Snakes on a Train (2006)
(Release Date: August 15, 2006 [Straight to Video... OF COURSE])

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J.C. Maçek III The World's Greatest Critic! Don't waste your money on a DVD! Download SOAT now for cheaper and see what I'm talkin' 'bout! I'm glad I didn't watch this piece of piss before I watched Snakes on a Plane! When my wife discovered this butt-pellet on the shelf of our local Whoreywood Video, I winced and said "I'll bet that's from The Asylum Home Entertainment!" She turned the box over to check. It was. It is. Argh. She suggested I rent it and review it right before Snakes on a Plane. I indicated that these jerks deserved no more of our money... or attention. But here I am reviewing it, two days after Snakes on a Plane. I don't know why... I can't imagine what's wrong with me. Part of the 2006 Summer of Horror! The Asylum has made their living by naming their horrible movies after bigger and better movies, and thus cashing in on their successes! During the past twelve months they've released King of the Lost World the day before King Kong hit theatres, When a Killer Calls, twenty five days after the remake of When a Stranger Calls hit theatres, Hillside Cannibals, eighteen days after the remake of The Hills Have Eyes hit theatres, The Da Vinci Treasure exactly a week after The Da Vinci Code hit theatres, 666:The Child on the exact same day as the remake of The Omen hit theatres, Pirates of Treasure Island the week before Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest hit theatres and now... the Tuesday before Snakes on a Plane hit theatres, my least favorite studio, INCLUDING TROMA, has released this smear of smegma known as Snakes on a Train! But here I am... Fuck! These rear-crammers are preying on the gullible, who could potentially be fooled into thinking a "Cash-In" is a "Tie-In"! I know better. I've been dissing "The ASSylum" for quite some time now. So why am I being such a good little consumer and forking over my Four Dollars and Thirty Cents? For you! To warn you and know what I'm talking about. Okay, actually, I kept my fo' buck thuddy! I had a free coupon, and I figured, hell, Summer of Horror and all, doesn't make any fuckin' difference! But like I said, I'm glad I didn't watch this before Snakes on a Plane! I might have given Snakes on a Plane the full Five Stars just by comparison. Yeah, big surprise, Snakes on a Train, a shameless cash in on an admitted B-Movie, is TERRIBLE. Big surprise, it gets a DOG! Big surprise... I was dumbass to sit through the whole thing. Naturally, this is the same damned movie, at core, as its major studio namesake. However, having as much imagination as they do cold cash, producer David Michael Latt and writer Eric Forsberg have put some super-lame Supernatural Horse Shit into the barely-there plot, which somehow still manages to fail to pad the film out in any interesting way. Julia Ryanne Ruiz' Alma has a Mayan curse slapped upon her for running away with her greasy boyfriend, Alby Castro's Brujo. She is now the incubator of snakes... supposedly lots of snakes. And all of them, how ever many there are, all come crawling out as soon as the dyslexic duo (who can't decide whether they speak any English or not) hop this midnight train going anywhere (as long as it's Los Angeles). Of course the advertising can't decide how many snakes there are. The DVD claims there are 3,000 poisonous snakes, the trailer counts them at 1,000 and the internet taglines figure there were 2,000. I don't blame them, actually, because there were probably more like seven... maybe ten total. But that doesn't count the incredibly fake "animatronics" snakes, and the even worse CGI snakes. And I took issue with SoaP's realism. Stupid me! The advertisers can't count people either, as pretty much every tagline includes the boast of "100 Passengers". Yeah, yeah, yeah, I counted 26 credited actors, including extras. I admit that "100 Trapped Passengers... 3,000 Venomous Snakes" sounds a lot better than "26 Trapped Passengers... like maybe ten or so snakes", but the tagline doesn't make the movie any better. But I digress. Because the snakes are all made out of Alma's body, all the snakes have to be retained so that Idiot Brujo's Idiot Uncle can stuff them all back in. I don't even want to know where, but the point is, she can't be whole without all the snakes... as it is, she feels like she's coming apart like a... well, like an Asylum release. So what does that Crap-Bag Fuck Up Brujo do to make sure he has absolutely no trouble whatsoever keeping up with Alma's Snakes to save Alma's Life? Why, elementary, he lays the curse on a fellow traveler, who is an even bigger waste of space than Brujo is, so that he too will start spitting up snakes. Okay... the man likes a challenge, I'll give him that! Now ol' "matinee at the Brujo" has