Okay, I liked Anacondas. I thought it was a fun, old-fashioned jungle movie. But why on earth would you pick that movie to rip-off? It strikes me as a one-time deal, and it's really amazing it turned out as good as it did. Snake King is a pretty much carbon copy, with almost all the enjoyability taken out and a ton of pretentiousness put in. It starts out looking like an enjoyably predictable jungle adventure with giant snakes and human-sacrificing tribes. However, half-way through it takes a hard right and portrays the tribe as a peaceful, wise group who will all die if the snake is killed (because the script says so, okay!). The villain, heroine, and hero are all immediately identifiable as such (incidently, the hero never does anything heroic except for arguing with the villain. otherwise he's generally being saved all the time.) The snake in the movie makes no sense. It apparently has multiple heads, but why is never even touched on, nor is it touched on how the water gives you immortal life, or anything (the snake, like the tribe, is allowed a certain "heroic" stance, despite the fact that it was just scene killing many people in gruesome ways, like the tribe. But, you know, PC). Ultimately, not a movie to waste your time on, except perhaps from a bad DTV standpoint, but even then the lack of anything interesting for the monster to do (and the attempts to make it seem less of a monster for no reason) does take away considerably from the fun.
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Bob_Tanaka14 April 2005
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The Snake King, or Snakeman as it's more commonly known, starts as New York based pharmaceutical company GenTech announces in a press conference that during a recent expedition in the Amazon they discovered a corpse of a man which when analysed showed he died at the age of 300. Company scientists Dr. Rick Gordon (Larry Day) & Dr. Susan Elters (Jayne Heitmeyer) are going to lead another expedition into the Amazon to finds his tribe & discover the secret of living for 300 years, what could possibly go wrong? Well, for a start their helicopter is struck by lightening & crash lands in the middle of the Amazon, then Rick turns out to be a complete d*ck & to top it off a huge five headed snake wants to eat them all. Can their local guide Matt (Stephen Baldwin) lead them to safety & is finding the secret to eternal life really worth being eaten by a huge five headed snake for?
This made-for-TV Canadian American co-production was written & directed by Allan A. Goldstein & is yet another Nu Image produced creature feature flick complete with all the clichés that these films seem determined to include. The script takes itself very seriously & is basically pretty much the same sort of thing as Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004) with it's plot about a youth potion in the Amazon guarded by a snake, in this case a ridiculous looking one of the giant five headed variety. Lets go through the clichés which Nu Image insist on having in their creature features, good guys including a beautiful female scientist & a rugged hero type who end up falling in love, the antagonistic bad guys who want something the creature is protecting/in the way of, the disposable character's who don't say anything & have no opinions on anything because they are there to get eaten, the supposedly dramatic moralistic ending which will leave most viewers wiping away the tears of either laughter or boredom, the single isolated location to keep production costs down & an abundance of awful CGI computer effects. Yep, they're all here present & correct. Unfortunately Snake King is even more lame than a lot of other Nu Image 'classics' like Cyborg Cop (1993), Shark Attack (1999), their best film to date Spiders (2000), Crocodile (2000), Octopus (2000), Mansquito (2005) & a plethora of sequels & other killer Shark flicks, I mean most of the above are pretty bad films but a lot of them at least had fun elements, unintentionally hilarious moments & a sense no one was taking things too seriously but The Snake Kingis just a dull, boring, unoriginal mess of a film that isn't even good for any laughs & doesn't have any good looking babes in it either. At least the five headed snake survives at the end & gets to eat lots of humans but it's still a stinker.
Director Goldstein doesn't do anything special here, the pace is slack, the plot is dumb, the editing is awful & the special effects are terrible. The CGI computer effects look awful, unless you have literally million's to spend on them GCI always ends up looking worse than your average Saturady morning cartoon with badly animated monsters that look stupid. The wonderful Ray Harryausen stop-motion animated seven headed Hydra from Jason and the Argonauts (1963) looks 100 times better & more realistic than the five headed snake here. There's a few gory bit here, there's some severed arms, people are bitten in half & there's a brief scene when someone has their stomach sliced open & their guts spill out.
