WEEK 2: SLITHERING SERPENTS
Jaws of Satan (1981) Review
Welcome to the first full week of Creepy Cinema, Animal
Mayhem edition! The subject this week: those legless, slithering reptiles
Indiana Jones can’t stand. That’s right, it’s all about snakes. The first
killer snake movie I’m looking at comes from 1981, called Jaws of Satan on the DVD cover, but the title screen in the actual
movie says King Cobra. Apparently
this movie has two titles; personally I like Jaws of Satan better, because that’s what initially grabbed my
attention. Jaws of Satan also better
explains what this movie is about, because it’s more than just a king cobra on
the loose. It's just as much about the natural as it is the
supernatural.
A train transporting a bunch of dogs also has some snakes on
board, for whatever reason, and one of the snakes, a king cobra, gets out of
its cage as if by magic and attacks two guys on the train and escapes.
Meanwhile, the town’s priest is in his home trying to warm himself by the fire.
The fire mysteriously extinguishes itself—it’s actually a creepy effect—and he
senses something isn’t right. A local sorcerer later reads the priests’ tea
leaves and gets such a fright, she faints. She suspects some satanic force is
after him, but he seems skeptical of such demonic forces, especially for a
priest. One of the victims from the train survives and is taken to the
hospital, where we are introduced to a female doctor and a male snake expert.
The doctors know the man was attacked by a snake, but it’s unlike any bite the
snake expert has seen before. A farmer and his son arrive at the hospital, the
farmer sporting a similar bite, and the son presents a snake, which he
decapitated. The snake expert says it’s just a regular rattlesnake, but the
situation is anything but regular, as things quickly escalate to epidemic
levels. It’s revealed to the priest that a curse was placed on his family many
generations ago, and the curse has brought Satan to his parish in the form of a
king cobra!
Jaws of Satan is
the first killer animal film I’ve come across to bring religion into the mix,
as far as the attacking animal in question is concerned. Having the main threat
in the movie be a combination of a deadly snake and Satan himself is pretty
original, and adds another layer of fright. There’s a nice balance between
scientific explanations and religious views. The snake expert can’t identify
why the cobra and its armada of rattlesnakes are doing what they’re doing, but
he still offers useful tips, such as how and where to find them, and how to
avoid being bit. There’s a great bathroom/bedroom scene in the doctor’s house,
where she’s getting a shower then going to bed, and a rattlesnake is slithering
around, following her, and the tension is sustained for a surprisingly long
time. You’re constantly waiting for the snake to strike, and it’s a pretty
suspenseful sequence.
The characters are all engaging enough, even though a few of
them are cliché. It features a very young Christina Applegate in her first film
role, but she’s only in one early scene and then doesn’t return until near the
end. The priest is unconventional, which makes him more interesting that just a
standard priest, and he’s pretty likeable too. You actually root for him to
defeat evil and save the town. The snakes used in the movie are all real, with
the exception of a few rod puppets for select shots. The main cobra performs
well and is used effectively, shown at just the right times, but never
overused. Unfortunately, it’s obvious some animals were harmed in the making of
this production. There’s a scene where a cop goes into a corner store to kill a
snake, and he sees a mouse caught in a mousetrap. It’s a real mouse, and it's
really caught in the trap. The snake that the farmer’s son presents looks too realistic to be just a prop, meaning a real unfortunate snake had its head cut off for the scene.
While Jaws of Satan is reasonably suspenseful and well directed in the
first act, the movie loses some momentum in the third act. Once the endgame is
set up for the characters, it feels a little slow as they work their way to the
final showdown with the Satan snake. There’s a sub-plot about the town opening
a new dog track, and about two-thirds through the movie, there’s suddenly this
deadline that all the snakes must be caught and killed before the track opens, but
it does little to add any more suspense to the story, especially when the
deadline comes to pass, and they simply don’t open the race track. Probably the
biggest gripe I have with the film is how conservative it feels for an
R-rating. The bathroom scene I mentioned earlier had the potential for so much
more, but the editing and choices of camera angles feel overtly censored to
ensure zero nudity is shown, which took away from how suspenseful it was
trying to be. There’s some blood and violence, but nothing particularly brutal
or shocking. Of course, for the time it was released, an R-rating is still
understandable, given some of the scenes and content. By today’s standards, it
probably would be assigned a PG-rating, or maybe PG-13, but I think even that’s
pushing it.
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