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THE JOURNAL (Rapid City, S Dakota) 11 September 06 Snakes in a bad movie (Ruth Milne)
Terry Phillip, who takes care of the venomous snakes at Reptile Gardens, doesn’t like how Hollywood portrays snakes.
“Movies make them out to be horrible, horrible animals, and it escalates the fear the general public has of snakes,” he said.
So Phillip had a lot to say at a recent viewing of the film “Snakes on a Plane.”
First of all, he explained, “Snakes aren’t out to get you; they don’t wait in the bushes. They’re pretty innocuous. If you leave them alone, they’ll do the same.”
Phillip wears no protective gear around the venomous snakes at Reptile Gardens, using only a “snake hook” — a pole with a hook at the end — to handle the creatures. His philosophy is simple and effective: “Keep your fingers out of their mouths.”
Phillip has had numerous nonvenomous snakebites, but he has never been bitten by a venomous snake, even though he estimates that he has about 1,000 interactions with venomous snakes every week. “I’m pretty proud of that,” he said. (However, he has had six alligator bites.)
But nobody in “Snakes on a Plane” seemed to have his luck with vipers.
The flimsy plot involved an FBI agent, played by Samuel L. Jackson, escorting a murder witness from Hawaii to Los Angeles to testify. But — to no viewer’s surprise — there are snakes on the plane.
The movie opened at No. 1 nationwide, but at our viewing two weeks later, the theater was nearly empty, so we were free to talk quietly without disturbing other patrons. On the downside, it felt a little awkward sitting in a nearly-empty theater watching a tasteless sex scene with a perfect stranger. Oh, the things we do for our jobs.
But when the snakes finally appeared, the movie got more interesting.
“That’s a bullsnake — that’s native to South Dakota,” Phillip noted.
“Would it really eat a cat?” I asked a moment later.
“No,” he said with a laugh.
The movie got one thing right: The snakes were fairly realistic, Phillip said, and all based on real snakes. “That’s a corn snake,” he said as a snake slithered threateningly across the screen.
“That doesn’t sound very dangerous,” I said.
“A lot of 8-year-olds have one for pets,” he told me.
Even the snakes that were obviously computer-generated were realistic enough to be easily identifiable, such as the Burmese python and the king cobra. Their behavior, however, was not true-to-life.
It was like asking someone from NASA to seriously analyze “Plan 9 from Outer Space.” Much of the time, Phillip was laughing too hard to explain what specifically was inaccurate.
The plane was seething with snakes — snakes interrupting a couple trying to join the Mile High Club, a snake in the toilet, a snake in the vomit bag and so on. Anywhere a snake could fit, a snake was there, and it was ready to attack.
In the film, the snakes’ aggression was explained by a “pheromone” added to all the leis given passengers on their departure from Hawaii. Jackson’s character described the result — with a straight face — as “snakes on crack.”
Does a pheromone really exist to make all species of snakes suddenly attack?
“No, not even remotely,” Phillip said.
Another inaccuracy was the rapidity with which some characters died after being bit. You don’t just fall over dead, Phillip said; the fastest death he has ever heard of was 2.5 minutes after a black mamba bite, and that time wasn’t verified.
Also, “sucking the poison out” 15 minutes after a snake bites someone is not an effective way to save his life, Phillip said.
Some questions I knew the answer to before I asked, but wanted to ask anyway: “If you die and there are snakes all around, would they really crawl inside you to slide out your mouth as soon as someone looks at you?”
“No.”
However, other answers came as a surprise.
When Samuel L. Jackson used a flamethrower rigged from hairspray and a lighter, snakes actually tried to bite the flames. “Would snakes really try to bite fire?” I asked, expecting another scornful no.
“Some might,” Phillip said.
Admittedly, this is not an authoritative source, but fire was effective when Indiana Jones encountered snakes. Could this movie be more realistic than Indiana Jones?
“Some snakes, like rattlesnakes, have heat receptors,” he explained, that help them strike at warm-blooded prey.
With Phillip’s commentary, “Snakes on a Plane” was just like a top-notch episode of Mystery Science Theater 3K, only more educational.
After finding out that the snakes on the plane were exotic varieties from around the globe, “Only a handful of U.S. hospitals carry foreign antivenom!” cried a “snake expert” onscreen.
“None of them do,” said the snake expert sitting next to me.
When antivenom was injected and saved the day, Phillip scoffed again. “Now that would kill you.” Antivenom, he explained, isn’t injected with a needle; it must be given in an IV drip, in a very nondramatic fashion, taking hours to administer a tiny bit.
“They tried to base some of it in reality, like the snakes’ appearance,” Phillip said as the credits ran. “But reality just isn’t exciting enough.”
The best thing about the movie, he said, was that it probably won’t make anyone afraid of snakes.
Snakes in a bad movie

On a plane??? A bee in your car... LOL...

I hate when that happens...

Gotta agree with you there-as far as horror movies, what happened to horror movies being about dogs(Cujo, Man's Best Friend, Play Dead), cats(Strays, Uninvited) and psychos(take your pick). Seems to be that there are more and more reptile-related horror movies, fun or not.
How about a reptile-related comedy, like a ripoff of Snakes on a Plane called Geckos on a Bus or something?
The snake horrors are fun, I've watched most of them, but aren't we about due for another GOOD shark movie by now?