Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1987)

[DrNgor]

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1987)

Okay, this is my first cut n' paste film made by at least one member of the trifecta of Joseph Lai, Tomas Tang and Godfrey Ho. In this case, we have an IFD Films production (Joseph Lai's company) with a script by Godfrey Ho. The original film, King of Snake, was a 1984 Taiwanese production and a questionable effort in itself (for reasons I'll go into briefly), featuring Inframan himself, Danny. Then IFD got their mits on it, filmed a couple of brief fight scenes and gunfights with Pierre Kirby and other Western actors, inserted them into the film, and then dubbed the entire affair so that everybody accept the little girl would be spouting F bombs for a good portion of the running time, because, yes, our kaiju movies need more profanity.

King of Snake is a kaiju film about a girl, Ting Ting, with a rather intelligent pet snake whom she calls Mozler (or Mozla). The snake understands dubbed English and is able to raise up and nod its head at the questions she asks it. Meanwhile, a team of scientists led by Danny Lee have discovered a formula for making things grow. After an experiment involving a frog, a group of armed terrorists storm the compound. One of the scientists, Lin, gets away with the formula and a box, which is apparently part of the package. She ends up chucking it out the car before it goes careening off a Cliff. Ting Ting finds the box and puts Mozler in it, who starts growing. The girl and her oversized snake pet are spied on by one of the terrorists. The girl eventually is kidnapped by the terrorists while a kaiju-sized Mozler wreaks havoc on Taipei in search of his owner.

Now, that plot is more or less intact, so Joseph Lai's scenes make us believe that the terrorists are working for Solomon, a Caucasian nutcase who wears casual clothes and babbles on about making the Third World bend to his will. Opposing him is Ted Fast (Pierre Kirby) who spends the film walking around random Taiwanese locales in military fatigues and getting into gunfights with Solomon's goons, none of whom are Asian.

The bizarre thing about the entire exercise is that the movie really does not know who its audience is, and that even goes for the King of Snake footage. The early scenes of Ting Ting and Mazler would fit in a children's film about a kid and his/her monstrous pet. And in 1984, I'm pretty sure that kaiju eiga were still viewed as mainly being kiddie fare. So then why all the violent gunfights, high body count, and numerous scenes of female (including Ting Ting's mother) characters being savagely beaten and pistol-whipped by the terrorists?

Once Mozler becomes the forerunner to Anaconda and all those cheap snake monsters made in the aughts, the film settles into traditional kaiju territory. The FX are on par with what you might see from a cheap Godzilla knock-off from the late 60s, like the original Yongary film. The FX were provided by a Japanese fellow named Chujio Shintaro, who made a living in the 70s and 80s doing special FX and cinematography on numerous low-budget Taiwanese fantasy movies (a look on the IMDB reveals no Japanese credits to his name). The model is rarely believable, but has its own goofy charm. The miniatures are solid and we do get a scene where Mozler coils around an entire building. My theory is that the Manda chapter in Marc Cerazini's novel Godzilla at World's End was an homage to this film.

In the end, this is a truly wackadoo film that must be seen to be believed. Don't ever understand that to mean it's good in any way, though.

[ThunderScore]

Stock footage from MOTHRA (1961) also appears in this...