We spotted the above DVD in the discount bin at Walmart. A quick glance at the back revealed that one film was Thai and the other two Chinese, and since the Chinese ones were giant snake films I could hardly hand over my crisp $5 fast enough!
Let’s get that first film out of the way first. Released in 2023 in Thailand as Thesis and then internationally as Immortal Species it’s now apparently called Jurassic Croc (the same name as an older film) and hardly worth its share of the price ($1.67).
This story is about a bunch of fools that go into the jungle in search of a magical plant (because of ‘the thesis’) and eventually run afoul of a gigantic crocodile. It’s a trash piece written and directed by a jackleg and would only interest lunatics so I won’t waste any more words on it here. Zero thumbs up.
Deep Sea Python is an entirely different experience! In recent years China has been spewing out giant snake films in remarkable quantities and I’ve always wanted to watch some.
The first fifteen minutes or so were mostly incoherent, with a mix of manatees, violence and slapstick and and yes that was an autocorrection but it effectively conveys how strange the film began so I’m keeping it.
After this mad intro, the protagonist, his fat friend, and two hot girls go through a whirlpool and up on (let’s call it) ‘Monster Island’ and things ramp up considerably. Aside from the giant python there’s skull crabs and killer bees and ‘trap vines’ and all sorts of gunplay, murder, public urination and even (let’s call him) ‘Chinese Tarzan’.
Of course the effects are terrible, the giant snake suffers from scale issues (which is common even in big budget creature films) and frankly the story is so half-baked it’s raw but it doesn’t matter at all because the main heroine is played by an actress (Qian Qian Ma) so pretty it was love at first sight for this starry-eyed geezer. For her alone, this is an easy 11 out of 10.
Deep Sea Mutant Snake is the result of someone going on a bender and eating seventeen bags of Korean cotton candy and having such an extreme case of sugar shock he wrote a script that wouldn’t have been possible from a sound mind.
My best attempt at a synopsis: Chinese James Bond fights 1000 snakes on a cruise liner before blowing up the ship to protect it from a kilometer-long mutant snake. He and his party of survivors end up on (let’s call it) ‘Monster Island’ where they fight barnacles and a mega-spider and (surprise surprise) the mutant snake that survived the explosion.
The film rollicks along at a cracking pace, and there’s no film ever made or that will ever be made with more snake action that this one, but ultimately this only served to teach us that (unfortunately) snakes aren’t everything. This was entertaining in its stupidity with better effects, more monsters and a hero both bolder and more likable than in the previous film, but in the end it lacked a soul. I’d give it three snakes out of five.
There’s a world of Chinese ‘creature films’ out there now, many of which are difficult if not impossible to watch in the west. As craptacular as these two snake movies were, they’ve certainly whetted my appetite for more in this genre, and they won’t be my last.