With a supposed budget of about $1,000,000 the filmmakers were obviously working on a tight budget & it's a surprise they actually managed to shoot the thing on location in Brazil. Awful looking five headed snakes & helicopter crashes apart it's reasonably well made but it's bland & forgettable without an ounce of style. The acting here is bad & Stephen Baldwin is the token 'celebrity' actor who obviously needed rent money & a free holiday in South America.
The Snake King is a pretty awful creature feature which offers nothing new over the countless killer Shark, Octopus, Insect, Lizard & Arachnid type films which seem to be everywhere & it doesn't even any genuine unintentional laughs either. Definitely not recommended, I'm not sure why they keep making these sorts of films other than there are people out there who like them & to satisfy demand Nu Image's next giant killer snake flick seems to be called MegaSnake (2007) & premiers in July apparently... -
gtc8317 April 2005Our story begins with the discovery of a dead Indian down around the Amazon somewhere. After analysis, it turns out that he was 300 years old at the time of his death, so a small team is dispatched to discover the secret of his long life. We get the utterly generic guide, the utterly generic female character, and the utterly generic corporate type. And no, I'm not using the word "utterly" without good cause; these people are as one-dimensional as it gets. There are a few other folks around at the beginning, I think a couple of them were named Kibbles and Bits, but my memory is a tad foggy.
Okay, so they go out for a nice walk in the jungle, and a few folks wander away from the group and get eaten by a giant snake. If you've ever seen a Sci-Fi original movie before, you know exactly what the snake looks like. The rest of the people run, then once they think they're safe they walk. Repeat several times. It's not a good sign when the best thing about a movie is the totally cheesy special effects.
Eventually they meet some Indians who know the secret of long life, but guess what? They ain't tellin'. So there's some inane dialog and a bit of running around, yadda yadda yadda guy kisses girl.
If I ask one thing from a movie like this, it's that they give us a hot sweaty babe in a tight T-shirt. They are in the Amazon, right? But this Amazon is oddly cool, perhaps in the mid 50's judging by the jacket the babe wears through half the movie. Having missed that opportunity, there's not much left. I mean, it's not like we care if these people live or die. It's not like the plot is interesting or even makes sense. It's not like, well, good or anything. The photography is nice, there are plenty of beautiful shots of the sun setting over the jungle and stuff like that. So there, I said something nice. I hope the cinematographer finds work on better movies than this in the future. -
Someone at the Sci-Fi Channel must have thought making a movie about a giant, five-headed snake in the Amazon would make for a nifty monster movie. It probably could have if it hadn't been for the fact that the giant, five-headed snake is so huge that we generally only see one, two, or three heads on the screen at any given time. That is until the climax of the movie when all five are finally shown, albeit briefly, and even then you never really get a full body view of the creature to figure out how everything is interconnected. The movie establishes that the snake has a tail so they can't use the excuse of it having heads at both ends. I want to know where the hell the fourth and fifth heads disappeared to for the first three quarters of the movie. Were they on a smoke break? Were they given conscientious objector status for refusing to take part in the killing if innocent people? Were they off auditioning for a role in Python 3?
Oh, but wait, there are still more problems with the giant, five-headed snake. Despite the fact that it appears to be big enough to give Godzilla a heck of a fight, this colossal, multi-headed snake is still able to hide undetected in the jungle brush until it's too late. The noise it makes when slithering through the jungle is minimal and keep in mind we are talking about an enormous monster with five-heads, each at least the size of an automobile. If it wasn't constantly roaring (This snake doesn't hiss. It roars.), then it would barely generate any noise at all. People are constantly running away before coming to a stop and looking up just in time for one of the heads to lurch down and nab them. Despite being gigantic it still consistently managed to not only move around unseen, it actually sneaks up on people.
