Director: John McCauley
Year: 1976
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
After a series of gruesome snake attacks, a herpetologist and a photographer band together to find the cause of the attacks and realize that a military experiment on nerve gas has affected the creatures and try to stop them from continuing their rampage.
Review:
This one turned out to be quite the decent and wholly enjoyable creature feature. Like most of the other 70s-era creature features, a lot of this one really tends to work because of the realistic manner in which the creatures are portrayed here, with a realistic manner and reasoning here to make them seem all the more credible and threatening. This here is built upon the power of the swarm and the fact that there are dozens of creatures on the attack at once, which is where the scenes of the first attack on the kids or the later ambushes out on the field where there are dozens of the creatures throughout the scene here preparing to attack, and the realistic size here is given precedence to keeping this one rather nice and enjoyable.
Likewise, other impressive elements that come from this realistic size is the ability to integrate the creatures really well into the action along the way, making the attack on the ranch, a house assault against the plumber and a simultaneous attack on the mother in the bathtub and the main sequence here of the two coming under attack during the investigation into the underground mine-shaft all allowing the creatures a fine opportunity to become involved in the sequence as the actual snakes are visibly seen being a part of the attack and generates some natural reactions due to that. This also makes them quite an active presence here with the main point of instigating the investigation of the numerous accidents and the overall secretive nature of the first half just showing the snakes rampaging throughout the countryside forcing that investigation is good enough to keep this rolling along so well here.
These here are what makes this one so good as there are a few minor parts keeping this one down. The film's biggest let-down is the finale, which is where this one seems to stumble as instead of being about the snakes it turns into a generic military cover-up action film that comes complete with a shoot-out and the requisite explosions taking out the main one in charge of the conspiracy rather than letting the snakes do anything as they're never seen again, and this whole section seems tacked on from another film entire such is the dramatic shift in tone away from the action that had previously passed before here. Beyond this, the film really wasn't all that bad.
Rating: ***.5/5
A highly enjoyable and fun old-school style creature feature/nature-run-amok style effort, the few slight and utterly unimportant flaws that show up aren't that big compared to the fun elements before it. Give this one a shot if you're a big fan of this style of genre film or interested in the general era of films this came out in, while those who aren't into the format and approach should heed mild caution.
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