Back in the day, like 1 B.C. or something,
there was a snake with little bitty arms, that spits
paralyzing acid, that uses its diamond eye to turn people into
silica statues, that used to terrorize the citizenry of the
desert. Fortunately it's the eclipse and my main man The
Wise Old Dude has the staff of Medusa and flips the script on
that beast, turning it into a
silica statue. The 'Basilisk: The Serpent King' will
terrorize us never again.
And by 'Never Again' we mean not for the next ten
minutes. Back to the present we meet stalwart
archeologist Dr. Harry McCall (Jeremy London) who has made the
most amazing find. One being the Staff of Medusa.
Another being amazingly intricate silica statues created long
before anybody was making statues of such detail, with all of
these statues howling in agonizing pain. But the Coup de
Grace is a super large Silica dragon with itty bitty
arms. Whoever created this marvel of ancient sculpture
was really on their A+ Game. Time to drag this thing
back to Sophia Bulgaria, today doubling as Pueblo Colorado,
and have a big shindig at the University Gallery, and let's
make it so that it coincides with a Solar Eclipse.
Outstanding.
Guess what? It's totally not a sculpture, it's a
monster. The eclipse hits, the Eye of Medusa lights up,
and the suspended monster starts to defrost.
Apparently this happens in Pueblo Colorado a lot because all
the party goers just stood there looking at the defrosting
monster, until it started eating them and spitting on them and
stuff.
Now the fun really starts. Dr.
Harry has made the acquaintance of a new colleague, the worlds
hottest pseudo archeologist with a concentration on mystical
studies, Dr. Rachel (Wendy Carter). This has nothing to
do with anything, but Rachel showed
up at this party sporting a tight black dress
five inches above the knee, with a twelve inch slit going up
the side. That's also outstanding, albeit wildly
inappropriate for the occasion. Anyway, this monster is
eating and spitting, Harry and Rachel are trapped in a sewer,
the monster has already eaten one of his grad assistants in
the lovely Sierra (Sarah Skeeters), but she only got eaten
because she was trying to wrest the Eye of Medusa from the
scurrilous Miss Hannah, as played by FCU favorite Yancy
Butler, which means scenery is about to get chewed up like a
square of Laffy Taffy. Miss Hannah knows the Eye of the
Medusa is the key to untold treasures, but it's also the key
to stopping the Basilisk.
The situation for Harry and Rachel and the Planet Earth is
dire. The Basilisk must be stopped, and it's
pregnant. Hell if we know who knocked it up. One
surviving grad assistant (Griff Furst) is trying to find a
solution in the lab, one incompetent National Guard leader
(Cleavant Derricks) is trying to find a solution in the field,
and one nutty chick in a tight red dress is scooting around
town carrying a eight foot staff trying to find the
treasure. Plus this staff is a Basilisk magnet.
Even though it can kill it. The Basilisk is dumb.
What we need is a substitute solar eclipse since the next one
isn't happening for another 40 years, the staff and a nuclear
power plant. How this all works, beats me. I just
know it's gonna work.
Can one seriously crap on a movie that is directed by Stephen
Furst, has one of his sons as a principle performer in Griff
and another providing the musical score in Nathan? Of
course you can, pretty easily actually, we're just not going
to do it here because we are Pro-Family at the FCU.
That's not say that if you didn't care for 'Basilisk: The
Serpent King' that you hate families… but you probably do.
Yes, this is a Sci-Fi Channel original and yes, it does suffer
from a lot of the Sci-Fi channel shortcomings such as the
occasional suspect special effect and a storyline that wings
it from time to time, but this one is actually kind of
fun. For starters this movie goes from 'opening credits'
to 'Basilisk spitting on suckaz' in no time flat, leaving
silly stuff like character development on the cutting room
floor and that was awesome. Then there's the Yancy
Butler effect which we have already established easily adds
two points, if you were to rate your movies from 1 to 10, to
almost any production. Ms. Butler routinely elevates
fours to sixes with her steely blue eyes, wry sense of humor,
and her trademark scene stealing by chewing it up and spitting
it out. Then there was the Basilisk itself
which in addition to looking pretty good, at least when it
wasn't next to a human actor, was also a death dealing
fool. It would spit on you, eat you, knock you into next
Tuesday with its tail, turn you into stone, steal your nachos
and it even rubbed one brother to death. Just rubbed him
into a bloody pulp. It never used those itty bitty
arms though. And though we'd prefer our monster movies
not to rely too much on comedy, like this one did, but
considering there was no chance in Hades that a spitting
lizard with tiny arms was going to be all that scary, the
comedy aspects weren't all that bad.
Of course the disclaimer is that if you don't routinely watch
these kinds of movies then there's little chance that you will
enjoy this movie, but if you do watch these kinds movies,
there's still a good chance you won't like 'Basilisk: The
Serpent King'… though it should be a Queen since it's pregnant
and stuff… but there's less of chance you won't like it.