And if that wasn't enough, there are some serious continuity issues regarding the giant, five-headed snakes' size. It appears to suffer from Deep Star Six syndrome, and by that I mean its size changes depending on what is required of it in the scene. This is highlighted in the climax set inside its lair where it seems to shrink and enlarge at random. Each head is the size of an automobile and its cave entrance only appears big enough to fit one head and neck at a time so we don't even get an explanation as to how the thing even manages to get inside this cave chamber to begin with. Heck, at one point, this gargantuan serpent even manages to hide underwater in a small river just waiting to spring out and surprise someone. Good grief!
These are just the problems with the monster. And don't argue suspension of disbelief because there is a huge difference between suspension of disbelief and insulting one's intelligence. Worst of all, the CGI used to bring the giant, five-headed snake is some of the least convincing I've ever seen in a Sci-Fi Channel movie, and believe me, that is really saying something.
The fact that the monster turned out to be such a conceptual catastrophe is kind of a good thing because I'd hate to see a potentially cool movie monster wasted on a production as lame, formulaic, and downright dull as this stinker was. A complete waste of time and energy. -
TheUnknown837-17 August 2005Snake King is one of the dumbest movies I have ever stumbled upon. The CGI has somewhat improved over other giant snake movies like Boa and Python, but is still pretty bad. The plot is bad and somewhat ripped off from Anacondas (a decent snake movie. The acting is also not very good either (although Stephan Baldwin did an acceptable job, although he was the only one). Snake King may look like it could be a pretty decent low-budget snake movie and at first, I thought it was going to be, but boy was I surprised. Like I said, this movie has several ripoffs from Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, which was released the year earlier and became a moderately successful snake movie. This movie totally rips off it. First off, a scientific team recovers a specimen from the Amazon (like the first orchid found) and they learn that it (a human corpse in a tomb) was hundreds of years old before it died. And they learned that it was the Fountain of Youth (like how the Orchid promotes longer lifespans). So, a team is sent down into the Amazon to recover more of this life-extending substance so that they can sell it (another ripoff). And they run into a gigantic snake, although this one's a gigantic creature with multiple heads (not very convincing actually). On their trip down, they come across the village of Amazonians (ripoff again), but this time it's got people in it, who worship the giant snake. Eventually, most of the team wants to just get out of the Amazon, while one wants to continue (just like in Anacondas). And the snake kills off him and all who follow him. And speaking of the Amazonians, they totally ruined the plot. For a while, the story is concentrated on the snake and then it goes right to the dumb and boring people who worship it and stays with them until the ending, where the snake finally reappears. And what's more, it doesn't get killed. Overall, Snake King is a dumb movie that tried to be what Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid was, but failed miserably.
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zombie-3225 February 2007This was one hell of a stinker. Comparing this to an early Dr Who episode from 1960's Who had the worse scrip: The Snake King Who had the worse dialog: The Snake King Who had the worse acting: The Snake King Who was more predictable: The Snake King Who had the most fake special effects: The Snake King (This is going against cardboard cutouts, men in wetsuits, and obvious miniatures.) The Snake King did have one advantage over the Dr Who episode it was in colour.
It does have a good drinking game if you have a drink every bad line or when a henchman gets killed you are more likely to pass-out from alcoholic poisoning than pass halfway through the movie. -
catbalou16818 April 2005I watched it on the sci-fi channel. I couldn't help laughing at the special effects and the story line. Stephen Baldwin was horrible in it! Bad acting overall from everyone in the movie! Sci-Fi should be sick with themselves about this load of garbage! The story goes pretty much like this, Some researchers go out in search of a fountain of youth that is supposedly somewhere in the jungle. But there is one problem though, to get to the so-called fountain of youth water they have to get past the deadly predator (the snake king), or should we say CGI King. The storyline as I mentioned earlier is totally silly, the snake doesn't even attack some of the people for some reason, what's up with that, maybe he knows them (they must be buddies! Come on, please!) Also when the snake kills the people, it looks ridiculous. Also you never understand why the snake has 3 heads. Please don't waste your time with this garbage!
