REVIEW: THUNDER OF THE GIGANTIC SERPENT
REVIEW: GODFREY HO [ 1988 ] 86'
REVIEW: IFD FILMS & ARTS LTD.
CAST: PIERRE KERBY, EDOWAN BERSMEA
CAST: DANNY RAISEBECK, DEWEY BOSWORTH
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:
WTF-FILMOMETER: Monsters, terrorists, guns, kung fu, and a whiny kid who puts the well-being of her pet snake abover her family's in a crisis situation . . .

WTFFILM would like to take a moment to thank the good people at CINEMAGEDDON [cinemageddon.org] - for without them this review would not have been possible. For providing the world with torrents of truly bizarre crap, I thank you all.

THUNDER OF THE GIGANTIC SERPENT (the IMDB lists the original title as DAAI SE WONG) is something I've known about for some time. I first stumbled upon an image of it while sifting around an old and now-defunct video trading page and wondered why I'd never heard of it before - more information was gleaned from MONSTRULA's [monstrula.de] file on it under the German release title of TERROR SERPENT. Since then the film has become more or less readily available on the bootleg video market, with VHS and DVD dupes from a Greek VHS source cropping up on many lists online.

Other than those few sources, there's not much to go on with this one other than intuition. The IMDB only recently added a page for the film, which is no wonder since precious little reliable information on the title or how it came to be is available.

Here is what is known for sure. The film was directed (I use the term loosely) by Hong Kong veteran Godfrey Ho, who is most infamous for a spate of cut-and-paste efforts in which he took a number of unrelated low-budget actioners and minced them together with newly shot footage of caucasian actors. The results were a number of films made for the price of one. This film seems to be of that ilk, though the main body of it seems to come from an unidentified giant monster film that was, apparently, never released on its own. The remainder of the footage consists of white guys who only come into contact with the rest of the film through mis-matched cross shots (a general will say something, and suddenly there's a cut away to a white guy sitting in an empty set).

The finished product was re-dubbed (presumably in Chinese as well as English) to blend the rather disparate material together and THUNDER OF THE GIGANTIC SERPENT was born. It's impossible to say at the moment whether or not this ever played theatrically in its homeland - it certainly never had a theatrical release here. The only real evidence of its existence is in the handful of VHS releases made of it over the years in Germany and Greece (if such releases were made elsewhere WTFFILM has never heard of them). No other release material, be it posters, lobby cards, or newspaper adverts, have ever been seen by these eyes. That the film was pieced together simply to be thrust into the booming home video market seems real possibility given the time period and lack of release material.

The film begins with the opening credits (crediting the new caucasian cast first, of course) being shown over backdrops of salamanders and snakes and lizards and things while a music cue that would seem more at home in an 8-bit video game drones on. These cut directly to a dark and stormy night that seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the film - on some island some place a bunch of snakes are washed away in a mudslide.

From there we are introduced to Solomon, the film's villain, as he shoots some cans in his back yard. With his receeding hairline and uber-casual dress, Solomon isn't someone you'd expect to be the head of a major international terrorist organization - perhaps that is all part of his brilliant scheme. What brilliant scheme, you ask? Why the brilliant scheme to steal the formula of course. What is the formula, you ask? We aren't told, but apparently it works on plants. This leads Solomon to eloquently order Billy and his men to "bring me the formula and bring it back to me" before maniacally cackling about world domination.

We cut from there to a little girl playing with her - ehem - snake. But it's not just any snake - this one nods its head in reaction to whatever the girl says to him via the art of string-guided animation (no expense was spared for this production). After naming the snake Moslah, she runs off to have dinner with her untrusting mother and her dick of a father. The girl quits the table early and steals some quail eggs away to feed Moslah, who is promptly seen by the mother. While the mother screams the girl (hitherto referred to as Ting Ting) replaces the snake with a rubber one she has handy. The father laughs and calls his wife a coward.

Cut to the military research project that is developing the formula - with tests on plants succesful, the commanding general orders that the Thunder project begin. The Thunder project involves testing the formula on animals. The formula is revealed to be a plexiglass box with some curly wires inside of it - not what most would assume a formula to be, but whatever - and its useage on a bullfrog ends with the frog increasing in size dramatically (from normal size to that of a dog, roughly. Gee, I wonder how the gigantic serpent is going to become gigantic?). The scientists congragulate themselves just in time for the terrorists to attack. All but one of the scientists are killed in the ensuing gun fight and at least one car explodes without provocation, but the formula (referred to briefly here as the box) is lost . . .

