SPOILERS.
I don't really know how it's possible to "spoil" this movie or two give two figs about it.
Let me see. The plot. Okay. A rash of odd and lethal snakebites begins turning up in a small town, much to the puzzlement of the doctor played by Gretchen Corbett, looking mighty slim and much cuter than my doctor. Nobody else seems particularly bothered though, despite the fact that all the deciduous trees are bare and all good snakes should be comfortably hibernating. Never mind, though. The priest (Fritz Weaver) is losing his faith or his confidence or something. He boozes it up and doesn't seem to be having a lot of fun. No joke to be unpopular in a small town. Maybe it's partly because, although he seems to be Catholic in that he lapses into Latin at a critical point, he says the mass facing in the wrong direction. At any rate his ontological Angst seems to have drawn Satan to his little town, with Weaver as the bullseye. The original snake, a cobra, arrives by train. (Don't ask.)
That's the Exorcist part of it. The Jaws part has to do with one of those money-mongering venture capitalists who wants to open a dog-racing track and doesn't want to alarm any visitors with all this talk about crazy snakes. How dumb can you get? He could have solved the entire problem simply by opening a mongoose-racing track.
Oh, there's one of those expert academicians drawn in from the outside to provide us with herpetological knowledge that the other characters (and the audience) don't have. He really doesn't add much, in the way of herpetological expertise, plot development, or character. He's only needed once, to rush in and save Corbett from a beautiful specimen of the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, Crotalus adamanteus.
I know. The snake seems to have changed from a cobra to a rattlesnake. This happens to be a rather wise rattlesnake, having followed Corbett into the shower and peeked at her, but it's a rattlesnake nonetheless. But then there are a LOT of different kinds of snakes used here. The, um, "king cobra" seems to have roused all of them. I spotted a common and harmless gopher snake among the mess. The herpetologist's curiosity isn't aroused by the presence of cobras, native to Asia and Africa, in a small American town, or what an Eastern diamondback is doing so far out of its range in the southeast US. At least one of the snakes is visibly killed on camera, which is pretty rotten if you ask me. The target should have been the screenwriters.
But the plot is so full of holes that it's not really worth going into. Speaking of holes, the cobra accosts the priest in a graveyard and while he's trying to run away he falls into an empty freshly dug grave and can't get out. The cobra, it seems, has this thing about crucifixes. What would have happened to Weaver if he'd been a rabbi and pulled a Mogen David we can only speculate about.
At one point, Corbett, wearing a neat red dress, is lying down in a cave full of snakes presided over by the Satanic Elapid. I don't know how she wound up on this rock altar. It's done offscreen. The priest shows up, waving his cross, removes the supine Corbett, which is a pity because she really looked very sacrificial, lies down in her place wearing a surplice, kisses his cross, encants some Latin mumbo jumbo, and the snake disappears in a pillar of flame.
If he'd have done that at the beginning he could have saved all of us an hour. Oh, by the way, the little girl -- there always has to be a kid to naive to recognize danger signals -- is played by Christina Applegate.
I don't really know how it's possible to "spoil" this movie or two give two figs about it.
Let me see. The plot. Okay. A rash of odd and lethal snakebites begins turning up in a small town, much to the puzzlement of the doctor played by Gretchen Corbett, looking mighty slim and much cuter than my doctor. Nobody else seems particularly bothered though, despite the fact that all the deciduous trees are bare and all good snakes should be comfortably hibernating. Never mind, though. The priest (Fritz Weaver) is losing his faith or his confidence or something. He boozes it up and doesn't seem to be having a lot of fun. No joke to be unpopular in a small town. Maybe it's partly because, although he seems to be Catholic in that he lapses into Latin at a critical point, he says the mass facing in the wrong direction. At any rate his ontological Angst seems to have drawn Satan to his little town, with Weaver as the bullseye. The original snake, a cobra, arrives by train. (Don't ask.)
That's the Exorcist part of it. The Jaws part has to do with one of those money-mongering venture capitalists who wants to open a dog-racing track and doesn't want to alarm any visitors with all this talk about crazy snakes. How dumb can you get? He could have solved the entire problem simply by opening a mongoose-racing track.
Oh, there's one of those expert academicians drawn in from the outside to provide us with herpetological knowledge that the other characters (and the audience) don't have. He really doesn't add much, in the way of herpetological expertise, plot development, or character. He's only needed once, to rush in and save Corbett from a beautiful specimen of the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, Crotalus adamanteus.
I know. The snake seems to have changed from a cobra to a rattlesnake. This happens to be a rather wise rattlesnake, having followed Corbett into the shower and peeked at her, but it's a rattlesnake nonetheless. But then there are a LOT of different kinds of snakes used here. The, um, "king cobra" seems to have roused all of them. I spotted a common and harmless gopher snake among the mess. The herpetologist's curiosity isn't aroused by the presence of cobras, native to Asia and Africa, in a small American town, or what an Eastern diamondback is doing so far out of its range in the southeast US. At least one of the snakes is visibly killed on camera, which is pretty rotten if you ask me. The target should have been the screenwriters.
But the plot is so full of holes that it's not really worth going into. Speaking of holes, the cobra accosts the priest in a graveyard and while he's trying to run away he falls into an empty freshly dug grave and can't get out. The cobra, it seems, has this thing about crucifixes. What would have happened to Weaver if he'd been a rabbi and pulled a Mogen David we can only speculate about.
At one point, Corbett, wearing a neat red dress, is lying down in a cave full of snakes presided over by the Satanic Elapid. I don't know how she wound up on this rock altar. It's done offscreen. The priest shows up, waving his cross, removes the supine Corbett, which is a pity because she really looked very sacrificial, lies down in her place wearing a surplice, kisses his cross, encants some Latin mumbo jumbo, and the snake disappears in a pillar of flame.
If he'd have done that at the beginning he could have saved all of us an hour. Oh, by the way, the little girl -- there always has to be a kid to naive to recognize danger signals -- is played by Christina Applegate.