Boa vs. Python



There is a point where the Sci Fi original Boa vs. Python became a great movie, either as a clever self parody or as a hilarious example of completely irony-deficient ineptitude. That moment is when Playboy Playmate Jamie Bergman, playing a marine biologist, declares "I'm dying to know what kind of situation could possibly require the use of his boa and my implants!"



Despite the title implying that this is crossover between the Dean Cain vehicle Boa (2002) and the Python series of films, the only references I picked up on were a couple of passing ones to Python II (2002). A rich big game hunter with his own computer generated 747 has bought a giant snake in Russia with the intent of releasing it on his property and having a bunch of rich guys help him hunt it. His plan goes awry when the snake escapes near Philadelphia, but the hunter just moves the hunt.

Meanwhile the CIA takes an interest and, apparently having turned the project over the Department of Wacky Plans, decides to have a marine biologist (Bergman) wire up a giant boa bred by a herpetologist (David Helwett) for sound and picture and let it go in the same area as the python, apparently because the boa will naturally hunt the python down. Was there no giant mongoose available?

Being a Sci Fi original movie there are four things we can expect, and Boa vs. Python delivers on all of them in spades.

- The monsters will be computer generated. The effects in Boa vs. Python are not really bad, but the snakes are oddly cute until they open their mouths.

- The movie will feature at least one Playboy Playmate, usually Angel Boris. Oh yeah, Angel Boris is in Boa vs. Python, and she brought her camo lingerie. She's playing the game hunter's main squeeze, Eve. Ha ha ha. And Angel is the bonus Playmate, after Bergman.

- The movie will have some formerly communist country subbing for the U.S. It's usually Romania, but in this case it's Bulgaria. As usual when they do this the smaller roles are cast with local actors who are bizarrely out of place if they're supposed to be Americans. Boa vs. Python features a guy named Tex, supposedly from Lubbock, who doesn't sound vaguely Texan, a TV news cameraman who can't pronounce "Dan Rather," and a horny teenage girl who looks about thirty and is obviously dubbed. Angel Boris is in so many of the European shot movies I wonder if she hasn't moved over there to make sure she doesn't miss any.

- There will be lots of scenes of people stalking monsters through industrial corridors, in this case a water purification plant where the snakes decide to nest.

Boa vs. Python is actually fairly entertaining as far as these kinds of films go. The acting is rarely painful, and it does deliver a lot of snake action and the promised snake fight at the end is almost clever. It's probably worth waiting until the DVD comes out however, when the gore and nudity will no doubt be reinstated. As it played on Sci Fi there were plenty of cutaways and even some optical fogging, just to make it feel that much more dirty.

Posted: Sun - May 23, 2004 at      

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