Jaws of Death (1981)
1/2 (out of 4)
It's common knowledge that THE EXORCIST and JAWS made a lot of money at the box office. It's common knowledge that both films had countless, needless rips that would follow throughout the decade. What isn't common knowledge is why it took so long for someone to try and take both films and mix them into one. The film starts off on a train as a large snake breaks free and lands in a small Alabama town where it starts to kill people. We then flash forward to a Priest (Fritz Weaver) whose father happened to have been fighting Druids or something and it turns out that Satan himself has taken over the body of this snake. This true excitement leads to a dingy cave where the Priest must perform an exorcism on the snake. I'm fairly convinced that Satan's an evil guy but if The Rolling Stone's Sympathy for the Devil thought me anything, it would be that evil Satan would be ashamed to be associated with this film. There are bad movies then there are movies like this that make no sense at all and will leave you scratching your head every few minutes. It should be noted that Dean Cundy (HALLOWEEN, THE FOG) did the cinematography here and Christina Applegate made her screen debut. With that out of the way, this movie gets off to an incredibly bad start. We're on the train when a number of stupid events take place and not a single one of them makes any sense. The second man the snake goes after has a shot of the snake where we can easily see the glass between it and the man. What's worse is that this piece of glass is not only seen but it's extremely dirty from previous takes The story itself is all over the place as it's never quite clear what's going on as we got Satan taking the body of a snake but then we have the Druid plot thrown in for whatever reason. As in JAWS, we have the evil mayor who wants to keep the story on the quiet side so that a dog track can come to town. The performances are all bland to poor but we don't necessarily come to a movie like this for the performances. For the most part the snake attack scenes are rather tame but there are a few quick shots of blood. We get one stupid scene after another but in the end there's no doubt that this here is one of the worst rips of either JAWS or THE EXORCIST.
