'Snakes on a Plane' is as phony as a python with fangs. It's still fun, though.
John Crumpacker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Owen Maercks, co-owner of the East Bay Vivarium, holds a ... Owen Maercks says, "
On a reality meter, it's a total fail... As a movie purporting to show the terror of venomous snakes on an airliner, the only thing wrong with "Snakes on a Plane" is the title. It should be "Fake Snakes on a Plane."
There were a whole lot of pseudo serpents slithering around the aisles and overhead bins of South Pacific Flight 121, possessed of abilities mere mortal snakes could only dream of -- if creatures with brains the size of a pebble could actually dream. Snake wrangler ("What do you want to be when you grow up, Tommy?'')
Jules Sylvester had 450 snakes at his disposal for the movie but only a small number were in evidence on the screen. The rest were high-tech versions of the old rubber snake gag.
Sharp-eyed viewers could discern an occasional
corn snake, rat snake, king snake, Burmese python, Boelen's python and
ball python, each lending a shred of legitimacy to a project heavy on special effects. There were also brief shots of a
Gaboon viper, a gorgeous thick-bodied denizen of Africa with the longest fangs of any snake at 2 inches. Yikes! "
It seems like they had some real cobras, too," said Owen Maercks, co-owner of Berkeley's East Bay Vivarium, the most comprehensive reptile pet store in the country.
In Saturday's Datebook review of the movie, there appears to be a photo of a harmless
king snake terrorizing actor
Tygh Runyan. Dude, relax. King snakes are a gentle species, not prone to bite. The fake snakes on this plane, hopped up on the biologically false premise that pheromones inspire their fang frenzy, fly out of cubby holes, hiss like felines and snap like bullwhips as they pursue a terrified captive audience of warm-blooded prey.
Part of the movie's perverse appeal lies where the fake snakes strike: an eyeball, a poor urinating fellow's genitals and, William Tell-like, smack dab on a naked nipple. In nature, snakes strike at whatever body part is closest to them, usually hands, fingers, arms and bare feet. The greatest marksman in the snake world is the spitting cobra, which has an uncanny ability to nail its victim in the eyes.
"
On a reality meter, it's a total failure," Maercks said. "
But you can't judge a movie like that on a reality meter. It was fun. It's every person's worst fear of snakes to their most basic level." Starting in biblical times, snakes have been portrayed through the ages as the embodiment of evil, cunning and stealthy creatures capable of inflicting death strikes without warning. Truth is, disease-carrying rats and mice have killed many millions more people than snakes. What do many snakes eat? Rats and mice.
If ever a species was in need of a PR firm to spin all the good the creatures do, it's snakes. Just not fake venomous ones on a plane. Snakes in the wild move much more slowly and deliberately than the malevolent speed freaks in the movie. Given a choice, snakes will avoid human beings, striking only when cornered, threatened or otherwise agitated. An unctuous Englishman in an airline seat is not the typical prey of a
Burmese python, but in the movie, a faked-up version with unnatural fangs (pythons do not have fangs) constricts the man and starts to consume him head-first. That part the moviemakers got right, because all snakes, great and small, start with the smallest part of their prey and work down from there.
While snakes have powerful and fast-acting digestive systems, even a 20-foot Burmese might balk at ingesting a three-piece suit and dress shoes, to say nothing of wallet, keys and cell phone. Likewise, the fake viper that threw its coils around the lap dog of the Paris Hilton-esque diva might have had trouble breaking down the rhinestone collar once the toy hound was swallowed.
Despite the movie's reality shortcomings, Maercks, a person who makes a living educating people about snakes, enjoyed a movie in which snakes are once again misrepresented as objects of primal fear. "
I gave up long ago on expecting biological accuracy out of exploitation moves," Maercks said. "
It's just not going to happen." Maercks applauded the plot device that had the snakes whipped into attack mode by pheromones, even though that can't happen in real life. Snakes taste the world with forked tongues for mates, meals and whatever might menace them.
"
In the history of snakes in cinema, there is still one scene that has not been topped," Maercks said, referring to the cinema classic "
Tarzan, the Ape Man," starring Bo Derek. "
It's one of the most poorly shot scenes ever. There were several times in the scene where the snakes change species. That's a real neat trick."
In a delightful bit of irony, Maercks' partner at the East Bay Vivarium,
John Emberton, flew to Daytona Beach, Fla., over the weekend with real-life snakes on a plane. He attended a reptile show and brought with him a variety of snakes and lizards. Rather than stoked with a blood lust for human flesh, Emberton's docile snakes were safely packaged in Tupperware-like containers with perforated lids and placed in Styrofoam packing boxes and then into cardboard boxes marked "
Live Animals." But that wouldn't make for a very entertaining movie.
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