Jaws of Satan

In this legendary trashy flick called "Jaws of Satan" the priest played by Fritz Weaver battles Satan in a form of a giant cobra snake.I must say that "Jaws of Satan" has to be one of the most idiotic horror films of 80's.It mixes the theme from "The Exorcist" with the-nature-run-amok plot in the vein of "Jaws" or "Grizzly".All the death scenes in "Jaws of Satan" look exactly the same.Poor victim gets bitten by a reptile,screams and falls down.On a train.In the forest.The acting is passable and the photography by Dean Cundey is professional."Jaws of Satan" marks the big-screen debut of Christina Applegate.5 out of 10.For 80's horror completists only.

The beauty of "Jaws of Satan" is that the Farmer's son was my 9th grade drama teacher and this was Christina Appelgate's first movie, so I can really show off when playing the six degrees game. Why anyone who does not meet these rather unique audience criteria would endure this abysmal piece of claptrap is beyond me. The plot highlights include an ancient Druid curse somehow connected to rural Georgia and tons of scenes of actors being menaced by stock footage of a cobra. "Jaws of Satan" is about as suspenseful as finding a rubber snake in a big bin of rubber snakes marked with a sign reading in huge, red letters - "Sale! Rubber Snakes"

Imitating the success of a certain horror classic is quite easy. Everybody did it back in the early 80's. All you had to do was steal the basic concept of a great film and/or box office hit, add more nastiness and preferably some sleazy sequences as well, and you had yourself an insignificant but enjoyable horror movie. Ain't nothing to it. One thing that does require a lot of courage (and tasteless insanity, for that matter), however, is to simultaneously rip off TWO legendary horror classics even though their plots have absolutely nothing in common! The title of this shameless piece of 80's cheese reveals it all: we are dealing here with a cash-in of both "Jaws" AND "The Exorcist". How can you possibly blend the concept of animals on the rampage with satanic possession, I hear you ask? Well, you can't… Surely the first draft of the screenplay made this clear as well, but they went along and made the movie anyways. In a godforsaken rural town in Alabama, Satan suddenly and for no apparent reasons possesses a rattlesnake. Or maybe He simply just appears in the form of a virulent snake? Actually, that would explain why it suddenly turns into a King Cobra. I don't know, either that part of the script didn't get explained properly or I wasn't paying enough close attention. Numerous dead bodies, mutilated with giant gaping holes in their faces, have to pop before the local priest decides to come into action. He's a direct descendant of a family of Druids, so if anyone can exorcise this slithery venomous demons, it's him. In good old Jaws tradition the town's prominent council members also refuse to admit there's a problem, since they just opened a fancy dog-racing track and hope to lure many tourists with this attraction. "Jaws of Satan" is a delightfully inept and imbecilic low-budget horror flick, typical for the early 80's, with clumsy effects and laughable "stunts". This is the type of movie that wants us to believe one of the characters comes into face to face contact with a deadly snake, even though you can clearly spot the dirty Plexiglas that separates them. Another character, the female lead heroine, spends an incredibly long time on the bed with a snake whilst nothing happens. She calls her boyfriend for help, and even though he's in his motel room a couple of streets away and still needs to get dressed first, the snake patiently awaits his arrival before launching attack. There are a bunch of underdeveloped sub plots that lead nowhere, like a rapist biker chasing the heroine or a spiritual medium lady that can't even predict her own death. On a slightly more positive note, the snake-bitten faces of the victims are quite cool (although it's the exact same make-up repeated 6 times) and the rural Alabama filming locations are very enchanting. And yes, that cherubic little blond girl is indeed the future Kelly Bundy in her very first appearance.

This flick here still unavailable on DVD as I am writing this was made in the heydays of horror. But what this film does is showing us how not to make a horror.

It's hard to believe with a cast like this that this is really a turkey. A snake is supposed to be Satan and terrorises a town. Looks promising but it's so low on everything and really has cheesy effects that I would classify it under a big failure. Bob Claver, the director in fact never made another movie, he was more into series. But the direction I could dig but the storyline and effects were laughable.

In the beginning when the snake attacks on a train you could easily spot the glass partition between the snake and the victim, and it gets funnier when you see the snake hitting the glass. Further on you only see the bitemarks of the snake on swollen faces.

The acting was okay, face it, big names from the genre were in it, Fritz Weaver and Gretchen Corbett of many famous horror flicks. But why most people are hunting the US VHS down is for the performance of the 10 year old Christina Applegate, here in her first role ever. And you will recognize her immediately due her eyes.

Jaws Of Satan is only worth watching for Christina fans or for the lovers of bad horror flicks. maybe some will want to see Gretchen walking around in her nudies but it's clean edited with nothing to see. It doesn't deliver scariness or blood, it's a lot of blah blah and you really must see the cheesy ending.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

This movie is never really sure if it wants to be one of those, "Nature is going to totally kill you" movies or a "Satan is behind everything" movie. So it tries to be both and we aren't really sure who our protagonist is, the drunken Priest or the Dashing Herpatologist.

So there's a town where an evil demonic snake takes control of all the other snakes and start randomly biting people. But the Snake is really Satan, trying to get the last of the priests from the line that drove him out of Ireland. Or something. If you were confused, so were the directors and writers.

The Jaws element is that they are keen to open a dog racing track even though people in the town are being randomly bitten by snakes.

The movie is kind of a meandering mess, ending in a cave where the drunken priest confronts Satan-snake... and frankly, it's kind of a letdown. I take back what I've said about all the over the top CGI sequences in movies, at least they have something going on.