. . . and found by Ting Ting, who apparently lives just off the site of a major military operation. She finds the formula and decides that it would make a lovely new home for Moslah, whom she promptly puts inside. Somehow or other the thing is turned on, and Moslah instantly grows into a 20 or so foot long puppet. But he's still a smart snake and, for whatever reason, he still likes Ting Ting, so the two spend their afternoons playing together (I don't even want to think of the psychological undertones of a little girl playing hide and seek with a 20 foot snake). In one particularly ludicrous scene, Moslah saves Ting Ting from a burning building (which Moslah, itself, put her inside of) by bursting through the wall and literally flying into the wild blue yonder, Ting Ting in tow. Amazing stuff, to be sure.

All is not well, however, as the terrorists have spotted Ting Ting and her giant snake and have come to the conclusion, quite correctly, that the giant snake, the girl, and the formula are all connected. A trap for the snake consisting of a few stakes planted into the ground with electrified wire wrapped around them is setup near Ting Ting's house and the terrorists head off to kidnap the little girl. Moslah intervenes, predictably, but is caught in the trap - the electricity running through the wires apparently has the same effect as the formula, and the terrorists soon find themselves facing a monstrous serpent that must stand hundreds of feet tall when fully - ehem - erect.

The terrorists find themselves with only one means of fighting the beast - the plane. The plane turns out to be a single engine Sessna (or at least a model thereof) that shoots animated gunfire. Moslah knocks it out of the sky with some mighty serpent tail-fu, but the battle gives the terrorists just the edge they need to run off with Ting Ting. Moslah sets off in hot pursuit, annoying policeman and destroying public property at an alarming rate before a final showdown with the military.

It's important to note that throughout the entire film, a white man in commando garb is running about the Hong Kong countryside shooting thugs without mercy (he has one cornered early on in the film and, even though the no-good chump could have easily been taken into custody, he is instead shot in the face. As my girlfriend stated at this point, "This movie is full of dousche bags!"). This man's name is Ted Fast . . . I'll give you a moment to let that soak in . . . and he always works alone (and, apparently, on foot). He, through the glory of editing, is tasked with finding and putting an end to Solomon. He does, in the end, in one of the all-time great one-sided kung fu battles in cinema history.

The main attraction to THUNDER OF THE GIGANTIC SERPENT is undoubtedly the gigantic serpent, who involves itself in a good deal of city-smashing antics in the latter half of the film. The special effects range from decent to awful (several composite shots of people running while Moslah towers in the background fair the best), with Moslah itself being only a few solid steps above the mighty Reptilicus in terms of believability. One particularly embarrassing scene involves a cutaway to an oncoming train - viewers who are unprepared may find themselves believing that the film has actually cut away to someone's table-top train set! The effects work is judiciously peppered with stock footage from a variety of sources - WTFFILM caught shots from SUBMERSION OF JAPAN [1973] and MOTHRA [1961] on the first viewing.

The musical score fairs about as well. Music production is credited to Stephen Tsang, but WTFFILM would find it difficult to believe that any cues original to the production are present at all. The usage of random cues is nothing new in the Asian film industry, MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE used tracks by Tangerine Dream and German band NEU!, while THE KILLER METEORS featured a goodly amount of music from the original KING KONG! I was hard pressed to identify much of what was on display here, though astute viewers will be amused to hear a chunk of the score to Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR [1985] crop up during the proceedings.

Direction is diffuclt to critique in a case like this, as Godfrey Ho seems to have simply taken a previously unreleased film and edited a bit of new footage into it. Ho's contributions certainly fair the worst and feature enough stilted dialogue and juvenile blocking to make most freshman film students want to scream - the main body of the film fares rather well, by comparison, but is no better than your average low budget 80's actioner in terms of overall quality. More confusing is just who the original film was intended for. The main plot involving Ting Ting and her snake, though admittedly creepy in Freudian terms, could have been intended for children had it not been constantly interrupted by gun fights and a number of scenes involving the terrorists graphically abusing members of the cast (including Ting Ting's family . . . twice!). With Godfrey Ho's laughable inserts taken into account, THUNDER OF THE GIGANTIC SERPENT truly becomes a film without an identifiable audience.

While demonstrably awful in almost every conceivable way the film does move along at a good pace and, given its demonstrable awfulness, remains thoroughly entertaining if entirely unengaging. This one is definitely best for group viewing and should benefit considerably from a few rounds of drinks. This one has made its way to the top of WTFFILM's favorites list and comes highly recommended, if for all the wrong reasons.