King Cobra (1999) Review

King Cobra (1999) Review

 

I’ve seen a lot of snake films, and arguably the best one of them all is Anaconda, which came out in 1997. Allegedly, the idea for King Cobra was conceived before Anaconda, but due to pre-production issues, wasn’t completed before Anaconda came out. They aren’t really comparable other than featuring a big killer snake, and unlike Anaconda, which became a mainstream success, King Cobra remains largely obscure.

It begins in a genetics lab where some scientists are tampering with science (as the good little scientists in all these kinds of movies always do) and create a 30-foot hybrid of a king cobra and a diamondback rattlesnake. See, right away I’m confused as to why this movie is called King Cobra, if the creature here isn’t even technically a cobra, only 50 % cobra. Predictably, the snake escapes, and two years later, starts killing people in a small town, so all the usual suspects are rounded up, and by that I mean the characters who typically show up in snake movies: the young cop, the skeptical sheriff, and the snake expert brought in to track the creature down.

A couple of the standouts from the cast are Pat Morita (Mr. Miyagi in the original Karate Kid) as a snake wrangler/expert/hunter who comes in halfway through, and Hoyt Axton (Billy Peltzer’s dad in Gremlins) in what ended up being his final film role, but it’s Pat Morita who makes it worth watching. He’s a jaded herpetologist who’s seen it all when it comes to snakes, and his final battle with the serpent is one of the best parts. In fact, the last fifteen minutes are the best minutes of the whole thing.

King Cobra is just ridiculous. It’s not scary in the least, but is often funny—occasionally the humour is purposeful, but most often it is not. Other than the aforementioned actors, the rest of the cast kind of sucks, especially the main guy and girl. There are some odd attempts at jump scares, but none that are too annoying. In some scenes there were quite a few crossfades and fades to black, which made me wonder if this was a TV movie, as that would have explained quite a bit, but it was actually a direct-to-video release, which also explains a lot.

The filmmakers took the Jaws route and avoided showing the snake too much early on, but it still makes a few appearances that are memorable enough. For some reason one of the hisses it makes is one of the same sounds as the Velociraptor from Jurassic Park. One other little Jurassic Park connection is they use a goat to lure the snake into a trap at the end. I guess goats entice genetically engineered Tyrannosaurs and hybrid snakes.

Something that surprised me and actually gave me hope for this flick was seeing the Chiodo Brothers in the opening credits for the special effects. The Chiodos have done some great practical special effects for a number of movies, with the most notable ones for me being Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Critters. There’s no cgi here, only animatronics, and the hybrid snake looks good. Its acting chops on the other hand could have used some work.

The snake’s performance is stiff and cumbersome. At no point does it look like a sleek, deadly killer, and while I’m usually all for practical effects over computer effects, I really wished there had been at least one full clear shot of the entire snake from one end to the other while slithering. Instead, all we get are quick shots of its head/hood and sections of its long body, and while POV shots are used to try and make it seem like its slithering, it doesn’t work. There’s one bizarre moment when a hunter comes across it in the bushes and it’s completely motionless, seemingly dead, and we get a good look at it, then it comes to life and kills the guy. Not long after, the snake expert explains cobras sometimes play dead to catch prey. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the scene certainly doesn’t help make the snake look any more realistic. It’s also disappointing that the snake (which has a name, by the way, it’s Seth) only kills people by poisoning them, never actually eating them. The effects, when shown, look so obviously fake because they aren’t shot properly and lack smooth movement, and it’s a real shame, because they almost got it right.

King Cobra is bad, but amusingly so. For a direct-to-video snake movie from the late 90’s, though, it’s far more entertaining than most others from that era, and the creators seemed to at least have their hearts in the right place. As the end credits rolled, I thought to myself, “y’know, I think I’ve had my fill of bad snake movies.” I won’t say I’ll never watch another one, though. Never say never!