Snakehead Terror

I watched Snakehead Terror mostly because I'm a big fan of Bruce Boxleitner.

Wow. Does he need money this badly? The premise wasn't bad. A small town's economy is ruined by nasty snakehead fish, their lake is poisoned to kill the nasty vermin, and the town is slow to recover. The film opens with a man and his dog finding a somewhat chewed up bear on the shores of the lake, the dog running into the lake to bark at snakehead fish and the guy going into the water to save his dog. Naturally both man and dog are eaten.

If I had found the dead bear, I would have run away.

Anyway, once you actually SEE the things and notice that the fish only crawl about 0.0005 miles per hour you wonder how come no one runs away, screaming into the night or even day? I mean I can understand the fish swimming quickly in the water, but on land? I could still outrun those things even if both my legs were missing and I had only the use of my left hand.

Bruce plays the sheriff of this under-economized town and his teenaged daughter's boyfriend is killed when he is eaten by the nasty fish and Bruce wants to immediately close the lake. Of course, no one listens and the lake remains open. Then he contacts the wildlife division and they send out Carol Alt who then determines the cause of the boy's death are snakeheads. Still, no one listens. Of course, what happens next is predictable, the news leaks out, and suddenly there are bounty hunters searching for the deadly snakeheads. And of course, teenagers who never listen, go on the lake seeking revenge for the death of their friend. Like a snakehead cares.

It turns out that the town's coroner has been giving his brother large quantities of growth hormone to help encourage the growth of the lake's natural fish but unfortunately all it did was make the snakeheads grow to enormous size and they HISS, SNARL, GROWL and I swear, they bark at you too.

These things are huge with appetites to match. The CGI was not very good but the gore was incredibly....well...gory. Bits and pieces of flesh flying about, blood spurting, limbs being ripped off, it was like watching me in the kitchen vainly trying to cut up a piece of meat for dinner.

Watching this movie made me decide on a couple of things (a) not to live on a lake (b) not to have teenagers, and (c) maybe give up sushi. It's an entertaining movie, better than most I've seen on the sci fi channel and believe it or not, more than 2 people actually survive. That was a relief. In a way.

It's also called: Jaws Jaws 2 Jaws 3D Kingdom of the spiders Piranha Frogs Alligator Squirm Ants (AKA It happened at Lakewood Manor) Bug Prophecy Snowbeast The Swarm The Bees The Savage Bees Orca Grizzly Dogs

What happens is this. Man screws up the environment, and nature revolts by sending _______ to kick Man's ass. Man is having a big financial crisis, and _________ threatens it. Man summons Scientist to figure it all out. Scientist advises not to have the big _________ celebration. Government Man disagrees, because he's greedy and wants the money. Against Man's better judgment, Man lets the big ________ celebration take place. This causes mayhem and destruction. Man may or may not have romantic involvement with Scientist. Man's kid from previous marriage gets put in a vulnerable situation. Man and Scientist work together to save kid and town, and finally kills ___________. The end.

Yet another mutant killer fish movie. The twist this time is that they can walk on land. Gasp! What could be scarier than an overgrown, flesh eating carp dragging itself through the mud after its intended victim? Just about anything else actually.

Tired format of decent sheriff (conveniently single) teaming with smart (and sexy of course) biologist to defeat the threat, while trying to convince the hard headed mayor to close the lake etc. etc. You've seen it all before, and way better in Jaws, Piranha and so forth.

Lame special effects, poor lighting, bad acting, annoying teens...need I go on? Not an original, frightening or worthwhile moment in the whole mess.

I was looking for something to watch last weekend, and this was aired on a Tv station. The movie is not something which will end up in any Cinema school class. In fact it is in the "so bad it's good" category, especially when the extremely cheesy fish stalk people on land. I don't know how much effort went in trying to make those fishes believable, but ... it did not work so well. It looks something out of a high school project.

Some of the actors are famous,evidently in a low spot in their careers. But the movie is not horribly acted. What is lacking is rather a coherent story which makes sense, substituted in this movie with an attempt to model the story on the "Jaws" line (hey, it worked for Jaws!). Also lacking is... mostly everything else. Except kills. Of course lots of people get killed. Most unbelievably.

In case anyone wonders, the movie is based on a real "scare" related to asian snakehead fish which were found to have become established in some areas of the Eastern US. The real fish do not eat people, but like any invasive species they damage ecosystems... alarmist news footage of this kind of (serious) problems easily get translated into movies like this about "killer" fish, wasps, bees, anything.

To sum it up: if you want to watch a teenage horror movie with friends and some beers. This is it.

The gang at MST3K would have had a field day with this movie. It has it all: bad plot, bad directing, bad effects, bad acting, and famous faces. With Bruce Boxleitner, William B. Davis and Carol Alt, the number of Scarecrow and Mrs. King, X-Files and supermodel jokes are endless (not to mention Babylon 5 and Tron). To be fair to Boxleitner, his acting was fine, but the number of long, drawn out scenes of him driving up and parking his car are worthy of ridicule, MST-style.

As has been noted, this movie rips off every other "animal attacks" movie ever made. Every cliché is here:

• Mutant "man made" monster: check

• Local sheriff: check

• Sheriff's child in peril: check

• Unconcerned politician: check

• New love interest partner: check

• Goofy teenagers: check

• Slow attacks that escalate without reason: check

• Illogical and downright stupid behavior of every human: check

• Dumb monsters that show intelligence for plot reasons: check

• Improbably, yet highly effective single solution: check

Actually there was one cliché that I either missed, or they just didn't do, but that's the "the end?" ending where something survived. Maybe I just stopped watching too soon.