Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988) User Reviews

Someone Shut That Kid UP!!! ;[

[Steve_Nyland · 4/10 · 9 February 2007]

Good freaking GOD. If it wasn't for the near constant yelping and yammering of an obviously dubbed adult woman doing a falsetto little girl's voice for the concluding 20 minutes of this movie I might actually say I enjoyed it. I liked the movie, but good LORD.

SOMEONE SHUT THAT KID UP.

Thank you. This is a somewhat awkward Hong Kong made blend of about eight genres: Asian snake horror, Hong Kong crime thriller, commando adventure, martial arts chop-sockey, coming of age childhood fantasy, family crisis averted drama, nature strikes back message flick, and Godzilla monster movie matinée mayhem. It's not just a movie, it's a Dewar's profile. The film is also a nonstop parade of garish 1980s fashions, cars, consumer products, haircuts, and neon lighted 1st generation Macintosh animation.

The plot was elusive, something about a young tyke who's pet snake Martha gets zapped by some sort of experimental beam and gets big. Not just ANACONDA big, but GODZILLA big, with the final scene finding it wrapped around a phallic skyscraper & under attack by a squadron of model jet planes that shoot laser beams. And like any good Godzilla movie, Martha's scale changes from scene to scene based upon the needs of the script. One minute her head is big enough for a jet plane to crash into, the next small enough for the lil' moppet to give her a hug.

It's some snake too. One of the problems with a lot of Asian snake horror is that they often used real snakes who sometimes came to ill end right on camera. This one uses a few basket-fulls of them during the opening scenes with hordes of teeming snakes being churned up down in some sewer, but once Martha goes from snake size to wheel barrel sized (the first of three changes in scale that were plot developments rather than continuity anomalies) she is played by a series of puppets that actually looked kind of cute even when rampaging through Hong Kong's restaurant district. It can also have nonverbal dialogs with the kid, dances to pop music, and takes out gangs of Tommy Gun toting bad guys with a flick of the tail.

And it IS a fun movie, until the kid starts yelping. THUNDER OF GIGANTIC SNAKE is a schizophrenic movie, though: It doesn't seem to know if it wants to be a PG rubber monster film or an R rated shoot-em-up, there are some jarring moments of violence and the film concludes on a downbeat with a rather brutal killing. I guess this is one that daddies can watch with their little pumpkins on a rainy Saturday afternoon provided the kid is into John Woo thrillers. There is also a curious detachment to the ending where this snake has just caused millions of dollars of damage & killed untold numbers of innocents, yet there is an emotional welling for Martha's well-being. What about all those restaurants and the people in the skyscraper? Kids can be selfish I guess.

4/10

Simply barmy!

[HaemovoreRex · 5/10 · 27 May 2007]

Well, this is pretty insane stuff even by IFD standards!

The plot concerns the Thunder project which has produced a formula that can increase the physical proportions of both plant life and animals to between 300 and 1000 times their original size! Of course, such a scientific breakthrough inevitably attracts the nefarious attentions of a terrorist group led by a chap named Solomon who needless to say, promptly orders his cronies to procure the formula by any means necessary.

As it happens, the attempted seizure of the breakthrough is a failure and the formula ends up in the hands of a little girl......and her intelligent pet snake(!) Well, you can probably guess what happens next..... Yep, said snake grows.....and grows.....and GROWS! By the end of the film the bloody thing is as big as a skyscraper and has caused untold damage to everything around it.

In between all these giant snake shenanigans we find another sub plot i.e. newly edited in footage, involving Pierre Kirby of Full Metal Ninja and Zombie vs Ninja fame trying to track down Solomon; Cue a few fun to watch shoot outs and martial arts scenes as our man takes out Solomon's lackeys first.

If it sounds strange on paper then it's nothing compared to how it transpires on screen! Whilst this is far from the most enjoyable output to spring forth from the IFD stables, it certainly figures as one of the most absurd (which is saying a lot!)

Fellow bad movie fans take note!

Super sized serpent

[capkronos · 4/10 · 2 March 2008]

At a heavily-guarded military lab, scientists are working on a top secret experiment called The Thunder Project, which can make animals or plants grow up to 1000 times in size. There's a lot of talk about a special "formula" being utilized but it's really just a little glass box that shoots electricity into whatever is inside and makes it grow. After making a frog quadruple in size, the lab is attacked by a group of armed terrorists who want to get their hands on the formula. Most are shot dead, but one lady scientist manages to escape. During a car chase she throws the box out into the brush and fakes her own death by jumping out right before sending her car over a cliff. She ends up in a hospital, the terrorists continue searching for the box, the military and local police get involved and an American mercenary named Ted Fast (Pierre Kirby) tries to hunt down and kill the man responsible for things getting out of hand in the first place.

