Una cobra de grandes dimensiones*

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t watch tv. I’m not like those people who say “I don’t watch tv” and what they mean is they don’t watch tv except for PBS and the History Channel and The Daily Show and CSI Miami and Studio 60 and ... No, I really don’t watch tv. I never turn the set on. I rarely go in the tiny tv room. So for Mel’s happiness challenge I decided to watch more tv. I turned it on last night and flipped through the channels, pausing only when I happened upon the made-for-tv movie, MegaSnake (also known as Mega Snake).

I missed the beginning, which apparently introduced us to a cult of snake handlers and showed how a crisis of faith led to a gruesome death for the hero’s father and a well-justified fear of snakes for the young hero. Fast forward twenty years and we find the hero’s brother shopping for snakes at the local tattoo parlor/black market reptile emporium. He sees a scary-looking little snake in a jar and learns that it’s the only surviving member of a race of supernatural snakes OF DOOM!!! However, the snake’s awesome and evil powers are held in check as long as you never ever let it out of the jar and never ever let it eat anything alive.

The hero’s brother steals the snake in the jar and what do you think happens next? YES!!!!! The little snake slithers out of the jar, chugs the cat, and rapidly grows to become, as the eponymous title suggests, a 70-foot-long writhing and voracious reptile OF THE APOCALYPSE!!! MegaSnake terrorizes and snacks on the inhabitants of what is supposed to be a small Tennessee town, but is actually Bulgaria. Local redneck-types with pick-up trucks and intermittent southern accents try to end the carnage, but they are no match for the wily MEGASNAKE!!!!!! To divert themselves from these tragic events, the townspeople decide to hold a fair. Unfortunately, the fairgrounds turn out to be the SECRET LAIR of MegaSnake, who quickly transforms the bucolic scene into a carnival OF DEATH!!!

Way back before the brother stole the snake, the snake store owner had told him “You must not fear the heart of the snake.” This advice comes in handy during the climactic final scene, when our snake-fearing hero allows himself to be swallowed whole by MegaSnake, which then suddenly dies amid a great deal of shuddering and thrashing. When I saw the hero using a knife to cut his way out of the snake’s belly, I changed the channel. I feel happier already.



*I have no idea why the promotional picture shows MegaSnake crushing skyscrapers while being strafed by fighter planes. It does look kinda cool, though.