Daai se Wong |
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Hong Kong • 1988 • 87m •
  • Directed by: Godfrey Ho. • Starring: Pierre Kirby, Edowan Bersmea, Danny Raisebeck, Dewey Bosworth, Jorge Gutman, Patrick Frzebar, Danny Lee, Carol Chang, Lin Shin Cin, Andy Lee, Jim Lau, James Chan, Bob Ma. • Music by: Stephen Tsang.     A secret formula that can cause plants and animals to expand a thousand-fold in size is stolen by a terrorist group. During a wild chase and shoot-out, the formula is lost. It's found by a little girl who accidently gives the formula to her pet snake. After the snake grows to an immense size, it follows and protects her. When the terrorists go after the girl, the snake begins destroying everything in its path.
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Review:
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.
Review by Steve Nyland from the Internet Movie Database.
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