Meanwhile, a pudgy and extremely whiny little girl named Ting Ting is trying to keep her pet snake Mozlar hidden from her serpent-fearin' momma. Mozlar is no normal snake, though; it nods and shakes it head to answer "yes" or "no" when Ting Ting asks it questions! Ting Ting eventually finds the glass box outside on her back porch and decides that's the perfect home for her pet. She puts the snake inside, flips a switch (thinking it's a light), electricity shoots out and next thing she knows her pet is so big she has to keep it outside in a large storage building. Mozlar helps her defeat bullies in a game, plays ball and hide-and-go-seek with her and saves her life when she's trapped in a burning building. Eventually the terrorists show up and set a trap for the snake. It's electrocuted again and grows to a huge monstrous GODZILLA size. Ting Ting is kidnapped by the lead terrorist and Mozlar goes on a rampage trying to save her. It knocks over a bridge, derails a train, busts a dam and eventually enters a large city and reduces skyscrapers into piles of rubble, while fending off tank and fighter pilot attacks sent out by the military.

If you've seen a giant monster movie from Asia before you pretty much know what to expect here. Horrible dubbing. Check. Hokey fx. Check. Stock footage. Check. Crowds of screaming people running through stairwells and city streets. Check. "Moral of the story" lines slipped in at the end. Check. The snake special effects, a combination of medium and large model snakes and miniature city model mock-ups may be a bit cheesy, but they still look better than the majority of crappy CGI effects utilized nowadays. This one doesn't have quite enough snake rampage action for my tastes (too much time is spent on various shoot-outs and karate fights) and you'll want to strangle the little girl by the end of the movie, but it's still watchable for fans of silly Asian monster movies.

"I have a right to know. I'm a scientist!"

[hwg1957-102-265704 · 6/10 · 19 September 2022]

The simple story of a child and her pet snake. Well not that simple as it involves terrorists, scientists working on a secret project, bratty kids, gunfights, martial arts (sort of), panicking crowds, an agent in camos called Ted Fast who mainly walks about, the police, the military and all culminating in a monster reptile wrapping itself around a tall building being shot at by fighter jets. It's all rather silly and it's all rather entertaining, to me anyway. Auteur Godfrey Ho has entwined two films together as was his wont and produced something that is not a great film but one you can't take your eyes off. Your ears might suffer though as the dubbing, particularly of the girl Tin-Tin, can be awful.

I was always rooting for the snake named Moslar so it was a shame it had such a sad demise. Just like King Kong really...

Oddly enjoyable and over-the-top creature feature

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 9/10 · 25 June 2018]

Intrigued over a new chemical formula, a terrorist group launch an attack on a secret facility to acquire it only for the strange formula to inadvertently cause a young girls' pet snake to grow into a monstrous giant and terrorize the city forcing a special agent to stop the creature.

This version of the film was quite an enjoyably cheesy effort. One of the more entertaining aspects here is the fact that this one relies on such over-the-top action that mixing it all together creates such a fun experience. From the beginning, which has a great start here with the absolutely insane series of gunfights featuring the terrorist group coming to attack the facility with the guards forced into defending the escaping scientists into the woods, the second battle in the woods when the commando goes into action to rescue the formula and several later military ambushes with the commando where he sets out to stop the terrorist gang from getting ahold of the formula with the family. This action is compounded by the full-on monster movie fun to be had once the creature gets exposed to the formula. Going through several size stages, from a forty-to-fifty foot creature that gets involved with the girl helping her to get revenge on her bullies or help save the family from the terrorists once they find out the snake has been affected. Lighthearted and completely against the tone of the rest of the footage here which has this resorting to the kind of extravagant monster-on-the-loose scenarios complete with scenes of the military attacking the creature, miniature cityscapes resulting in plenty of cheesy spectacle and the kind of action-packed fun that normally results from seeing a goofy, silly monster movie. These here are what make this fun over its flaws. Those flaws, though, are mainly based around the manner of how the film was constructed. It's quite well-known that the film is edited from another movie and has additional footage inserted into the final release, and it's quite obvious how that occurs here. The footage of the Caucasian commando that adds nothing to the film and really looks to be shoehorned into the beginning and ending while completely disappearing from the rest of the movie which accounts for the majority of footage taken from the other movie. The wackiness of the material is something to get over as well, and the constant tonal shifts from goofy family comedy to straight action and then cheesy monster film which all come from the original film all combine into a rather chaotic and disorienting experience. Otherwise, there's not much else about the movie itself to really dislike.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

Awesome of expanded reptile girth rampage!

