Boa vs. Python

2004
Starring
David Hewlett as Emmett
Jaime Bergman as Monica Bond
Kirk B.R. Woller as Agent Sharpe
Adam Kendrick as Broddick
Angel Boris as Eve
Jeff Rank as Kent Humphries

The undisputed KING of made for Sci-Fi Channel movies. Combiner of franchises, giver of the ultimate battle no one was craving, Boa vs. Python is the answer to everyone’s prayers. No mention is made of the Boa franchise, but the Python movies get a quick mention. That is all we need, this stands alone. For what it is, it delivers the goods, we have giant monsters running amok, a cast of dispensable “cool” characters hunting it and becoming cannon fodder, nudity, and a hot babe scientist (combined with a dorky guy) who help to save the day. These giant snake movies all seem to take place in some alternate universe where giant snakes are 50 feet long, four feet around, and movie with lightning fast speed. Not only are these movies guilty, the older Anaconda does the same thing. In real life, a Boa vs. Python battle would probably just have the snakes sitting there doing nothing. That’s all they do in the zoo. Big snakes are boring. Fantasy big snakes are ultimate killing machines.

Opens with a La Luchadores battle between masked wrestlers named, appropriately enough, Boa and Python. This is attended by our resident bad guy, a muscle bound arrogant simp named Broddick, take away the first four letters and you have an apt description. Broddick’s girl is Playboy Playmate Angel Boris, who plays a lovely gun toting lass named Eve (Get it? Lord, I hope so.) Broddick is having something shipped across the country in a special truck, as you will find out soon enough, I might as well reveal it’s a Python that was to be prey for a private hunt Broddick was organizing. The python wakes up despite being heavily medicated. The incompetent guards, lead by Ramon, ends up blowing themselves up when they aren’t being eaten by the python, and the python soon escapes into the nearby water treatment plant. Good job, Ramon.

Back on Broddick’s private jet, ghastly painted “Broddick” on the side, in case you forgot who the arrogant loser is, Angel Boris takes a bath. I should complaint about the feasibility of taking a bath on a jet, but she’s naked, so I won’t complain, but instead admire in awe. Angel has a few fake tattoos added for effect, to pan her character as a bad girl. A snake crawls into the bathroom, it is a three foot type of snake, yet referred to as a garter snake, and it squeak’s like my dog’s chewtoy when tossed around. This truly is an alternate universe with gigantic snakes, hottubs on airplanes, Mexican wrestling in America, and squeaktoy snakes. Angel reveals she hates snakes, yet she has a giant snake tattoo running down her back. Chicks.

Some sexing is interrupted by a call from the shipping company wondering where the truck Broddick was using has gone to. The answer is quick in coming, as the local news station has picked up the wreckages of the truck, and local smug reporter Kent Humphries is blaming Al-Qay-EE-da. Kent Humphries has an ego bigger than the combined weight of the snakes in this movie. The actor playing him, Jeff Rank, even helped write Python 2. It all comes together. Kent Humphries ambushes FBI Agent Sharpe as soon as he arrives with annoying questions. Sharpe brushes him off and soon figures out there is a giant snake loose. He references the Python movies and shuts down the water treatment plant for Pittsburg, effectively dehydrating half of Pennsylvania. Agent Sharpe also asks for Monica Bond. I guess James has a sister or something.

Monica Bond is Playboy Playmate Jamie Bergman, and is a brilliant dolphin researcher, because all biologists are 25 year old blondes with kicking bods. Monica Bond makes extra dough by scamming kids on spring break by holding her breath. That must also be some fun sport in this alternate giant snake universe. Monica Bond and Agent Sharpe go to meet a guy named Emmett, who is a leading expert on gigantic snakes, and is raising a giant Scarlet Queen Boa named Betty. Emmett looks like Matt Besser from Upright Citizens Brigade and Robert Picardo’s love child. As Bond, Monica Bond has invented some tracking devices for her dolphins, those devices are now to be used on Boa Betty and she will be utilized in the search and destroy mission to find the Python.

Back in Broddick, the hunting party for the Python is all set, they will just change the venue to the Water Plant. Our hunters follow the rules of action films where rapid characters with gimmicks are introduced to become cannon fodder one by one. Luckily, it works out here. Our hunters:

Tex — J.R. Ewing-type from Texas

Mr. Foley — Military’s greatest sniper. He talks like Kevin Spacey and only uses one bullet

Mr. Danner — Red State hunter stereotype

James Danner — Mr. Danner’s wimpy, sensitive Blue State non-hunter wussy stereotype

Littlefield — Master huntsman, uses a crossbow, says nothing because that should make him cool like Boba Fett, right?

Let’s not forget Broddick himself, nor the lovely Angel Boris, who is wearing the most ridiculous hunting outfit ever conceived, with more midrift showing than a sorority convention.

What looks like Brian Austin Green’s Jackass watching 15-year-old brother and a 47-year-old woman are making out in the kid’s mom’s station wagon. The kid is even called Brian! They get Pythoned, and 47-year-old woman gets some Pythonniligus as an added bonus. I wonder if the detachable jaw is an asset. Because you were dying to know, Brian’s wang is named “Lester.” Thanks movie! Kent Humphries gets eaten as well, this Python sure eats a lot, considering most zoo snakes eat like once a week or so and just sit around the rest of the time. Kent’s sarcastic cameraman is left alone, which is a plus as he was pretty cool. Nice to see the movie recognizes that some characters are worth keeping around.

