I wasn’t really go do a review for this one so soon, i had saved in my Amazon Prime Video list for when i would have been bored enough, or needed to do it for a special, but i noticed the “this title won’t be available after the 5th of December 2020”, so once again i felt coerced to watch and review before its gone or back as a paid rental or tied to another paid subscription within the subscription i’m already paying for.
Heck, i didn’t even knew it was a sequel to The Curse Of The Komodo (which i happen to own, having picked up an ultra cheap DVD copy for it in a flea market some time ago), released just one year prior by the same director… “Jay Andrews”, at least according to the credits.
“Jay Andrews” is actually one of the many pseudonyms of Jim Wynorski, a prolific B-movie filmmaker, trained and formed by Corman like many, whom also directed some fan favorites like Chopping Mall, the Sorceress series, Sorority House Massacre II and III, collaborated with Fred Olen Ray on Dinosaur Island, and Scream Queen Hot Tub Party (among others) , a lot of erotic thrillers and plenty of porn parodies in the early 2000s, with titles like “Cleavagefield”.
While i found out this is tecnically a sequel… it is in the same way Carnosaur 3 was a sequel to Carnosaur 1. Actually i’m not that sure, because while i haven’t seen The Curse Of The Komodo yet at the time of writing, if the synopses online for the movie are correct, it’s not really a continuation but just another movie filmed in an identical location, with the same basic plot elements of scientists (with a scientist and his daughter working on the research team) creating genetically mutated Komodo dragons in a remote, unmarked island in the middle of tropical nowhere, the army coming in to “doing sumethin about it” after funding the experiments in the first place.
This time we have a different group of people coming to the island, an enviromentalist group called One Planet, because they catched wind of some secret government experiment and wanted to blow the lid on it with the help of a reporter. And there are also giant cobras, also made giant after the experiments to genetically made plants and fruits bigger (Food Of Gods style) worked, so the army wanted them to try on animals on the island, which happened to be reptilians.
It’s no wonder it’s often sold or marketed as its own thing, hilariously even put in double-pack DVD with movies that aren’t his 2004 “precedessor”. I will get to that movie very, very soon, it’s a given since i already did this one, but you can watch it on its own, you really aren’t missing anything.
It’s really just the usual bullshit, the same old low budget monster movie crap, with some of the more modern flavors of “bad”, with crappy CG for the monsters, the military made of some soldiers that get eaten in 5 minutes, mustached generals played by TV actors that are clearly above this material but signed an obligation anyway, including Paul Logan (yes, i didn’t accidentally swapped name and surname), better known for Mega Piranha, and he was in The Curse Of The Komodo as well.
And people shooting from handguns with infinite muzzleflashed bullets, you gotta have guns going by arcade videogame logic. That said, it’s a “reliable” flick, you can trust its ability to at least kill some boredom, it’s as competent as it needs to be for a cheap ass monster movie of this ilk, just enough entertaining, the characters are not complete idiots, it’s just bad enough to not be a complete slog or a frustrating endurance test, where you actively and aggressively hate every character and wait an entire movie to see the monster fight happening at the very end.
Even if the match between Komodo and Cobra (yes, with a C) still happens at the very end, it’s brief and as fun as it can with crappy CG, but at least there’s a reason for it to happen besides being promised by the title, the movie goes by fairly quickly with the usual B-movie bullshit, the production values are not as bad as you’d expect (the military outfits for example don’t look ransacked from a charity shop.)
It’s serviceable TV movie monster trash, it’s alright, it’s “fine”.
Wise Cafe (International) 