[Bezenby · 8/10 · 28 January 2017]

I'm sure Ian Curtis's soul can rest in peace knowing that "I Remember Nothing" has been used in a Godfrey Ho film. Did anyone tell Edgar Froese how much coverage Tangerine Dream have in these films? Both Phaedra and Logos turn up in this one. And what sounds like Throbbing Gristle? Weird.

This film is kind of like E.T. if E.T. was a snake who kept getting bigger every time it came into contact with electricity, who also loved a little girl so much that it was willing to kill everybody else in China to be with her. Such is love in the world of Godfrey Ho.

So Ting Ting (the girl) and Moslar (the snake) are buddies, and I immediately burst out laughing when a real live snake with a bonnet on it's head was forced to nod by some invisible wire. Thankfully we don't get much of this as when Moslar grows he's replaced by a rubber snake. Which makes things ever funnier.

The snake helps the girl win races, plays beach ball with her, and saves her from the hordes of gangsters who want the formula that made the snake grow in the first place. This film would be almost sweet if it wasn't for the gangsters and police graphically gunning each other down for most of the fist half of the film.

Luckily Moslar becomes truly giant and that's when things become proper mental. Godfrey must have been laughing all the way to the bank with this one because he hardly had to lift a finger to film some crappy tack-on white guy stuff. This film didn't need it. It's a truly insane classic of some kind.

Moser!

[BandSAboutMovies · 8/10 · 1 August 2023]

This movie is why I keep on writing.

Take King of Snake, also known as Da She Wang, a movie directed by Yu-Lung Hsu and starring Danny Lee - Infra-Man! - as Dr. Ling, an inventor who makes R19, a drug that can transform organic matter into gigantic things. Maybe that would be a good idea for fruit or vegetables.

But then a snake gets into it.

Yet in this version, remixed and remade by Godfrey Ho, there's also a hardass government agent named Ted Fast (Pierre Kirby) who is tracking down some terrorists while the world explodes all around him as a gigantic snake named Moser and his human friend Tingting just try and be a snake and his little girl, except he gets too big and starts killing hundreds if not thousands of people.

As Ted Fast comes after his enemy Bob Solomon (Edowan Bersma), who wants to use the formula to grow giant food and take over the world's need for groceries, he has only the losest of ties to the reality of the other movie, as always united through one conversation over the telephone.

There's a moment at the end of this, as Moser lies dying - it breaks my heart just as much here as it does in King of Snake - Tingting loses her mind and starts shrieking at the military about killing her snake. Oh Tingting. Your snake just killed an entire city and some people will never recover from this and most of it is your fault.

As with all movies directed by Godfrey Ho, the soundtrack to this is so much of the reason to watch. There's "Isadora," "Catedral de Sal" and "The Night" by Azul y Negro; "Never Land" by Sisters of Mercy; "Sister Surprise" by Gary Numan; "Dance II" by the Duretti Column; "Phaedra," "Kiew Mission," "Logos (Part 1)" and "Rubycon (Part 1)" by Tangerine Dream; "Let It Rock" by Bon Jovi; "Better and Better" by A Flock of Seagulls; Richard Band's Re-Animator soundtrack; "Heartbeat" by Chris and Cosey; "Rendez Vous V" by Jean Michel Jarre; "Agonized by Love" and "Lorretine" by Clan of Xymox; "Witches' Multiplication Table" by Holger Czukay; "Part 1 (Alien)" by Don Preston and Michael Mantler; The Human Vapor soundtrack by Kunio Miyauchi; a song from Miyauchi Kunio's Ultra Q soundtrack and part of the Starman score by Jack Nitzsche.

There are reviews of this that talk about how bad it is, how cheap it is and how they wasted time watching it. Anyone who wrote one of those is someone you never want to be friends with. They have a lack of vision, an inability to love life and just are robots sleepwalking through life.

Open your heart and let Moser inside.