If I seem a tad fixated on Giant Monster films recently, there’s good reason for that — a reason I hope to be able to reveal soon enough. But at the very least it’s indicative of the fact that there’s nothing like box-office success to lure the giant ‘roaches out of the woodwork.
Latest off the rank is Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent (US-2008; dir. Amir Valinia). This one is much less microscopically budgeted than some that have surfaced of late and features a decent-looking giant snake of supernatural origin. It also features a seemingly inevitable black rapper, DMX, who gets to be the repository of plot-necessary esoteric voodoo knowledge and to race around with a rocket launcher, saving the usual vacuous twenty-something / post-pubescent party animals who are doomed to become snake chow. Personally I’m sick to death of the “bunch of guys and gals who are off for a weekend of fun but will get attacked by a monster, slasher or ghost instead” trope and would like them all to get eaten — but I probably shouldn’t be surly about the stereotype. Sometimes it works — and sometimes their presence is merely token. Maybe this is the case here and other, more interesting things are going on. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, I like the look of the beastie. From the trailer the filmmakers are smart enough to keep it in semi-darkness in order to hide the inevitable flaws in the no-doubt low-budget CGI.
You can see the trailer here. Hang around to the end to catch a glimpse of the snake.
I was also going to tell you about Jim Wynorski’s latest effort — a soft-porn parody of Cloverfield called either Cleavagefield or Chestyfield. I was going to mention that it arose from an idea “developed” on Fred Olen Ray’s chat group. I was also going tell you that it features a bunch of bimbos holding a going-away party in Los Angeles for one of their number who’s off to star in a porn film or something, when the city is attacked by a giant monster infested by lice that have a penchant for dropping off the monster and eating the clothes from the nubile bodies of beautiful young women as they race through the streets filming the event with a hand-held camera.
But I’ve decided not to say a thing about it.