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Can bad movies ever get any worse? Maybe. But for the moment, Snakeman beats everything in its shear awfulness. The snake is just SO fake, even the one in Python would choke on its own tongue. The actors are bad, they couldn't act if there lives depended on it, even if they sold their souls to Sponge Bob Squarepants first. I don't understand why the many-headed snake is actually a good creature, it seems to enjoy tearing and ripping and killing people in various and imaginative ways, yet it gives the Mysterious Indian Tribe that Stinks its great gift of eternal youth... This mystifies me. The teams that are sent to the rather fake looking jungle seem to be well equipped with big and savage-looking automatic rifles, large vicious snakes are probably commonplace in the jungle... Not a good film, if it appears on your TV, switch the channel or it will take a little bite out of your intellect.
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greenflea23 March 2007This movie is rubbish, not the worse i have seem so far, the special effects are a shocker, and very poor. I love these jungle movies, were they suppose to be in thick jungle, were no-one human been for thousands of years, but there is well design tracks and path-ways. I do agree this movie is the poor mans Anaconda, with villains, and the hero who saves the day. I notice on the it says on the cover, Anaconda meets Indiana Jones, well Stephen Baldwin is no Indiana Jones, however this movie does tried to rip off the raiders of the lost art, but fails and is falls short of this. There is no boobs and sex in this movie, but some hot native girls who are obviously models with their boob jobs. Native girls in the Amazon with boob jobs, thats what it is. This movie is not bad, and if you have a bored Saturday afternoon, it wouldn't hurt watching this low budget, poorly acted so called jungle action movie.
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dmuel18 November 2006Here we have Snakeman, or maybe it's really some other title, telling the story of a nasty snake monster in the Amazon which has a penchant for munching on people parts. Stephen Baldwin, the not-too-talented younger brother of Alec, may be the Snakeman, I don't know. We can't be sure because the plot involves the snake monster eating everyone. It has nothing to do with a "snakeman". Why do they make movies like this? Because they get suckers like me to watch them, that's why. Terrible CGI effects only cheapen this Anaconda rip-off. Some of the gore effects are quite amusing, as when the gun-for-hire decides to pull his own guts out of his stomach after being bitten there by the snake monster. Think we'll see "Snakeman Returns", "Snakeman Forever", or "Snakeman: The Beginning"? Let's hope not.
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I was real surprised with "Snakeman". It was actually a pretty good little independent movie. First, it was well shot. The director chose to use film instead of digital (which a lot of B-movies) do. And there were some great jungle shots of the Amazon. Second, the movie was fairly well acted. I really thought everyone in the film was a pretty seasoned actor. Stephen Baldwin was definitely a good hero. Third, they had some real cool production design. They had snake pillars in the jungle. I love that whole look.
The only real downside was that there were some fairly bad CGI shots of the snake. But, it's definitely entertaining if you're looking for that whole "monster in the jungle" concept. -
BrandtSponseller25 April 2005After a group of researchers discovers a mummy in the Amazon who proves to have lived to an age of at least 300--he had some physiological peculiarities--a "big, evil corporation" sends a handful of scientists back to Amazonia to search for a tribe of Methulselahs. They end up with Stephen Baldwin as a guide, which is good news if you like the Baldwins (I do) but probably a reason to avoid the film otherwise, and they end up discovering a tribe associated with a multi-headed "snake god", which really exists (in the film) and which enjoys eating people after it dismembers them.
My rating for this film is something of an average. Being in the mood for some abecedarianism, I gave Snake King an A for aeffort when it comes to gore (if I can be allowed to spell "effort" like "aesthetics"; maybe I should give it an "A for attitude" instead), a B for Baldwin, a C for the clichés, a D for da story, and an F for most of the other aspects, like the cgi, the native costumes and makeup, the lack of suspense, and so on. That averaged out to a D for me, or a 6.
