The Viper Rooms

Calamity of Snakes (William Chang Kee, 1982)

William Chang Kee's Cat. III nasty, Calamity of Snakes (1982), puts me in an awkward spot when it comes it an honest review, as I feel both love and revulsion for it.

Events kick off when a construction crew are building an apartment complex and discover a nest of snakes (we're talking thousands here). Rather than contact the relevant authorities and face delays, they cruelly kill the snakes off with the aid of an excavator smashing them (for real). This is the revenge motive for an even greater number of snakes, led by a giant python, to exact their vengeance on the humans moving into in the new apartment complex.

Calamity of Snakes employs Irwin Allen's tried and tested formula from his nature-gone-wild and disaster movies. Prominent film subgenres movies from the seventies and early eighties. Delving further, Calamity of Snakes shares much of the same DNA as the star-studded The Towering Inferno (1974); swapping fire for a serpent invasion. Thus, the clichéd introduction involving the apartment complex's occupant is ever present, before they're eventually killed off. This is where some unexpected Benny Hill style humour takes over and when a sadly small noticeable dip in pacing occurs. In a disco party scene, a snake crawls up a woman's leg and a guy predictably receives a slap because of it. Typical Saturday night for some.

If you're at all familiar with any of the Jungle horror films from the seventies and eighties; particularly of the Italian kind, then you'll be aware that real animal cruelty was very prominent in them. Calamity of Snakes is not only guilty of committing this taboo, but performs it on a mass scale. Numerous scenes show snakes being skinned alive, burnt, chopped and eaten. These scenes are both incrediby graphic and disturbing. Hard to recommend this film for this very reason, or at the very least, to advise anyone interested to tread with caution.

On a more positive note, what I totally adore about Calamity of Snakes is just how surreal it is from start to finish. There's an elderly snake master tasked with dispatching the giant python leader, which culminates in a bloody and savage martial arts battle between the pair. It's an amazing face-off and one you'll never quickly forget. Snakes gatecrashing the apartment's disco party is equal parts hilarious and down right brutal. Hundreds of snakes are thrown over the actors, and it all looks very dangerous (and possibly unsupervised). The camera doesn't shy away from the carnage that ensues - it's all very graphic detail.

Well done to the music department for borrowing a few recognisable horror film soundtracks. Goblin's Zombie makes a cameo, but Jay Chattaway's Subway Terror is used more liberally, and works effectively well in the background while snakes slither around various rooms and hallways; legitimately adding a another layer of intensity.

Calamity of Snakes is amongst the most outlandish and mean-spirited entry in the whole nature-gone-wild subgenre I've watched thus far. The animal cruelty alone stigmatises it. Definitely not a film for everyone, but the insanity of it all might be the jackpot that exploitation movie enthusiasts are craving for.