Break out the shotguns & gas up the ATVs...We got us a big ass snake to kill!!!

God, I love giant snake movies.

I'm not sure, really, where this adoration of gargantuan reptiles began, but it's completely undeniable. If there's a giant snake movie on the shelf at Blockbuster, it's going to take an act of God or a bullet to my chest to keep me from grabbing it.

(Editor's note: there are a handful of women out there that I've attempted to date who will completely testify to this. They loathed this obsession. Apparently, women I'm attracted to don't seem to really appreciate damn good movies about rampaging giant snakes that terrorize small towns and eat everything they come across. Go figure, man. If you could track these women down.... say, like Bill Murray's character in "Broken Flowers," then you'd see what I'm talking about. It was never pretty when it came down to a choice between Matthew McConaughey in... anything starring Matthew McConaughey... and Pat Morita in "King Cobra.")

There's nothing I'd love more than to give you a detailed breakdown of my favorite snake films of all time and all the wonderful reasons I love them so much, but that would turn into one of those 4,000-word blog posts that, apparently, nobody has patience for anymore.

However, long-blog haters aside, here's a quick list of my favorites:


5. "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid"

All I'm going to say here is that Johnny Messner's monkey deserves an Academy Award nomination, and the giant snake orgy sequence pretty much changed the course of my life.




4. "Mega Snake"

This is the movie I just saw tonight, and I'm just delighted with it. More info below, but for now, enjoy this amazing clip of "Screaming Hawk" and company as they save a little girl from being eaten. Sort of.




The real genius behind these things is the actual noise that the snakes always make. It's always some creepy ass screaming noise, like an injured bird or a howling banshee. It's not quite what I'd imagine a snake would sound like, but kudos to the directors and the sound technicians for getting creative with it.


3. "King Cobra"

What happens when you cross-breed an African King Cobra with an American Eastern Diamondback Rattler and mix in an experimental drug that increases aggression? You get a giant, mutated flesh-craving, 30-foot-long piece of genius named (seriously) "SETH." The Pat Morita death sequence will mess you up, son:





2. "PYTHON"

Let me just go ahead and tell you right now: If you don't like this movie and you tell me to my face, you might as well expect to get a roundhouse kick to the throat and neck area, bud.




This is one of my very few reasons to go on living on this planet. Let's break this down in simple terms of my endearment.

1. Casper Van Dien with an unbelievable fake Southern accent and a Rhett Butler mustache.
2. William Zabka (yes, that's right: "Johnny" from "The Karate Kid") as the town sheriff.
3. A giant chemical factory in the middle of town.
4. Robert Englund as your classic mad scientist.
5. Wil Wheaton. Let me say that again: Wil Wheaton.
6. Jenny McCarthy as a Real Estate Agent.
7. Mountain bikes. Tons and tons of mountain bikes everywhere.
8. John Franklin, the kid who played "Issac" in the original "Children of the Corn."
9. A small rubber prosthetic snake's "tail," which they use repeatedly to indicate when the massive, 50' beast has just slithered out of the shot. ("Oh damn, there he goes!")
10. The snake spits acid. Case closed.


1. "Anaconda"





How can life get any better here?? It's really no wonder why this is my favorite giant snake movie... after all, it put giant snake movies back on the map!! There's just too much to even list off, but the recipe for this main course goes as follows:

5 cups John Voight in the performance of his entire career.
2 cups Ice Cube's one-liners. "They got snakes this big? I'm gettin' my ass back to LA"
4 tbs Jennifer Lopez's ass in its prime.
2 cups of Eric Stoltz.
3 tbs of Kari Wuhrer.
2 Gallons of the *Special Sauce*

*Special Sauce ingredients: One part John Voight getting regurgitated and winking at the camera and equal part John Voight's face as he pilots the steering wheel of the boat.

Garnish with this line: "This river can kill you in a thousan' ways, my lil' baby bird."

Mix well and serve with a big ass bucket of monkey blood.

There are a few others that I'm itching to finally see, like "Python vs. Boa," "Boa," "Komodo vs. Cobra," "Venomous" and "Copperhead." There's also a "Python II" which I've GOT to get my hands on.

You can also throw on the list some infamous snakes in history that I really love: The snake-man guy from "Sssssssss," the Cobra Commander, the giant sumbitch monster snake from "Conan the Barbarian," the hilariously CGI-fake and insanely stupid snakes from "Snakes on a Plane," and Mark Whalberg's hilarious penis extension from the last scene of "Boogie Nights."

Anyway, let's talk about the giant snake movie I just watched tonight, "MEGA SNAKE," which you'll notice immediately ranked number four on my list. Blew. My. Mind.

First of all, the damn movie is called "Mega Snake." That pretty much seals the deal. The movie starts off with some STUNNING ideas. The first thing that punched me in the face was the opening title: "East Tennessee, 1986."

Okay, I paused the damn thing immediately and ran to the computer to see if this thing was actually filmed in this area. If it was, I was planning on kicking myself in the balls for not seeking it out and camping out on set. Unfortunately, to my dismay, I discovered the thing was shot entirely in.... Bulgaria. That's right. Bulgaria. (Insert giant piece of genius #1.)

So this thing was shot in Bulgaria to look exactly like hard core, rural East Tennessee. I've got to say, though, they did a helluva job. It actually DOES look like East Tennessee! There's a lake in this thing that looks exactly like Cherokee lake in Dandridge. Unbelievable.

However, what was even more unbelievable was the over-the-top, brilliant fake East Tennessee accents. Some of the characters don't even speak with one (or try), and others lay it on thick as hell... just like they came from Southern Georgia, circa 1920.

Two of my favorite characters in the film are these insane redneck old guys who live in these busted, Appalachian-style cabins, literally facing each other... a few yards apart. In every scene that they're in, they come running out of their cabins screaming at each other, simultaneously, holding shotguns. I have no idea what this is about, but they're both wearing long johns and pulling up their overalls... cussing at each other like brawling neighbors... and absolutely awesome. This is insanely realistic. Growing up, my uncles did this exact thing every time the mailman came to deliver a new issue of "Coonhound Bloodlines."

At one point in the film, these two geniuses decide to fight back and try to kill this giant, 30' snake (that we'll get to later). They get their pickup truck, and in a matter of minutes, assemble this giant A-Team-like armored vehicle equipped with a motherfucking flame thrower made out of an old gas grill and some rusty aluminum siding from their roof. I can't make this up, people, it's amazing.

Anyway, back to the beginning. The movie starts in East Tennessee with this guy wrangling rattlesnakes for his church service. It's all about snake handling and praising the Lord. I think this angle would have been absolutely brilliant to examine!!! I would LOVE to see a giant snake movie that's completely based on East Tennessee pentecostal church members who somehow accidentally inject some radioactive toxic waste into one of their church snakes, and it ends up going on this rampage in the name of the Lord. Now that kind of thing would make millions.

Unfortunately, the religion part is abandoned after the first scene, which was disappointing.

Anyway, so the father of the family is the main snake man, and when he tries to make his son pass the snake around while the church members cheer and clap, the snake suddenly bites the guy and kills him on the spot. The son is scared to death, and cries a lot.

Fast forward 20 years later, the troubled son is terrified of snakes... love... life... driving... Native Americans, apparently, and living on his own. This guy and his brother (who are both in their late 30's) still live with their mom. The scared son is mostly just scared of everything and works as an EMT, and his brother apparently just hangs out around the house and talks about how awesome snakes are, in general.

The dumb brother loves snakes SO much, in fact, that he's apparently running the show down at the church now. When he goes hunting some new snakes for his big upcoming service, he visits this tattoo parlor where this crazy old Native American guy named "Screaming Hawk" keeps shit tons of snakes in the back. While the brother is picking up some deadly pygmies, he notices this little snake in a jar full of piss. Screaming-Hawk-Man tells the dumb brother guy (while wearing leather chaps) that this snake is a very powerful, evil snake that single-handedly wiped out his entire tribe a long time ago.

(Later he says he's Cherokee, but then changes it towards the end to something else. He also says that the Cherokee were a "powerful tribe of fierce warriors," which is hilarious to me. I think the director of this film pictured the "Trail of Tears" as actually being the last time Chuck Norris walked to McDonald's.)

Anyway, this snake—called Unteka—is magical, and everything will be fine as long as you don't break the three rules:

1. Don't let it out of the jar... ever.

2. Don't let it eat anything living.

3. Never fear the heart of the snake.

Okay, that's just awesome to me. The first two seem pretty simple enough, but you have to be really careful not to fear that damn heart.

Anyway, of course the brother steals the jar and ends up dropping it off the family dinner table later that evening. That bastard Unteka immediately grows three feet and then eats the cat, the mother and all their chickens... aaaannnddd....the rampage of doom has begun. The dumb brother actually catches it at one point, before it gets too out-of-control enormous, and puts it in this big box. Confused, he drives down the road to ask the two maniac old men in the cabins "how to kill."

The guy didn't know "how to kill."

The two old guys come out in their underwear holding shotguns and proceed to argue about who knows the most about "killin'." When the brother asks them what's the best way to kill a giant, mythical snake called 'Unteka,' the old men reply: "Well, you could shoot it. Or stab it in the head with a knife."

Does this kind of logic even merit a comment from me?

So anyway, the brother drives all the way back home and stabs it in the head with a big sharp-looking metal pole and a crowbar. He buries it in the ground, but instead of dying, it digs its way out and eats the dog. But it leaves the collar.

The damn thing is an unstoppable juggernaut: bullets, knives, flamethrowers, crowbars, patio umbrellas and metal rods don't harm it at all. Even when it's stabbed repeatedly with a knife. Every time it kills... there's this faint noise of some kind of Native American hand shakers, or pipes or whistles or something. I figured that it's the Native American magic working. Or something.

Obviously, you know where this one is going. The scared son EMT guy has to save the day, but unfortunately, he's too busy dicking around being scared or being full of self doubt. I don't think I've ever seen a more worthless pussy of a hero. His girlfriend kicks ass and takes names, and at one point she actually says that she has a "Ph.D. in 'zoo-ology'."

One of the most awesome features of this guy is how he speaks to his dumb brother when he brings home Unteka in the jar. He looks at Unteka in the jar. He listens to his brother say how powerful and dangerous it is. He witnesses his brother knocking the jar off the table and letting it escape. He witnesses the snake grow more than three feet instantly when escaping from the jar.

When he discovers his entire family dead, all their animals vanished, the neighbor's entire herd of goats eaten alive and butchered and a family completely gone with nothing but a bloody trail... he has absolutely no idea what might have killed them. The sheriff thinks he's responsible, and throws him in jail. He has no clue. He says, "I don't know who killed my family, but I'm going to find out and get out of here!"

His girlfriend finally figures out that it's a snake when she finds its gigantic shedded skin (which, by the way, is obviously sewn-together plastic bags). When she tries to explain to the guy why she thinks it might be a giant snake, he finally says, "Oh yeah... my brother had that snake in a jar that he said was deadly and it grew three feet when it escaped. That could be it!!"

It all comes down to Screaming Hawk and the pussy trying to figure out how "Not to Fear the Heart of the Snake" as it goes on an all-out rampage at the local county fair.

I love this movie.

So that pretty much sums up my never-ending love of the snake movies, and I hope you and your family can enjoy these treasured gems in your households. They always add a light of comfort and sensibility to my life, and I know they can do the same for you.

It's going to be a long week of deadlines and rushed design jobs, so hang in there until my next post. I'm thinking of leaving this whole graphic design gig behind and considering a life as a herpetologist. Don't count me out.

As Screaming-Hawk-Man so eloquently put it, "Anybody ready to get out of this snake hole???"

Venomously yours,

-McClane

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And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Mark 16:17-18