The biggest problem is that the story just isn't that interesting, and director Allan A. Goldstein doesn't seem to mind. Although the discovery and search for the exact source of a practical, scientific "fountain of youth" could have promise, what we get instead is a very pedestrian film that couldn't care less if every dramatic situation is by the numbers. In fact, the editing (both the literal film editing and the "flow" or construction of the script) is so bad that the clichés were probably welcomed--they help viewers fill the missing exposition in for themselves.
But the final result is that Snake King is almost entirely devoid of suspense. For most of the characters, you just do not care what happens to them. Most you want to die in the jaws of the snake--and soon--so the film can end already, before it gets any worse. Eventually it gets so bad that the climax, and particularly the dénouement, are pretty hilarious. There is a romance angle in the last few moments that comes out of nowhere. It's even funnier because characters stop to make googly eyes and kiss while ignoring the fact that one of them may be bleeding to death. But most of the film isn't "so bad it's good", whether Goldstein may have been shooting for that or not. Most of it is just bad.
For a sci-fi channel film, there is little sci in this sci-fi (which arguably, is not unusual). The actual goal is merely to have a film showing a cgi snake mauling explorers 10 Little Indians style, and the real motivation for setting the film in Amazonia is to avoid the cost of building sets. Since the film takes place in the jungle, and some of the crew must be big Predator (1987) fans, they figure what better opportunity to give our antagonist Predator vision (minus the computer displays). Like everything else, this effect has all the impact of a greased cotton ball smashing through steel.
Even though the mauling scenes look more like an early 1990s video game, I have to give the filmmakers credit for trying to amp up that aspect. There is no shortage of severed limbs, decapitations, or bodies cut in half. There could have been a bit more blood in the film for my tastes (I'm no champion of bloodless horror, although I don't necessarily mind it). But the more visceral aspect of the film was nice, especially for a made for television film.
Although most of the cast wasn't much to speak of--some of them are obviously present just as snake food--I like Stephen Baldwin, as I like all of the Baldwin brothers. I'm a fan of camp. No matter what the Baldwin brothers do, they can't help but radiate camp. My only complaint is that Baldwin should have had an even bigger part. But the prominent "evil scientist", played by Larry Day, was just as fun to hate as Baldwin was fun to watch being campy.
Of course, it's difficult to buy any character as being the kind of person who would have the job or social role that they have in the film, including the natives, who have some fairly ridiculous makeup and costumes on (in the main tribe, all of the women are wearing bikinis for some odd reason). There was also a subplot about other explorers, including one who adopts a tribal way of life (played by Greg Evigan). The subplot is never explored/explained very well, so those characters remain more of a mystery.
If you dislike predictability, you should steer far clear from this film. In addition to the 10 Little Indians and monster movie clichés (you just know what kind of big confrontation there will be in the climax, and so on), there are the typical "big, evil corporation" clichés. Given the basic elements, most IMDb users could probably construct the rest of the script for themselves.
Still, I can't say that I had no fun watching Snake King, and I'd even consider picking up the DVD if I could get it for less than, say, $2. So it isn't a complete failure, but it's awfully close. -
Lurking in the exotic rain forests of Brazil is a deadly, multi-headed serpent that rips limbs off, squeezes victims to a bloody pulp and swallows others whole. A group of scientists working for a leading pharmaceutical company called Gen-Tec are down that way researching a new drug and end up stranded in monster territory when their helicopter crashes. Along for the ride is a local guide (Stephen Baldwin) who is the son of anthropologists and speaks the obscure native language, a corrupt, bossy jerk who keeps waving his gun at everyone and the token attractive blonde lady doctor (Jayne Heitmeyer) who emerges as the film's strongest character. Gary Hudson spends most of his time on the phone or sitting behind a desk as an exec from the company who actually has the team down for other reasons (and shows up with a machine gun toting commando squad at the very end). There's another mean jungle tribe in the forest (with an English-speaking leader!) that use blowguns, spears, tree limbs, booby traps and arrows against victims, kidnap the leading lady and worship the great Snake God "Naga."
