Snake Island (2002)

Too much of everything

Best movie ever!

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

First off, I'm not sure what the problem here most people seem to be having with this movie. I mean look, the film is called SNAKE ISLAND. It isn't called FAREWELL TO ARMS or THE GRAPES OF WRATH, it's a B grade direct to DVD/video movie about a boatload of people who get stranded on an island infested by a zillion snakes. WHAT are you people expecting?? SNAKE ISLAND was directed, written, produced, and stars my new favorite B movie icon, Wayne Crawford, a person about whom there is very little information. Mr. Crawford appears to be an opportunistic part-time genre filmmaker who surfaces every few years to helm a new little "vanity project" with himself in the starring role. He got his start in a demented little horror shocker in 1972 called AUNT MARTHA DOES DREADFUL THINGS, is perhaps best known for his work as the title character in the 80s home video detective thriller JAKE SPEED (and manages to play characters named Jake in many of his projects), though my favorite Wayne Crawford film is the 1978 JAWS ripoff and X-FILES anticipating rampaging barracuda/chemical experiment sleeper BARRACUDA (THE LUCIFER PROJECT) which SNAKE ISLAND actually reminds me a lot of.Others have done ample justice to the plot, what little there is of it: Humans trapped on an island with a zillion snakes attacking from every angle once the drunken topless lezbo techno dance party is over and everyone has gone back to their cabins to throw up. William Katt has fun as the expatriate American writer looking for something to write about, and Crawford casts himself as the somewhat grizzled tour guide who manages to find time to go skinny dipping with his female lead. Yes, making B movies can be fun, just remember to keep your day job, and Crawford is now apparently employed as a college professor, hopefully teaching film. People can learn a lot from him I am sure, as is evidenced by how much brain-dead fun there is to be had with this movie provided that one steadfastly refuses to take it seriously. ANY of it.As another reviewer pointed out, the difference between SNAKE ISLAND and the majority of the recent PG-13 oriented giant snakes on the loose movies is that this one was accomplished without relying too heavily on computer graphics effects -- they apparently actually used many actual snakes when making this movie, which makes me wonder how it slipped under PETA's usual animal watch radar. One reason might be that it's so easily dismissed as being just a load of crap, filmed in South Africa on the cheap, with no recognizable star names (William Katt??) and no real point to it's existence other than helping jaded viewers occupy 90 minutes of their lives in an entertaining manner.And it IS an entertaining little movie, especially if you can suppress both your brain and taste centers for an hour or so while the story sets itself up. One other aspect that proves useful is that the film actually has a subtle little sleaze factor going on, with some agreeable nudity, the infamous lezbo techno dance, a laugh or two about safari theme park attractions and finally the inevitable Night of the Snakes sequence, which is impressively staged. It won't make anyone forget stuff like SSSSSS or STANLEY but heck, for a few thousand dollars Mr. Crawford was able to gather an attractive cast, pick out a suitably isolated setting, and cut loose. Looks to me like the film was made in about two weeks with minimal fuss, and sent straight to the rental shops where stuff like this probably has it's most beneficial application.Genuine B movies are on the wane as of late, with the independent market being gobbled up by message movie attempts and the major distributors all looking for the next big event film package that will result in a franchise. That left people like Wayne Crawford free to fill the vacuum as far as mindless, disposable entertainment goes. Unlike JAKE SPEED or BARRACUDA I doubt that SNAKE ISLAND will gather much of a cult following and it's not the sort of film that will command repeat performances, but for a $1.50 three-day DVD rental you can do a heck of a lot worse. Which is what a good B movie should amount to.6/10; Sets it's sights low and achieves what it set out to do, and you sort of have to admire it for being true to it's nature.

I will not vote this movie as an awful one, mainly because i kind of like it, i was one of those summer days that i was so lame to do anything and decided do rent a movie in the stupid section of the videostore. Besides that i didn't slept in the nigh before and the movie got me awake...Let's just start the autopsy, OK, the movie haves a strange plot, first is isolation, there is an expedition, they get isolated in an island because there is no gas on the boat, something like that, there is not a single convincing performance on the actors part(so far), the main problem starts after the isolation idea, the POV of a snake, then another, ...then another, then snakes that change, then false spooks, a lot of them, and when we believe the movie is going on a good way for a b flick keeping the suspense it fails, because after ten or eleven spooks we don't get carried away, the one scene that unmistifies all is the scene when we witness a drunk lesbian show watched by snakes that seem to dance, after this it's becoming not a horror\adventure but a comedy driven movie, the adventure part is discarded also.For me the problem in a movie is the third act, it is the one section that just drives the movie for a already guessed conclusion, or if it succeeds we don't noticed it, like a ninja smoke in our eyes, well....Snake island haves a bad conclusion, it all comes to a «by the book» ending, with a confront, persecution and escape sequence, it was predictable in the moment i rented the dam copy. The other real problem is concept, concept is very important, it is the reason you believe in dinosaurs coming to life or a corpse full of stitches that just wants to live, the main concept about snakes that want revenge after decades on torture by the human civilization, well...hmmm, just doesen't glues on the wall. One thing you will enjoy (if you watch it with an opened mind) is the more b-z sequences, naked lesbian girls, some amateur camera angles, the braindead homage with the grass cutter, the black dude doesen't die first, and thats all... if you want to see snakes, black dudes and comedy and you prefer bigger budgets go and see «snakes on a plane».Hasta moviegoers

Snake island was one of the most entertaining films I've seen all summer including a very attractive and fantastic leading actor. Anyone who's afraid of snakes will have a fit with this film. It's not a film to be taken too seriously but will still scare you at the right moments. This is one you should get your hands on while you still can!!!!

Don't waste your time. One of those cool-looking boxes that you pick up at Blockbuster on a hunch, but not even worth that. You will NOT say, "It's so bad, it's good." Just, "It's bad." The Greatest American Hero is a writer who rents a cabin on African island, called Snake Island. Some other tourists are on the boat that drops him off, but they are not staying on the island. They just stop there to let off the writer. Then the boat is stranded there, and --in true Hollywood originality-- the one and only radio on the island is busted. So they start walking around and see a bunch of snakes. Like hundreds of them, which really became annoying and you knew the plot would go nowhere. It's not like there ever was ONE main snake. Like a giant mutated snake or an extra poisonous king of all snakes. Instead, there are just a bunch of ham-and-egger snakes of all kinds of breeds. Their only goal, then, was to escape the island...as opposed to having to conquer the enemy. Because there were so many snakes, you knew they couldn't possibly try to kill them all, and they didn't try. I've seen a similar movie where a town was haunted by snakes and they lead all the snakes into a cave then blew it up. At least then you get the feeling that the good guys killed the bad guys and it was a normal ending. In Snake Island (by the way, every single character was shocked to see snakes on the Island...duhhhhh, it's NAMED Snake Island for a reason), there was no plan other than trying to get gas for the stupid boat. Oh, they never do get gas by the way. They "just happen" to find another boat on the island already gassed up.