to not only fight his enemies while tracking down all these (supposed) snakes, but also tell one snake from another, being that he's created a second group. What a DOUCHE! I started wondering what would happen if Brujo got too damned many of the snakes stuffed back into Alma... would she turn out to be all fat now? As convoluted (note: NOT "Complex") as this already is, it's striking to note how many subplots Crew Latt (including Latt's appropriately named business partner Sherri Strain) stuff into this flick! Taking a look at the "Deleted Scenes" (it's amazing that anything failed to make the cut in a movie this bad) there were even more, if you can believe that. There are more underdeveloped characters here than in a UV-saturated One Hour Photo lab! I'm not even going to bother mentioning most of these (almost all of the 26 characters are paid mere lip service at best). However, a silly sub-plot featuring Shannon Gayle and Amelia Jackson-Gray as two traveling hotties named Summer and Crystal, respectively, offers just about the only thing in this flick worth watching. Their cocaine smuggling conflict leads to some of the least inane dialogue (it's still pretty inane) as well as the only nudity we're given in this movie (on the part of Jackson-Gray). I will say this: Although this is a Z-Grade movie from a Z-Grade Studio, there is nothing less than Top Notch about Amelia Jackson-Gray's natural nudity. I salute you. But Amelia and the Twins are the only praise-worthy part of this plopper. It's amusing to note that the direction of this goober was credited to "THE MALLACHI BROTHERS", which makes me wonder if we were supposed to mistake that name for "Wachowski". Do the rip offs ever end? Groan! Whomever they are, they have no sense of pace or timing when it comes to movie making, nor do they have any balance when it comes to the Bat Guano stalactites that shoot out of the script as a sad and lame attempt at a B-Story. Even at its best, some of the scenes feel like a rehearsal for a High School play. There are a few real snakes in this movie, most of whom just sit there coiled, sleeping, or crawling slowly. And most of them are what look like baby grass snakes, even then. However, the SFX snakes make the fake snakes in SoaP look like models of realism by comparison. Hell, the SFX snakes in Snakes on a Train make the fake snake ol' Ricky Baker fought in the 1976 King Kong look like an exact replica from a Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom expedition by comparison. Look, I realize all of the above can be chalked up to the fact that this was rushed into production to cash in on SoaP, but that's less a defense than it is further proof that this film shouldn't have ever been fucking made, man, ever! What, am I being mean? Go buy some Kingdom Come albums and go rent Bloody Murder if that's the case, because everything is public domain and fair game. Hell and DAMN but I thought I was done with The Asylum after I passed the stone called Corpses are Forever, a movie almost as well done as that fifteen second, shaky Bigfoot footage. Here I am again, giving yet another flick from The Asylum a DOG!!! It's a reptilized little venom-sack licking DOG, suited less for your DVD player than your area land-fill. That is... with the exception of Amelia's softly pouting breasts. Huzzah! Trust me on this one, folks, when you're in the video store and you see a flick that looks oddly familiar, or that you think might be funny, or has some now-minor actor you used to love in it, or has the promise of nudity, or you think it might be a decent time-passer that will allow you and your friends to riff on a corny flick, do yourselves a favor and turn the box over, carefully so as not to spill anything. If you see the words "The Asylum" appearing anywhere on the case (usually in the lower right hand corner), carefully place that disc back on the shelf, walk away quietly and seek your entertainment elsewhere. The Department of Homeland Security should get involved in preventing these guys from releasing films. Maybe Sally Struthers could have some commercials on how to give "Just Seventy-Two Cents a Day" to your favorite washed up actors, so they won't have to be in these decrepit bowel movies. Or, hey, Jerry Lewis could add the Anti-Asylum Telethon to his annual schedule to help these guys, and nice ladies like Amelia Jackson-Gray, get into the parts they deserve. Never gonna happen, though. Superman's got his Kryptonite, Werewolves have their silver bullets, Damien's got his blessed daggers, Fonzie's got liver, Achilles has his heel, and I've got The Asylum. You've won this round, The Asylum, but I'll return and I'll have my revenge! I'll get you The Asylum, and your gaggle of turkeys too! You will bow down before me, The Asylum, I swear it! You will bow down before me! Both you... and then one day... YOUR HEIRS!