Also here is a trek through a crocodile-filled swamp, attacks from tarantulas and smaller serpents, overkill green-tinted snake POV camera-work and a partially insane, blood-painted American from a previous expedition. And it all ends on a weird metaphysical note with the discovery of the fountain of youth and a message about modern day greed and disregard for the sanctity of ancient cultures! The computer special effects on the deadly serpent are pretty lame (especially during the day scenes), but this is still a pretty entertaining fusing of Lost World, adventure and monster movie genres. -
hjassol19 February 2011What a horrible, horrible thing they have done! The producers of this piece of trash, I mean. A ridiculous plot, amateurish FX and easily the worst acting I've seen in a long while. Let's be honest here, Stephen Baldwin can't act to save his life. I've seen more emotion from a block of wood than he displays at any time during this entire debacle. The only mildly redeeming part of this whole mess is Jayne Heitmeyer, who is not only a more skilled actor than Baldwin, but is not bad looking, either.
The FX are, as stated, amateurish at best. A giant multi-headed fake snake likes to eat people. What's worse, it likes to pick them up by their legs and then the other heads join in, having a tug of war with the hapless prey until the screaming victim is ripped in half, then everyone gets a piece. Or, sometimes it picks them up and tosses them into the air in a complete flip before catching them and swallowing them in one gulp. If that isn't ridiculous enough, how about a remote tribe of natives who wear nothing but loincloths and pointy straw hats but whose chief speaks English like a Harvard grad? The Brazilian jungle scenes are striking but I've got to believe that the rest of the one million dollar budget for this stinker was spent on craft service. My only regret (beside actually watching this crapfest), is that I can't give it a lower rating than 1/10. -
lastliberal1 January 2010I felt like I was in some backwoods fundamentalist church yesterday. There was Anaconda 3, Snakes on a Plane, Vipers, and this one. What is with all these snakes? This one had no special appeal. It was you routine running through the jungle, with one member in a tight top (Jayne Heitmeyer), and everyone getting eaten by the snakes. They even brought in some mercenaries, presumably from Blackwater or Halliburton, and they all get eaten, too. The only thing different was that this particular snake had about four heads. That made for an interesting twist as each head can get a body extremity and, pop, instant paraplegic. Then the main snake just pops the head and sucks out the juice like eating craw-fish in the bayou.
The only thing that will keep you interest is the aforementioned Heitmeyer getting that top all sweaty and bloody. -
nogodnomasters25 May 2018You don't have to wait the entire movie to see the low budget monster. A group of scientists go to the Amazon in search of a Fountain of Youth only to discover it is connected to a giant man-eating snake, who doesn't eat once a month like most snakes, but rather eats large meals daily like most man-eating movie snakes.
The scene where the helicopter is in the air and gets struck by lightning, I watched several times. It reminded me of those old Flash Gordon serials where the plane is flying on a string.
The movie has a lack of bad language, sexual scenes, or nudity. The gore is minimum, but people do get bit in half. It has that "made for TV" movie feel, which is bad. The characters are not that well developed or likable as I found myself rooting for the snake. -
laurampaleka25 November 2006I hate to give this movie even one star. It doesn't do anything to deserve it. Totally laughable plot, horribly untalented cast and I haven't seen graphics of this "high" caliber since Children of the Corn 4. One of the Baldwin brothers is in this movie. And here's something that must have come as a delightful surprise to him- he's not even the main star of this C grade flick. That must have been a huge blow to the Baldwin ego. I can't believe that they actually filmed this in the Rain Forests of Brazil and somehow made it seem as if it was on a cardboard set. How do you mess that up? PLEASE don't waste your time with this one- unless you are looking for a movie to make fun of all night long.
