Jaws of Satan (1981)

Right of the bat I'd like to AGAIN question IMDb's rating for this film! They list it as "R." Based on what? No sex violence or profanity! Also my VHS copy clearly states "PG." As far as B movies go the production quality isn't that bad.This is one of those films with a decent set up and NO PAY OFF! I've seen several killer snake movies that turn out that way like Oliver Reed's 'Venom.' The creepy set up consists of a priest (Fritz Weaver of 'Scanners') being told by a fortune teller that his ancestors in England persecuted the pagan Druids whom put a curse on his family.Wait! I just checked his flexography and remember he wasn't in 'Scanners!' So what else do we know Fritz Weaver from? A few episodes of 'L&O.' Fortunately the priest knows exactly how to deal with fortune tellers. "A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortune-teller shall be put to death by stoning; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death." Leviticus 20:27 But no, Father Weaver doesn't kill her a few minutes later, she's killed by the curse.Anyway snakes on a train kill the conductor and the train car comes into town. Pretty soon there are dozens of fatal snake bites.Just like every killer animalxploitation film the smart lady reporter wants to call in the feds for help, but greedy businessmen want to stop her as a public scare could hurt the business at the town's center of commerce, a dog racing track. Yup that's the key plot point of this movie a dog racing track.Here the businessmen are so evil they even hire someone to kill the reporter. WTF? Isn't this going a little too far.The head businessman's daughter really stands out as being cuter than Shirley Temple. When predictably she too is bitten I realized whom she was, Christina Applegate! Yup, and the businessman's wife is Christina's real life mother Nancy Priddy.Unlike most killer animal movies there are no epic scenes of swarms of animals. Even 'Dogs' had that. Almost all the snake attack scenes simply consist of an actor screaming in pain and then collapsing to the ground.There are a few boring scenes of snakes cornering people. Now I'm no zoologist but all the snakes appear to be cobras (probably only one cobra was actually used for filming). Since cobras aren't American I kept waiting for the reporter and the scientist to uncover some kind of dark secret that a cobra from Asia was on the train and began breeding with local snakes thus creating a heard of killer snakes? No, this is never explained.The climax is also a major let down. The reporter and scientist track the snakes' headquarters to a cave. So can't they just seal off the cave? How are these snakes traveling tens of miles all over town to bite people? Father Weaver accepts his fate and has a final confrontation with a cobra leading it into a fire. But what about the hundreds of other snakes all over town? Even presuming this cobra is their leader, killing it isn't going to simply make all the other snakes go away.The movie's good for a few laughs or if you want to see Christina Applegate's debut, and isn't horrible. It just suffers from the most back movie problem, boredom! The question still remains, was this part of a bigger conspiracy? Just an excuse to beat up the Irish?

This flick here still unavailable on DVD as I am writing this was made in the heydays of horror. But what this film does is showing us how not to make a horror. It's hard to believe with a cast like this that this is really a turkey. A snake is supposed to be Satan and terrorises a town. Looks promising but it's so low on everything and really has cheesy effects that I would classify it under a big failure. Bob Claver, the director in fact never made another movie, he was more into series. But the direction I could dig but the storyline and effects were laughable. In the beginning when the snake attacks on a train you could easily spot the glass partition between the snake and the victim, and it gets funnier when you see the snake hitting the glass. Further on you only see the bitemarks of the snake on swollen faces. The acting was okay, face it, big names from the genre were in it, Fritz Weaver and Gretchen Corbett of many famous horror flicks. But why most people are hunting the US VHS down is for the performance of the 10 year old Christina Applegate, here in her first role ever. And you will recognize her immediately due her eyes.Jaws Of Satan is only worth watching for Christina fans or for the lovers of bad horror flicks. maybe some will want to see Gretchen walking around in her nudies but it's clean edited with nothing to see. It doesn't deliver scariness or blood, it's a lot of blah blah and you really must see the cheesy ending.Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

(There are Spoilers) Almost dropping dead from fright Evelyn Downs, Diana Douglas, the president of the Green County Historical Society and part time Witch saw something in Father Tom Farrow's, Fritz Weaver, coffee cup that left her stunned and unconscious.Later the confused and befuddled Father Farrow is told by the Monsignore, Norman Llyod,of his church the horrible secret of Farrow's lineage. Father Tom's Great-great-great-great-great Granddaddy back during the middle-ages in jolly old England did a number on the local Druids who were in league with the Devil. For that his's family was cursed since then by the "Evil One" with death and destruction. Now it's his, Father Tom's, turn to pay for what his long ago ancestor in England did. The brood of snakes, Cobras and Rattle Snakes led by Satan himself, in disguise as a giant King Cobra attack, move with lighting speed and kill about a dozen residents of Green County. But when it came to kill their intended target, Father Tom, as well as the two co-stars in the movie Green County's hospital director Dr. Maggie Sheridan & Herpetologist Dr. Paul Hendricks, Gretchen Corbett & Jon Korkes,the snakes just laid down and seem to play dead. There was an incredible scene in the movie when Maggie is at home and takes a shower and then drys and puts on her nightgown and goes to bed. All this with a deadly Rattle Snake slithering around in her bathroom shower and bedroom within inches of her! Then for some unexplained reason the snake doesn't bother striking it's poisonous fangs into Maggie's body? It gets even more ridicules when Maggie finally, after what seems like a half hour, sees the snake and then calls her boyfriend Dr. Hendricks for help. Dr. Hendricks gets out of bed gets dressed runs to her house, which is about a mile away, and then after pinning the snakes head to the wall blows it's brains out! What was the snake waiting for all this time? For Hendricks to come to Maggie's rescue and kill it? Fritz Weaver looked like he would rather do something else then be in the movie. Weaver walks around during the entire film in a daze trying to figure how he ever ended up in "Jaws of Satan" in the first place. Maggie being a whistle-blower and trying to warn the public about the danger of the attacking snakes is almost kidnapped raped and murder by this psycho biker, Mike Smith the 34th. Smith the 34th was hired to stop her from letting the truth out by Green Country big business man Matt Perry, Bob Hanna. Perry has a lot to lose by the public being in fear and not venturing out with his dog track about to open with nobody showing up for the Grand Opening. This jerk was so determined to open the dog track that even after his 10 year-old daughter Kim, Christina Applegate, was bitten by a rattler at the track he still didn't want to have it closed down!Maggie is saved from the crazed biker by non-other then Satan himself wearing a King Cobra outfit. The movie "Jaws of Satan" comes to it's inevitable and non-surprising conclusion with Father Tom running to the rescue of both Maggie and Dr. Hendrick,who ended up trapped in the snake cave. Father Tom then does an Exorcism in both English and Latin causing the nest of vipers to catch fire and go back to where they came from.What makes the movie "Jaws of Satan" worth watching is to see the actors in it play their parts completely straight. Not realizing just how absurd the movie was until they actually saw it and by then it was too late for them to quit.

The beauty of "Jaws of Satan" is that the Farmer's son was my 9th grade drama teacher and this was Christina Appelgate's first movie, so I can really show off when playing the six degrees game. Why anyone who does not meet these rather unique audience criteria would endure this abysmal piece of claptrap is beyond me. The plot highlights include an ancient Druid curse somehow connected to rural Georgia and tons of scenes of actors being menaced by stock footage of a cobra. "Jaws of Satan" is about as suspenseful as finding a rubber snake in a big bin of rubber snakes marked with a sign reading in huge, red letters - "Sale! Rubber Snakes"