Agent Sharpe, Emmett, and Monica Bond release Betty to begin tracking down the python. There are technical problems from almost the first seconds, and then their military escort of four random officers wander off to kill the snake by themselves. Betty doesn’t like that, so she eats one guy, while a second army guy manages to set himself on fire in the middle of a water plant. This guy deserves some sort of special genius award. Instead of stopping Betty, Emmett tells the remaining brilliant Napoleons to shoot the steam pipes, because Boas see by heat, just like the Predator. This works, and the two manage to escape, and Betty the Boa goes back after the Python. While the exciting military snafu is happening, the hunting party has encountered the Python, and Tex has gone to the big oil rig in the sky. The rest of the team prepares to enter the plant, and Broddick grabs a flamethrower instead of a gun.

SNAKE SEX! Almost. The Boa has gone back underground, and is trying to et busy with the Python. Sharpe and Co. head to the snakey-hanky-panky, but the Sniper guy shoots Agent Sharpe and gets eaten by Boa, while Mr. Danner gets speared by a giant spike he was knocked into. Wussy son James Danner is too afraid to shoot the snake or even run for his life when torrents of rushing water comes into the area. Emmett and Monica Bond manage to escape. Outside the room but inside the plant, Angel Boris finds some snake eggs laid by the Python, who was secretly pregnant at the time. An egg is accidentally dropped, leading to Angel Boris becoming squishbait. Broddick’s flamethrower is ineffective, as it would hurt Angel, so he tries to switch to guns, but is too late, she is killed, and so is Littlefield. Now there is no more hunting party, but to delay Broddick’s death a little bit he gets arrested for poaching by an agent who is badly, badly dubbed and is usually played by a hand connected to an unseen offscreen person, who may not be the person they show when they dub, and looks just like an production assistant would look.

Monica and Emmett are taken back to Basecamp, which just happens to have spares of all their equipment set up ready to use. Philadelphia is cut off by the army, but somehow an underground rave is going on. Now, raves seem to happen all the time in low budget crappy movies. There was one in Catwoman, there is one here, they are included I would guess because they allow the director to put in some scenes with glowing lights, and thus look “arty.” It doesn’t work, and raves are so overused in the movie world that I bet they stopped having raves in real life in 1997 and have since moved on to another type of party that no one from Hollywood has heard of yet, probably called “Snorks.” That was a neat cartoon.

Bah, back to this movie. Broddick escapes because in this alternate universe the army is completely incompetent and allows a prisoner to escape with a flamethrower and an army humvee while they stand around picking their noses. This universe also features a goateed Anne Coulter who is the President of the ACLU and married to Conservative commentator Michael Moore. At the Rave, we got girls in bodypaint writhing around poles in blacklight in an attempt to be sexy, yet just reminding you of old Star Trek or other science fiction shows. Python shows up at the rave looking to score some X, and turns the DJ into Snake Chow. You could say the Python was making a statement on the industrial/house music scene, if you were looking for symbolism that wasn’t there, as you should still be thinking about the eastern European girls that were poledancing. Boa shows up at the club as well for a fight. Good thing Betty the Boa has her implants, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to tell her from the Python, except by the color. It is good that Sci-Fi Channel is thinking of their spectrumly challenged viewer base, but more than likely they think we are too stupid to tell colors apart. Broddick comes to the rave with the flamethrower and no explanation on how he figured out where the snakes were, and starts turning the place into a BBQ. The best part is the ravegoer who just stands there during all this until Broddick steals his cigar. The Army storms the rave, only to become Army Fried Steaks beneath Broddick’s Flame of Death. The army in this alternate universe is very incompetent. All good things must come to an end, and so do lame things like Broddick’s holding off of an army with some fire, as he runs out of gas and the two snakes rip him in half devouring him, pulling off the Giant Snake version of the spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp.

Finally, it’s FINAL BATTLE TIME! Boa and Python battle to the death in the Philly underground. Since the town is shut down, the subway is still running. Wait, ignore the running subway. The snakes fight onto the track, where Emmett realizes Betty is losing, and gives her a one-shot shock treatment, which knocks her off the railway, and distracts the Python just long enough for him to get hit by a second subway car which severs his head. Now, the city that has itself shut down has a working subway, and it’s working so fast cars only take a minute to come? I think not. Does Philly even have a subway?

Emmett and Monica Bond are happy they’ve won, but Betty has wandered off again, back to her nest in the Water Plant. The last shot of the film is those two going in to go get her.

Hey, giant snakes, what can you complain about? For starters, there wasn’t much of a Boa vs. Python fight in Boa vs. Python, which is kind of disappointing. The DVD cover even has the snakes even more gigantic trouncing through the streets of a big city as helicopters hover overhead. That would have been cooler, but not what the movie wanted. If Boa and Python were that big, then we could have them fight Godzilla. Sci-Fi Channel really dropped the ball by weakening their size. This is a cool, slick movie, that does it’s job of being a cool, slick, cheap monster film well, and is the highpoint of the giant snake films. Though that is like being King of People who Know Trivia about Manimal, it’s still better than what thousands of films could ever hope for. Highly recommended for all those who like trash like this, this trash IS our treasure. It’s kind of funny how all these giant snake movies seem to take place in the same universe, filled with giant CGI snakes, even ones by other studios, it all comes together, like the circle of life, or that image of the circle made out of the snake eating it’s tail. I shall fly my “Don’t Tread on Me!” flag high for this film!

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