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Cemetarygirl23 February 2007What makes me miffed is those who can a movie like Anacondas especially the second one, which I enjoyed. Well I recommend you see this first and then you will realise that the former are entertainingly good movies with a far higher acting standard than this one. Do we really need to live 300 years? Most of us cant handle the ones that we are granted in the first place. Or is that another, if you are rich then you are deserved of potential immortality. OK they needed to make another serpent movie but next time make a better one, with a better script and better actors. The snake fodder are obvious from the very start, hardly deemed to get any lines, and are not allowed the courtesy of developing personality. The snake is very unrealistic even though size does matter. In Anaconda one at least felt that the snakes where real(istic). And in this movie everything is said in the first half an hour giving the movie very little scope to work on. Why don't they let the obnoxious guy get it early and save us all a little grief. Stephen Baldwin although a little thinner, did it best in the Flintstones. He should stay with that genre, a hunter hey ho! The Jaguer chief was not plausible in the role and needed to shed a few cat kilos himself. I know it isn't going to happen but I will go back to my video shop and ask for my money back. Don't bother
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There's not much to say about this movie. It's predictable. In the sense that, there's nothing particularly new about the plot that we haven't seen and some parts are really easy to guess. For instance, you can always be assured that greedy or selfish people will end up eaten. Other than that, I think it generally caters to people who have a penchant for monster/creature movies such as Anacondas, Jurassic Park, Resident Evil, The Host, House of the Dead etc (But not all of these movies are lousy. Some of them have rather redeeming qualities-such as the Host and R. Evil). Or viewers who enjoy seeing people being chased by this things. There's nothing outrightly bad about this movie-just that it seems like a copy of Anacondas-curse of the blood orchid, with variations here and there. I watched this movie for sheer amusement. It's not scary either-since they always give you a visual warning whenever the giant Snake is about to attack by showing you the Snake's point of view which is illuminated in green-which reminds me of Snakes on a plane.
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TheLittleSongbird4 June 2012I was not expecting much in terms of a good plot and good special effects, but I was expecting it to be entertaining with some of the actors giving their all. That was not the case with Snake King(or Snake Man). This was a horrible movie from start to finish, redeemed only by the striking scenery and Jayne Heitmeyer, who is pretty decent not to mention good looking. The rest is one big mess. The special effects are really cheap and some of the least convincing of any special effect I've seen in any movie in a while, and the choppy editing, suspense-less and un-thrilling attack scenes and the snake(s), which are the opposite of menacing or effective do not help. Neither do the crass dialogue, clichéd characters(the film doesn't even try to give them any sort of development either), slack pacing or the formulaic, unexciting story(which further suffers from being derivative of the far superior Anacondas 2). Nor, with the exception of Heitmeyer, does the acting, which in Stephen Baldwin's case is bland, and in the case of others, including the villain, verging on camp. So overall, the scenery and Heitmeyer are good but the rest contribute to Snake King being the stinker that it is. 2/10 Bethany Cox
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kannibalcorpsegrinder25 January 2017Following a rare discovery in the Amazon, a team of explorers hoping to find a potential fountain-of-youth for their pharmaceutical company finds the area guarded by a monstrous multi-headed snake and must find a way of getting out of the jungle alive.
