Mega Snake: Growing pains in the reptile world...

Not your garden variety...

Mega Snake has a lot going for it, especially in the acting talent department. The whole reason I tuned in was for Michael Shanks, but the rest of the cast does an awesome job keeping the lines funny, and the action cheesy. One of my newly discovered favorite 'minor part' actors, Todd Jensen, puts in a great performance as 'Big Bo', a complete jerk that still makes you feel sorry for him when he gets what's coming to him. Harry Anichkin and Nick Harvey play a pair of back woods hunters that know how to put together all sorts of snake luring and killing devices.

Ben Cardinal plays a stern, believable man guarding the secret of the giant snake, which hunted his people nearly to extinction. When John T. Woods' character, 'Duff Daniels', comes in to the shop to buy another batch of snakes for his religious sect, naturally this mysterious snake in a glass jar catches his eye. In true stupid, arrogant son of bitch character, he makes sure to not be careful after he steals it, and unleashes the terror on the community.

Duff is the older brother of Shanks' character, 'Les', who watched as their father died by snakebite during a religious ceremony when he was a child. Duff naturally thinks his little brother is a coward for having a healthy respect and fear of things that can kill you, so there's your family tension for a bit of drama. Les is afraid of a lot of things, including commitment to his girlfriend, Erin, who is played by Siri Barus. Erin starts off very shrewish, and I intensely wanted Les to dump her melodramatic ass for his partner, Fay, who is played with glee by Michal Yannai. When Erin takes up with 'Big Bo', we get some well played juvenile games in a bar as everyone tries to make everyone else jealous. Normally I would find this boring, but it fits into the story well, and is a lot of fun to watch.

We get a lot of CGI action of Mega Snake, watching it grow, having hints of it snacking on household pets, and a whole coop full of chickens. Once it gets the appetizers out of the way it just keeps on growing, and keeps on eating. Pretty soon a lot of the 'local color' start getting picked off, too, adding to all the tension between our main characters. Livestock is left in steaming, regurgitated piles that ain't pretty, and Les ends up as a suspect, mostly because Big Bo is an ass.

Of course the truth is discovered and a hunting party heads out to tackle the beast with various unfortunate results. There's even the requisite 'You have to cancel the county fair!', 'Are you kidding? That's the biggest attraction of the year! I ain't canceling it!', 'But people are gonna die!' 'Well, you'd better get snake hunting, then, shouldn't ya?' exchange (not direct quotes). This gives the perfect chance to give a cameo that made the train wreck watcher in me do a double take. We get to see 'Feedback' from Who Wants To Be A Superhero?'. He gives us valuable safety tips, faces off with Mega Snake for a few seconds, and then herds a bunch of cute kids to safety as he adds 'Wow, that's a big snake' to his acting repertoire. As far as cheesy cameos go, this one was a riot, and definitely not a waste of time.

Overall Mega Snake is a very good creature feature B-movie. There's a lot of colorful characters to keep the story moving along, lots of humor, and great CGI on the beastie. I've watched this one a couple of times, and while I don't think I'll ever buy it on DVD, whenever it is on I will hope to have time to watch it again. It's coming up on rotation on Sci Fi on February 28, 2009 and March 5, 2009, and I encourage you to set up a recording device to catch it. The giggle factor is worth it!