Boa Vs. Python (2004)
Dread Central Staff
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Starring David Hewlett, Jaime Bergman’s implants, Angel Boris, and two huge CGI snakes
Directed by David Flores
I can only guess that UFO Films must have locked the screenwriters in a room for several days with a large bong and refused to let them out until they had come up with a Boa vs. Python script that would pit these two serpents against one another no matter how screwy it might be. Screwy is definitely the most opportune way to describe Boa vs. Python. Dopey, strange, downright bizarre, and “What the hell?” would also be acceptable descriptions. It’s a train wreck all right and you can’t help but slow down to get a good look at the carnage.
UFO Films, the makers of some of the lamest Sci-Fi Channel original movies like Dragon Fighter, decided to jump on the Freddy vs. Jason/Alien vs. Predator bandwagon by pitting their two signature serpents in a one-on-one, winner take all smackdown. In one corner we have a giant CGI python, as seen in two UFO productions. In the original Python, the snake killed off Casper Van Dien, Jenny McCarthy, and Wil Wheaton. Therefore, it cannot be considered totally evil. Nonetheless, the python is once again cast as, if I may use pro wrestling terminology here, the heel. In the other corner we have a giant CGI boa constrictor. The boa has only appeared in one dreadful movie cleverly titled Boa, in which it battled Dean Cain in an underground Antarctic prison. The boa in this movie is actually a good guy, although not actually a guy. You see this boa is female, so not only is this movie a showdown between two colossal snakes but it’s also a battle of the sexes.
So there’s this super billionaire casino owner named Broddick (Think Mark Cuban spliced with a James Bond villain and played by a guy who looks more like the male lead from any Andy Sidaris flick), who also happens to be an avid big game hunter. Broddick has a girlfriend named Eve, played by former Playboy Playmate and current UFO Films “it” girl Angel Boris. She doesn’t like snakes, which of course explains why she has a huge snake tattooed on her back. Together they zip around in his CGI airplane, hang out in the front row of wrestling matches where they pull their guns on wrestlers that get too close to them, and prepare for a big hunt with the giant python the billionaire has transported in for game. Unfortunately, the giant python escapes its transport and proceeds to kill some henchmen, eat the world’s oldest teenager, and hide out in the underground industrial duct just outside of Philadelphia.
In comes a federal agent to investigate and he quickly deduces that someone has tried importing a giant python from Russia. I know what you’re thinking. There are giant pythons in Russia? Well, yes. You see the only tie this film has to any of the previous movies that led up to it is the Python 2 storyline involving the US military blundering a plan to use giant pythons as tactical weapons leading to a massacre at a Russian lab. Don’t ask. If you haven’t seen that film then you’re a better person for it.
The fed immediately calls in the current Mrs. David Boreanaz, Jamie Bergman. You know you must be watching a campy sci-fi flick when a busty blonde former “Baywatch” cast member is cast as a brilliant scientist. Not only does she teach dolphins how to locate underwater mines, but she can also hold her breath underwater for a very long period of time. You better believe they find a convoluted way to use that special skill again later in the movie. He’s called her in because she developed some sort of high-tech implants that can be used to track the rampaging python.
The fed also recruits a local herpetologist who just happens to have bred a giant boa constrictor named Betty. He feeds average-sized boa constrictors to her so that it will help harvest some sort of miracle anti-venom. You’re going to have call Bill Nye the Science Guy to explain that one because I haven’t got a clue, but since he was able to breed a giant boa constrictor I guess I shouldn’t bother questioning his other scientific techniques. For the record, the herpetologist’s lab looks more like the interior of the X-Men’s base. Despite Betty’s lair requiring more fortification than the entrance to Cerebro, the three of them just walk in and stand around for a while without any protection and are never in any danger because the enormous snake would rather eat a smaller member of its own species than the tall people that look as if they’d make a much better meal. Betty is the world’s friendliest giant boa constrictor.
The fed comes up with one of those “so crazy it just might work” plans, and keep in mind this plan was his first option and not a last resort. He wants to implant Betty the behemoth boa with those tracking implants and let it loose in the underground industrial ductwork in order to track down the giant python. As absurd as this idea is, it’s all worth it just to hear ex-Playboy Playmate Jaime Bergman forced to repeatedly saying things with a straight face like, “You want to use my implants to track down the python?” Priceless.
Meanwhile, Broddick decides to make lemonade out of lemons so he picks up his hunting buddies, consisting of a ragtag mix of goofy stereotypes, and jets over to the outskirts of Philadelphia so they can hunt down the giant python themselves.
Everyone eventually ends up in the underground industrial tunnels and corridors for really no other reason than because it would be cheaper for UFO to film in such a location. Before long, everyone’s battling it out with each other and the giant snakes, which culminates in the last 10 minutes where Broddick going completely loco with a flamethrower and the title snakes finally deliver on the movie’s title in a nightclub and then a subway tunnel. And I haven’t even mentioned the idiot reporter who tries to link the snake attacks to “Al KAI-EE-DUH”, Boa Boy and Implant Girl falling in love, and that the giant python actually rapes the giant boa leading to Betty going Ms. 45 on its scaly ass.
Boa vs. Python never quite reaches the sheer lunacy of the last half hour of Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, but it certainly exists in its own seriously warped reality that must be seen to be believed. It aspires to be tongue-in-cheek but often ends up playing scenes straight, too straight, making the film downright bizarre at times. The tone is so schizophrenic it’s hard not to be mesmerized by it no matter how preposterous things gets. At the very least, Boa vs. Python can lay claim to being the best movie ever made about two giant snakes fighting it out, a claim I’m fairly certain UFO Films will be able to boast about for a long time to come.
Amazingly, Boa vs. Python has even managed to spawn an imitator as Jim Wynorski has Komodo vs. King Cobra in the works. With any luck, this will see be the start of a whole new subgenre of nature gone amok films where featured killer animals square off. Personally, I’m waiting for Shark Attack vs. Spring Break Shark Attack.
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