SNAKE ISLAND (2002) For killer snakes, you could do worse I almost gave a green to this movie, but it wouldn't have been with an entirely straight face. If snakes don't creep you out, you'll be bored, though you might get some (possibly, charitably) semi-intended chuckles out of it. If snakes do creep you out, then this movie has all the seedy, tacky charm (and production values, and box art) of a direct-to-video movie circa 1985. And I mean that in a good way. The end result is to silly and amateurish to recommend, which is why I held back from giving the green, but I have to admit, for a guy like me it was fun while it lasted. The plot: tourists get stranded on Snake Island, and while there are zebras, elephants, hippos, monkeys, wildebeests, impala, leopards, and hyraxes on the island, nobody has to ask why it's called Snake Island. I don't know what it is about snakes that creeps me out...I don't understand my attitudes toward the damn things at all. Loved them as a kid, then they creeped me out as a young adult, and now that I'm elderly they didn't bother me anymore until I watched this and now I'm all shuddery again. Dammit. This movie set back my mind like six years. There are no giant snakes in this movie, just hundreds of regular-sized ones - poisonous ones, constricting ones, seemingly harmless ones, CGI ones, snakes coming out of dead people's mouths, pretty much every snake on earth with total disregard to where their species originated. The absence of giant snakes is what makes this movie work as much as it does. It's nice to see a killer-animal movie that isn't so jaded that it doesn't understand that some animals can be menacing enough in their regular, non-giant form. Snake Island is essentially a Wayne Crawford vanity project (remember Jake Speed?), which gives him the opportunity to write, direct, act, and write and direct one scene where he skinny-dips with a hot female cast member. Nice work if you can get it. The only other familiar face is that of William Katt, who plays a writer as he has in seemingly every movie (and he hasn't been in a Stephen King movie yet?). Some unwelcome moments of goofy humor (the "snake is mistaken for an erect penis" gag, and a bizarre hallucination scene where the snakes start talking and even singing) and some of the most gratuitous nudity I've seen in a while (not that I'm complaining) throw off the cluelessly sincere tone of the rest of the movie, which seems to genuinely want to throw a scare or two at us. At least, at those of us whose appreciation of snakes is prone to wavering. The climax has our surviving heroes clobbering, stomping, freezing, and even pillow-pummelling snakes, not quite convincingly enough to ever make the viewer idly wonder if the movie had an SPCA guy on the set, but convincingly enough to make snake-haters crack a satisfied grin. Any movie where somebody on a riding mower drives over a bunch of reared-up cobras can't be all bad. BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE