Snakes on Film

A cute commercial from Mars promoting the M&Ms-Indiana Jones tie-in, featuring the animated M&Ms reprising the famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The commercial can be viewed online here. It’s a good thing snakes are indifferent to chocolate.

(P.S. That looks like a corn snake at the end of the ad.)

People have animal familiars in the world of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, so it’s no surprise that some people have snakes. Presumably, only the evil people do, because that’s the bad rap snakes get. In one scene we see a computer-generated cobra; in another, a member of the Magisterium holds his familiar during their meetings. As we can see from this still from the movie trailer, it’s clearly a Corn Snake (Elaphe guttata), and a damn pretty one besides. If the animal familiar reflects the person’s personality, then this individual must be very much like a Corn Snake: laid-back, a prodigious fornicator, and someone prone to fouling his dwelling after someone has just cleaned it. (Time to clean the Corn Snake cages again.)

I have had it with these motherf***ing snakes on this motherf***ing train! Henry “Indiana” Jones Jr., Age 13

Young Indy is a little old to be developing a phobia, and it’s a little precious to suggest that his adult character traits were formed in an eight-minute span, but there it is. While trying to escape from the bad guys in Utah, Indy jumps on a circus train and runs into trouble in the reptile car when the catwalk gives way. First he somersaults into a tank containing an animatronic anaconda — say that ten times — then falls backwards into a crate filled with small snakes. Those snakes — like the one we saw earlier when Indy tells his scouting friend “It’s only a snake” — are Red-sided Garter Snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis).

Ahem. I know something about Red-sided Garter Snakes: not only have I been to the dens, I’ve also bred and raised that particular subspecies. Spielberg and company used thousands of them, imported from Manitoba, which at that time still allowed commercial collecting. (A year or two later, after an average of 52,000 snakes per year were harvested from the province, collecting was stopped over concerns that the population was being fished out.)

Interestingly, the snake that crawls from Indy’s wrist onto one of the bad guys a minute or two later isn’t a red-sided garter; my partner Jennifer, who tried to ascertain the sex of the snakes while watching this movie, immediately identified it as a Wandering Garter Snake (Thamnophis elegans vagrans). We’ve got one of those too, and even had a litter a few years back.

So, garter snakes made Indiana Jones an ophidiophobe. What a pussy.

Dr. Montgomery Montgomery’s reptile room features a menagerie of snakes and other reptiles: some computer-generated, like the Incredibly Deadly Viper, and some real. All the real snakes seem to be albinos, like the albino Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus) wrapped around Billy Connolly’s neck and the amelanistic Corn Snake (Elaphe guttata) I think I briefly saw in one shot. Then there’s Petunia, who is completely harmless and so, not milkable, but is almost certainly either a Queretaro Mountain Kingsnake (Lampropeltis ruthveni) or one of several possible subspecies of Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum); my best guess is a nelsoni — again, an albino in either case. At least there were no egregious instances of snake blinking as occurred in the original book — or in the Harry Potter movie.

P.S. Little udders?!

Nothing, nothing nothing is worse than a bad Italian movie, except a bad Italian SF movie …Howard Waldrop

In 1984, Z-movie film director Joe D’Amato — the “Ed Wood of Italy” — released Ator l’invincible 2, which was totally not a cynical attempt to cash in on the Conan franchise. It’s better known to us as Cave Dwellers, which is the name it was released to U.S. TV in 1990 — and, more importantly, the name under which it was deservedly lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000. An incoherent mishmash of clips stolen from other movies and sloppy anachronisms, this film is not safe to watch without wiseacre robot silhouettes. Fortunately it does not seem to be available any other way.

Anyway, along the way Ator, his Asian sidekick and be-breastplated girl warrior find themselves in a temple where innocents are being sacrificed to a giant snake. (See? Nothing like Conan the Barbarian!) The serpent god itself is a foam rubber monstrosity that is only filmed in dim light, but it’s more risible than the snake Conan dispatches, if that’s even possible. But in the giant snake’s pit there are other snakes scattered about — Burmese and Reticulated Pythons (Python molurus bivittatus and P. reticulatus), which is about what you’d expect: big, Old World snakes would be the best choice, and retics are the only snakes that have been recorded to have eaten people before. Not those little specimens, though. Given D’Amato’s propensity to steal footage from other movies, I’m not sure whether he should get credit for it.

Admit it: you’ve been waiting for this one. Much has already been written about the snakes behind Snakes on a Plane, and the questionable snake behaviour and biology has been debunked elsewhere; I wrote something shortly after I saw the film myself. The key points:

1. The real, live snakes were harmless and handled by stunt doubles or extras; the venomous snakes were either computer generated or shot in isolation.
2. The real snakes were common pet-store varieties; I spotted Corn Snakes (Elaphe guttata) and several kinds of Common Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula) and Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum), for example.
3. The aggressive snake behaviour was attributed to pheromones sprayed on leis, which is creative nonsense. Pheromones will make snakes horny at best, and no one pheromone would have the same effect across so many different species.
4. The movie correctly points out that snakes aren’t normally that aggressive, hence the pheromone plot device.
5. The computer-generated snakes were larger than nature — and faster. No matter how pissed, most snakes don’t move that fast. Except maybe mambas (Dendroaspis) and coachwhips (Masticophis), and I didn’t see any of those.
6. Antivenom is easier to find than that.
7. Snakes are illegal to keep in Hawaii.
8. Pythons never eat fully grown adult males. Well, hardly ever. Yappy little dogs? Total python food. (At least I can hope.)

There must not be enough snakes in Britain, because J. K. Rowling was apparently unaware of two key snake facts when she wrote the early scene with Harry and the snake — a Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus) in the movie, a Boa Constrictor (Boa constrictor) in the book. Namely, that snakes have neither eyelids nor ears, which makes it difficult for this one to be winking at and listening to our man Harry. I’ll grant a lot for a fantasy story, mind. I mean, it’s not like owls are smart enough to be trained in postal service either.

Conan takes time out from the thieving and the plo chops to take on Sith Lord Thulsa Doom, leader of a snake cult, who himself can change into a snake. So of course our man Thulsa has a few snakes around the premises, including a big fake python with improbable fangs. Real snakes used in the movie were almost all Boa Constrictors (Boa constrictor), though I spotted at least one Yellow Anaconda (Eunectes notaeus). I couldn’t get a good look at the snake used as an arrow; my best guess is that it was a Gray Rat Snake (Elaphe obsoleta spiloides). That gives Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age a decidedly New World bent. Where are the Toltecs? I bet Conan would have some fun with Toltecs. Being crucified on the Tree of Woe has nothing on having your beating heart cut out.