It's a bad film because it was taken too seriously by its director. Fruet felt that the puppet snake (the thing viewers of the film wanted to see) was too stupid to show, therefore we get snippets of the main attraction and the usual dark rooms and victims flying around screaming as they are seemingly attacked by a ghost. YET it wasn't deemed silly that the box it was brought to America in was far too tiny for such a beast, or that the ridiculous little padlock was useless, or that keeping the monster off screen was simply farcical.
Peter Fonda was a big part of the ruination of the film. His performance is rubbish and he takes up a lot of screen time.
It was made around the time where transformation sequences were all the rage (Howling, American Werewolf in London, Beast Within, Scanners) and so the film marketed itself as being about gory bodily explosions.
Had this film been generous with the giant devil snake and generous with the exploding bodies it would be an insane cult classic today. Instead it languishes about with that Fritz Weaver devil snake movie, the one whose trailer promises a giant snake but instead we just get a normal snake. Here we get teased by a giant snake and have Oliver Reed.
Boring film.
Peter Fonda was a big part of the ruination of the film. His performance is rubbish and he takes up a lot of screen time.
It was made around the time where transformation sequences were all the rage (Howling, American Werewolf in London, Beast Within, Scanners) and so the film marketed itself as being about gory bodily explosions.
Had this film been generous with the giant devil snake and generous with the exploding bodies it would be an insane cult classic today. Instead it languishes about with that Fritz Weaver devil snake movie, the one whose trailer promises a giant snake but instead we just get a normal snake. Here we get teased by a giant snake and have Oliver Reed.
Boring film.