King Cobra (1999)
- written April 2005
|
A small-town community is trying to enjoy its one tourist season of the whole year. The problem is a vicious animal is patrolling the outskirts of the city for food and eating anyone that comes near it. The town gets an animal expert to come down and help, but that doesn’t seem to help until the sheriff and the expert go together to kill the animal.
Overall: So what film did I just describe? Sounds a lot like “Jaws,” doesn’t it? What if I told you a line in the film is: “We’re gonna need bigger guns.” Does that help? Ok, fine. This film is called “King Cobra” and has a giant Cobra…who’s been mutated with rattlesnake DNAso it has a rattle too. And well, the fact that Erik Estrada, Hoyt Axton and Pat Morita star in this film…yeah, it’s not a good film. We also have a director that is also the main actor in the film. What works for the film is the fact that at least they pretended to throw in a storyline. Problem is, for much of the film, all we see is some silly relationships between the Doc and the Sheriff. It's about how the dude is leaving the girl to have a better life and the woman is being quite passive-aggressive about it. But for much of the film, you almost forget there is a giant snake because of all the lovey-dovey relationship stuff. And that’s fine in a way since too many monster films get accused of no story. So the directors here got the job done in that regard. But they copied the script of “Jaws” and got actors who really weren’t comfortable acting. I mean watch Morita’s performance…he’s just not trying hard. Axton looks like he was there for the check or the booze and Estrada probably wanted to use this to make it onto VH1’s “The Surreal Life.” It’s really some bad acting to go with a film that offered really nothing new to the “Giant Snake” genre. Comparison: Anaconda meets Jaws |
Links to other sites at The Sinning Room
Horror Films A-K Review Page
Horror Films Review Page
