ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

____________
____________________

_________________ King Cobra Trailer 1999


__________

Thirty feet of pure terror!

So proclaims the jacket ad. The monster snake is actually a Cobra-Rattlesnake creation, the result of genetic tinkering.

After the obligatory lab explosion, it escapes and settles down in a small rural town to make life hectic for the hicks (including leader Hoyt Axton), who call in snake-expert Pat Morita (from Happy Days and the Karate Kid movies).

This flic is rather low-budget and went direct-to-video. I'm not really sure how much of it is unintentionally funny or tongue-in-cheek (especially the climactic battle between Morita & the Monster — who, by the way, is named Seth).

But it comes off as entertaining in a goofy, lopsided manner, hearkening back to all those monster flics of the 1950s (and the 1970s, come to think of it). There weren't that many giant snake movies back then, however, instead mostly giant insects and an occasional lizard. Then we got Anaconda in '97 and the rest is history — the Sci-Fi Channel (later the SyFy) has a sub genre load of these by now.

The snake-monster itself in King Cobra is fairly well executed, showing that even with a very low budget, FX can be done in a reasonable fashion these days. Lucky us.

BoG's Score: 3 out of 10

Star Trek TOS actor alert: Joe Ruskin has the role of the scientist in charge of the lab from where the snake escapes. He played an alien in the episode The Gamesters of Triskelion.


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus