Director: Godfrey Ho (as Charles Lee)
Year: 1988
Country: Hong Kong
Alternate Titles: Daa she wang, Terror Serpent
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Intrigued over a new chemical formula, a terrorist group launch an attack on a secret facility to acquire it only for the strange formula to inadvertently cause a young girls' pet snake to grow into a monstrous giant and terrorize the city forcing a special agent to stop the creature.
Review:
This version of the film was quite an enjoyably cheesy effort. One of the more entertaining aspects here is the fact that this one relies on such over-the-top action that mixing it all together creates such a fun experience. From the beginning, which has a great start here with the absolutely insane series of gunfights featuring the terrorist group coming to attack the facility with the guards forced into defending the escaping scientists into the woods, the second battle in the woods when the commando goes into action to rescue the formula and several later military ambushes with the commando where he sets out to stop the terrorist gang from getting ahold of the formula with the family.
This action is compounded by the full-on monster movie fun to be had once the creature gets exposed to the formula. Going through several size stages, from a forty-to-fifty foot creature that gets involved with the girl helping her to get revenge on her bullies or help save the family from the terrorists once they find out the snake has been affected. Lighthearted and completely against the tone of the rest of the footage here which has this resorting to the kind of extravagant monster-on-the-loose scenarios complete with scenes of the military attacking the creature, miniature cityscapes resulting in plenty of cheesy spectacle and the kind of action-packed fun that normally results from seeing a goofy, silly monster movie. These here are what make this fun over its flaws.
Those flaws, though, are mainly based around the manner of how the film was constructed. It's quite well-known that the film is edited from another movie and has additional footage inserted into the final release, and it's quite obvious how that occurs here. The footage of the Caucasian commando that adds nothing to the film and really looks to be shoehorned into the beginning and ending while completely disappearing from the rest of the movie which accounts for the majority of footage taken from the other movie. The wackiness of the material is something to get over as well, and the constant tonal shifts from goofy family comedy to straight action and then cheesy monster film which all come from the original film all combine into a rather chaotic and disorienting experience. Otherwise, there's not much else about the movie itself to really dislike.
One of the finest and most purely enjoyable exploitative genre pieces around, this one manages to contain so much fun that it holds itself in rarefied air in the scene overall. Dive into this one immediately if you're at all involved with this type of genre effort or are curious about this one, while those who are even the slightest bit put off by the flaws should avoid this immediately.
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