MegaSnake

This is one of the better movies I've seen recently.  It's got some quality kill scenes, funny lines, and a happy ending.  Aww.  Now, "break out the shotguns and gas up the ATVs.  We got us a big ass snake to kill."

 

Back in 1986, this family who are followers of a church that handles snakes, accidentally gets the father bitten and killed by a poisonous snake.  There are two boys in the family.  Fast forward twenty years.  The boys are now grown and still live with their mother.  The younger brother is now an EMT and the older brother is in the snake handling business.

 

The older brother needs some new snakes and finds a tattoo parlor where a Native-American works.  The Native-American is one of the last Keetowah tribe members and has a very rare and deadly snake named Unteka.  There are three rules when handling Unteka.  One, Unteka should never be removed from its jar.  Two, never feed it anything living.  And three, never fear the heart of the snake.  But there should have been a fourth rule, ... always turn your back on a guy who you have just met so that he may steal Unteka.  The older brother follows rule four.

 

He then breaks rule one, which leads to the breaking of rule two.  Seeing his snake escape, the older brother finds these two hillbillies and seeks their advice on killing Unteka.  He tries stabbing the snake and burying it, but that doesn't seem to work.  The snake grows and grows.  Killing more and more.  Which leads to a music montage where the two hillbillies fashion a crude flame thrower.  That doesn't work either, and the county fair is coming up soon.

 

Of course, Unteka makes its way to the fair.  And of course, Unteka begins biting off the heads of people on the Rock 'n' Roll Express ride, the Love Bug roller coaster, the bumper cars, and whatever else it can sink its fangs into.

 

One of the funnier scenes is when the children are learning about electricity from this guy on stage.  This kid notices the snake and our hero on stage leaps into action and tells the serpent, "That's it.  Time for some feed back," as he attempts to electrocute the snake.

 

Rule three saves the day as the younger brother is swallowed whole and cuts the heart out of the snake from the inside.  From the inside of a seventy-foot snake.  Yep.  Saw that one coming when I started watching this.

 

I give this movie 3 1/2 out of 5 Untekas.

Skeleton Man

This movie has no cohesiveness.  From the first scene where Skeleton Man appears until the very end, you never know what you are going to see next.

The beginning scene lets us know that a Native-American skull has been discovered.  And it also lets us know that there was an evil spirit protecting the skull.  The professor/archiologist that discovered the skull soon finds out that the evil spirit is Skeleton Man.  The professor's assistant flees the research cabin, deep in the woods, to come across some sort of industrial facility.  Security at the facility proves to be no match for Skeleton Man.

A group of four women and four guys are sent to investigate.  You know they mean business because they perform a camoflage make-up scene with slow-motion walking afterwards.  Later, they stumble upon an indian man in the woods and he relays the story of Skeleton Man.  One by one, the team is picked off.  There are even some scenes of utterly-no-relevance-to-the-story violence.  Fisherman, ... shot with arrow.  Big rig driver, ... knifed. 

There are some nice kills by Skeleton Man that involve scapling and impailing several different victims.  One of the women in the group annouces, "If it breathes, I can kill it."  Nothing signs a death notice like trying to be the hero with 30 minutes remaining in the film.

The kills by Skeleton Man are not enough to save this film.  The story jumps around more than a kangaroo on a trampoline.

I give it 1/2 out of 5 spears.