As one of the better Sci-Fi Channel originals, there really is a lot to like here. Among the better qualities here is the fact that for once, the plot-line is pretty credible and creative as the subplot about the search for the tribe in the jungle takes precedence and getting the snake to the background. The atmosphere here is quite nice as the thick, wet rainforest and impenetrable heat allows for a great location to be had to introduce the sake who acts as a guardian spirit for their people, and the little bits featured here gives their society a nice enough grounding to work well for the monster action. As the titular creature, this setup allows for more screen-time for the actors and less for the snake, making his sporadic appearances more effective while losing just a little of that fear. It's a nice gamble that pays off, as there's some solid snake action featured here due to the low number of appearances. There's some great suspense stalking scenes early on as the snake would constantly roar off-screen, the first encounter deep in the jungle that takes place in the dead of night works very nicely as the creepy action is fun with the chaotic scene being a blast and the later scenes at the campsite are really fun. The ending assault on the cave is undoubtedly the highlight, though, as bodies fly in all directions, lots of severed limbs go flying about and there's non-stop action here from the creature appearing during their ceremony and sending everyone scattering and leading to some great chasing throughout the different whirlpools and caves before the big ending here. Alongside the great gory kills and a chilling looking snake, there's enough to like here to hold it up over the film's singular flaw. Despite the fact that it appears to be quite large, the snake is still able to hide undetected in the jungle brush and spring out until it's too late, consistently manages to not only move around unseen it actually sneaks up on people and it's pretty hard to believe that an animal of this snake's size is that sneaky, no matter how familiar with its surroundings. Also, for as great as the snake looks, it's so obviously CGI that it hardly meshes with the actors, and the size of it creates several incredibly distracting scenes and ideas that it really sticks out. However, this is the main problem with the film.
Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language. -
lordzedd-323 September 2006Where to begin. The story, the characters are a bit wooden and two dimensional and the evil corporation who cares for profits over human lives maybe true, but it's getting old in movies. Steven Baldwin, looks like he'd appear at the opening of a letter. I mean even he's better then this. But it's not all bad, I think there was clever dialog and Naga looks real. I've done my research and there are versions of Naga that are just multi-headed snakes, they didn't screw that up. I respect any movie that researches the subject matter. It's not dull by a long shot, lots of bullets flying around and stuff blowing up and people getting ripped to pieces.
It does get confusing at points, first they're fighting the snake god and the natives, next they join the natives. What's up with that? Anyway I give it six stars. -
This movie is great. the real name of it is snakeman ... thats what you'll have to look for in the video store.. this movie is so funny!! and the story is great! and the special effects are top notch CGI quality .. it reminds me more of those older clash of the Titans / Jason and the Argonauts types of movies.. so it starts off with Stephen Baldwin and a crew of People going to the amazon forest for some reason or another and then they run into some natives and there is a huge snake that eats people.. now that i think about it .. this is a lot like the 1933 king Kong.. oh god this movie is funny!! go and get a few friends and a six pack and watch it!!! snakeman will give yall hours of fun lines to quoit in public as an inside joke to make other people around you thing that yall are really cool or just weird.
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balint080817 August 2008The Story is not too bad.. I read the script and they missed some interesting parts, which could help to understand it. The water is the poison of the snake which mixed with the water of the cave ...if I remember correctly. The snake is not good the original snake's size is about the snake head statue's size. I have trouble only with the snake.. other parts of the movie is good, the colors and sounds both...,just the snake...very virtually. The real snake is looks like the statues, and they are looks good , the Snake King is too big for the size witch can live in a little cave is true, but the statue size snake easily fit into a cave. When they built the cave they didn't know what is the size of the snake what the Effect Man "draw" on it. I think if the effection men should make a better snake this movie could be one of the best snakemovies ever. :XD
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dianerpessler-4616419 July 2015Allan A. Goldstein's inspired direction brings incredible creativity and vision to this refreshingly original horror film. Creating an environment that's overwhelming in its tense darkness and unrelenting terror, Goldstein weaves a tight story against the backdrop of a steaming jungle where the atmosphere is virtually unendurable. The creature that stalks its victims without mercy is one of the most stunningly horrible ever imagined and will leave audiences long-lasting nightmares. A fine cast gives memorably powerful performances and Stephen Baldwin does some of the finest work of his career. Exotic locales, intense thrills, and never-let-up shocks make for superb cinema horror and a motion picture experience you will simply never forget.