Satan

A king cobra being transported by train to a carnival supposedly becomes the resting place for Satan himself. And in this form, Satan has the ability to command other slithering reptiles to do his bidding. This company of snakes arrives in a small town to disrupt the lives of the locals, among them irreverent priest Father Tom Farrow (Fritz Weaver, "Creepshow"), dedicated doctor Maggie Sheridan (Gretchen Corbett, "Let's Scare Jessica to Death", 'The Rockford Files'), and herpetologist Paul Hendricks (Jon Korkes, "Syngenor").

"Jaws of Satan" certainly wears its influences right on its sleeve, including the naming of the Hendricks character. It plays like a cross between "Jaws" and "The Exorcist", except without the level of craftsmanship in those two classics. It's directed in very workmanlike fashion by TV veteran Bob Claver, in what appears to be his only feature film. The shocks aren't anything special, nor are the suspense scenes, but at least the animal action is well executed. If this low budget production at least *looks* very good, that's due to the contributions of the great cinematographer Dean Cundey and camera operator Raymond Stella, two guys who did some of their best work for the director John Carpenter. The music score by Roger Kellaway ("Evilspeak", "Silent Scream") is quite good, and the movie does have an atmospheric opening. The similarity to "Jaws" itself is quite obvious in the way that the mayor (Jack Gordon) and businessman Matt Perry (Bob Hannah) don't want public fears about snakes to interfere with the operation of their brand spanking new dog racing track.

Some of the supporting cast is rather nondescript, but things are held together by a highly engaging Weaver. Diana Douglas, whose son Joel was the production manager, co-stars as the doom sayer Evelyn Downs. A very young Christina Applegate makes her film debut here, playing the daughter of her real-life mom Nancy Priddy's character.

This viewer found "Jaws of Satan" agreeable enough. It's not a great movie, or even a good one, really, but it's passable schlock for lovers of Animal Attack cinema.

Five out of 10.

The beauty of "Jaws of Satan" is that the Farmer's son was my 9th grade drama teacher and this was Christina Appelgate's first movie, so I can really show off when playing the six degrees game. Why anyone who does not meet these rather unique audience criteria would endure this abysmal piece of claptrap is beyond me. The plot highlights include an ancient Druid curse somehow connected to rural Georgia and tons of scenes of actors being menaced by stock footage of a cobra. "Jaws of Satan" is about as suspenseful as finding a rubber snake in a big bin of rubber snakes marked with a sign reading in huge, red letters - "Sale! Rubber Snakes"

A carnival train lets loose a snake (or snakes) near a small Alabama town, which is just about to open a dog track as a hopeful economic booster. When people start turning up dead with strange bites, and others report seeing unusual snakes, most of the town can't put two and two together, but Dr. Maggie Sheridan (Gretchen Korbett) becomes suspicious (nothing gets by her!) that something weird is going on and wants to alert the town. She's excited enough about it that she'd also probably like to call in the National Guard, and maybe even nuke Alabama just to be safe. The Mayor, Grady Thorpe (Jack Gordon), and the dog track developer, Matt Perry (Bob Hannah), will hear nothing of it. Meanwhile, the local Priest, Tom Farrow (Fritz Weaver) comes to believe that the snakes just might be Satan, at least after the local witch looks at his coffee grounds. On the other hand, maybe it has something to do with that discussion he has with a church member about acid.

Although I can find no literature related to the film to confirm this, it's virtually impossible for me to believe that Jaws of Satan (aka King Cobra) wasn't intended as a horror/comedy. Much of the dialogue and plot is simply too ridiculous to have been taken seriously. In any event, Jaws of Satan is a delight to watch, even if it is a poor film by traditional criteria. It was enjoyable enough to earn my coveted 5 out of 10 "so bad, it's good" rating.

Within the first five minutes, director Bob Claver shows us what an amusingly confusing mess he has in store for us. Two men are on a carnival train that seems otherwise unpopulated. For some reason (either it wasn't stated very well or I was already falling asleep) one leaves to check on a crate. It moves in mysterious ways. The lock on the crate opens itself, and our carny is surprised to see a cobra appear. It bites him. Some invisible force then pushes him off the train (invisible forces are always a sign that you're in for a doozy or a film). Meanwhile, his buddy is bitten in the face by the same or another snake, or at least the snake bumps into the really dirty plexiglass they had in front of the camera, then the buddy dies on the spot. We cut to an outside shot of the train, which suddenly slows and stops. We're never shown the engineer or what happens to him, but presumably there was an engineer, something happened to him, and he stopped the train gracefully. Cue the audience jumping out of their seats.

In an interview about the film, producer Bill Wilson said that the film was inspired by a true story circa 1955 that happened near Springfield, Missouri. A carnival train derailed, loosing countless snakes in the countryside. Many people were bitten and died. The way the incident is shown in the film is an indication of the kind of budget and technical finesse we're dealing with. Since Wilson and company obviously couldn't afford to have a train derail or crash, it simply stops, gently. We've only seen one snake up to that point, but within minutes, after just one more snakebite, Dr. Sheridan is ready to hit the panic button.

Much of the film has the same non-sequitur logic and low-budget sensibility, making for some very funny scenarios. It should be clear from the title--and it's implied very early in the film--that Father Farrow ends up being right--Satan has something to do with the incidents (and there is a long, convoluted backstory about Father Farrow's family and some druids). However, the film's logic is so loose that it's never clear just how Satan is involved. Snakes that should be possessed are easily killed--often through methods such as blowing their heads off with guns. There are a number of different snakes, although not enough to ever create much suspense, and certainly not enough for the big blowout that you might expect for a finale. Is it a collective possession? We end up with a battle against one particular snake, so that doesn't seem to be the case, but then what was the deal with all of the other snakes in the film?

It's best not to worry too much about this shady storytelling, and simply chuckle at the bizarre scenarios--such as an "assassin motorcyclist" who tries to chase down the whistleblowers to rape and/or murder them, or a mad chase through a cemetery where humans cannot outrun a slowly slithering beastie, or our heroes in peril because they have chosen to simply lie down, unbound, beneath the main villain in his lair, and so on. None of it makes much sense, but most of it is funny, especially when you add the consistently ludicrous dialogue.

And yet, unbelievably, there are flashes of brilliance in the film. Cinematographer Dean Cundey finds a number of beautiful, symbolic shots. That probably had something to do with his extensive experience--prior to Jaws of Satan, Cundey had already been a cinematographer on films such as Halloween (1978), Rock 'N' Roll High School (1979) and The Fog (1980); he's understandably had a long, successful career since. Weaver is a delight as Father Farrow, being humorously irreligious as he tells off-color jokes, drinks, smokes and regularly refers to his faith as "a bunch of superstitious nonsense".

I'd certainly recommend Jaws of Death, but only for fans of low-budget cheese and unintentional humor, despite its few intentional highlights. It's obvious that the producers were trying to cash in on a combo of two popular 1970s genres--religious (and especially possession) horror and nature run amok films. Obviously, there are many better examples of each genre to watch from the era, but none may be quite as funny as Jaws of Satan.

This movie is never really sure if it wants to be one of those, "Nature is going to totally kill you" movies or a "Satan is behind everything" movie. So it tries to be both and we aren't really sure who our protagonist is, the drunken Priest or the Dashing Herpatologist.

So there's a town where an evil demonic snake takes control of all the other snakes and start randomly biting people. But the Snake is really Satan, trying to get the last of the priests from the line that drove him out of Ireland. Or something. If you were confused, so were the directors and writers.

The Jaws element is that they are keen to open a dog racing track even though people in the town are being randomly bitten by snakes.

The movie is kind of a meandering mess, ending in a cave where the drunken priest confronts Satan-snake... and frankly, it's kind of a letdown. I take back what I've said about all the over the top CGI sequences in movies, at least they have something going on.

Jaws of Death (1981)

1/2 (out of 4)

It's common knowledge that THE EXORCIST and JAWS made a lot of money at the box office. It's common knowledge that both films had countless, needless rips that would follow throughout the decade. What isn't common knowledge is why it took so long for someone to try and take both films and mix them into one. The film starts off on a train as a large snake breaks free and lands in a small Alabama town where it starts to kill people. We then flash forward to a Priest (Fritz Weaver) whose father happened to have been fighting Druids or something and it turns out that Satan himself has taken over the body of this snake. This true excitement leads to a dingy cave where the Priest must perform an exorcism on the snake. I'm fairly convinced that Satan's an evil guy but if The Rolling Stone's Sympathy for the Devil thought me anything, it would be that evil Satan would be ashamed to be associated with this film. There are bad movies then there are movies like this that make no sense at all and will leave you scratching your head every few minutes. It should be noted that Dean Cundy (HALLOWEEN, THE FOG) did the cinematography here and Christina Applegate made her screen debut. With that out of the way, this movie gets off to an incredibly bad start. We're on the train when a number of stupid events take place and not a single one of them makes any sense. The second man the snake goes after has a shot of the snake where we can easily see the glass between it and the man. What's worse is that this piece of glass is not only seen but it's extremely dirty from previous takes The story itself is all over the place as it's never quite clear what's going on as we got Satan taking the body of a snake but then we have the Druid plot thrown in for whatever reason. As in JAWS, we have the evil mayor who wants to keep the story on the quiet side so that a dog track can come to town. The performances are all bland to poor but we don't necessarily come to a movie like this for the performances. For the most part the snake attack scenes are rather tame but there are a few quick shots of blood. We get one stupid scene after another but in the end there's no doubt that this here is one of the worst rips of either JAWS or THE EXORCIST.