Courtesy of those Garden City kids over at Film Junk, here is the Japanese trailer for Snakes on a Plane. This is far superior to any trailer I saw over here, with plenty of kills, daunting music and an incredibly exuberant voice over. Snake Flight!

This post cements today as the greatest in The Horror Blog’s short history. A few months ago I was visiting my friends in The Rose City where we were planning on having one of our infrequent roleplaying sessions. I was tired from my trip and wasn’t in the mood to concoct something taxing. My afternoon was spent trying to come up with a quick Coke-and-Doritos game to waste a few hours with. That’s when I remembered the Snakes on a Plane roleplaying game.

The following podcast is the first part of an ongoing serial, recorded off the floor with all the awkward pauses, excessive swearing, racous laughter and potato chip bag crinkling that make up a night of pure geekery. If you’re not familiar with roleplaying, please keep in mind that listening to this podcast will most likely be an excruciating experience. And if you’re a current or former gamer, hopefully you’ll manage a wistful smile through the pain. You have been warned!

Now fasten your motherfucking seatbelt and download Snakes on a Plane - The Roleplaying Game.

“Hi, iguana. I’m going to call him Jub Jub.”

A woman cursed to have snakes burst from her body is smuggled in from Mexico by her husband, a shaman who hopes to find a cure for her ailment in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, her condition deteriorates after they stow away onboard a train filled with unsuspecting passengers.

A co-worker watched Snakes on a Train a few days before me, and he attempted to warn me away from it. He also told me that if I happened to enjoy it he would lose all respect for me and begin to question my sanity.

It won’t be the first time, Rony. And I doubt it will be the last.

Snakes on a Train is a southern-fried exploitation rip-off on the cheap that steamrolls over every continuity gaffe, erratic pacing, shoddy make-up effect and bad CGI snake that make up the majority of its running time. Under all the trappings inherent in this low-budget shocker there beats a cold, black heart, one that gleefully pulls out nearly all the stops to make you either wince, give a high-five, or deliver both at the same time.

This is the type of movie where the sets are filthy and nearly everyone is a scumbag. Even the people who should have it together the most are using lightbulbs for bongs. Vulgar and sometimes strangely inappropriate swearing is scattered throughout, breasts are bared under duress, some of the only nice people in the film get torn apart and gratuitious homoeroticism runs rampant. I only wish my floors were sticky to add to the ambience.

The standout performance, and the glue that holds the whole thing together, is Ryanne Ruiz who plays the cursed snake woman. She grimaces and squirms so well that she actually manages to sell the lacklustre make-up, and she seemingly has the ability to make small sections of her face uncontrollably twitch independent of the rest of her body. But the most admirable aspect of her performance is her willingness to stuff her mouth full of snakes at the slightest provocation. By far the best special effect in the entire movie is watching Ruiz roll tiny, live snakes around with her tongue. This is precisely the kind of virtuoso performance that makes doing this blog worthwhile.

This isn’t a masterpiece by any means, and the shocks are more of the grossout type than from fear, but if you’re looking for a slutty, vicious lay of a popcorn flick you could do a whole lot worse.

“Regulations, my foot. Just wait ’til I put one under Ol’ Bradley’s blanket.”

While ashore in South America, the world’s most idiotic sailor buys a bucket full of poisonous snakes to take aboard the submarine he’s assigned to. The snakes not only begin attacking the crew, but also cause malfunctions that could doom the entire submarine to the ocean’s floor.

“Snakes on a Sub” is a little misleading as the title of this 1974 made-for-television movie is actually Fer-De-Lance. That title is not only the name of the submarine, it’s also a type of snake, hence the reason the sailor decides to bring a bushel of them aboard.

Fer-De-Lance is a potential classic undermined by its complete lack of character. One of the essential ingredients in a decent disaster movie is its characterization. This needn’t be deep, but it should at least be evident, or at least half as compelling as the colourful jumpsuits the international civilian scientists are forced to wear. Nowhere in Fer-De-Lance are we introduced to the sailor who cracks open his wallet to show a picture of his newborn son, or the Captain and the nurse who are sharing a forbidden tryst, or the 10-year-old stowaway who fell asleep onboard while the submarine was docked. Instead the movie proceeds almost as if it were some kind of absurd documentary, with nearly everyone acting efficiently and with military precision. And who wants that?

In place of compelling stereotypes we are treated to near-identical drones and enough nautical jargon to help me get through naval academy. There are only two exceptions to this, and both instances are the best parts of the movie. One of the crew members begins to lose it, while another becomes more of a hardass the more he drinks, and he seems to drink alot. Finally, to be fair, in the end Fer-De-Lance does have one of the most simple yet effective snake kills I have ever seen, and I’m a real sucker for any movie that finishes on a high note.

To celebrate the release of Snakes on a Plane, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas held the Blanks on a Blank filmmaking challenge.

To us, the success of SNAKES ON A PLANE is a foregone conclusion. And when any film is a success, sequels are inevitable. But how do you follow up the brilliance of S.O.A.P.? Do you put snakes somewhere else? Do you put a different animal on a plane? The options, of course, are endless, and as we were sitting around a table at a pub talking about all the different possible cinematic combinations, we realized that we really, really, really we wanted to see all those movies become a reality. And so we set up the Blanks On A Blank film-making challenge, giving the whole world the chance to show us the future of animal/vehicle disaster films.

The contest may be over, but the films are still available for viewing. Here you’ll find everything from a Buffalo on a Custom Van to a Taratula on a Hovercraft to a Unicorn on a Stagecoach, with a whopping 83 short animal-on-a-vehicle films in total.

According to Monga Bay’s mission statement, they seek to promote appreciation of wildlands and wildlife. They also examine the science of how snakes can see on a crowded plane, and give pointers on ways you can avoid death should you ever become stuck in this particular situation.

Even in the dark, snakes on a plane (at least those of the pit viper and boa varieties) could keep a close watch on terrorized passengers and crew thanks to small cavities near their snouts known as pit organs. The organs are sensitive to the infrared radiation emitted by warm prey such as rats, rabbits, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Once again, science is the only thing seperating Man from the beast, and Mankind from compete destruction.

“It was what I thought it was and as long as it was what I thought it was going to be fine, which was the movie that I used to leave home for on Saturday afternoon and go and see so I could scream real loud, yell and freak my friends out and do stuff in. It was all about a Saturday afternoon excitement film.” - Samuel L. Jackson

Snakes on a Plane opens this Friday, and I couldn’t be more excited. However, seemingly unlike the rest of the world, I’m not throwing my hands up in forced ironic anticipation. It’s driving me crazy seeing this referred to as a “bad” movie when all reports point that it actually takes itself fairly seriously within its premise. Regardless of how it plays out you can be assured that many moviegoers hoping for another Scary Movie won’t be expecting the level of violence that has been promised.

What’s happening to modern audiences? Why are so many moviegoers attempting to be more “hip” than some of the movies they watch. And why horror movies? People can suspend their disbelief for a movie where a flying man wears his underwear on the outside of his clothes, but a plane full of snakes is pushing it. I regularly see people who can swallow Lord of the Rings and Star Wars without batting an eye organizing “bad movie” nights that are comprised of anything but. It’s gotten to the point where some amateur MST3K players have created a ridiculously unfunny script to be yelled out loud during screenings of Snakes on a Plane, not unlike The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It may seem that my stance is at odds with the Samuel L. Jackson quote above, but it was his response in interviews that first enticed me into wanting to watch Snakes on a Plane. Since the demise of the Grindhouse and Drive-In circuits, the rise of a monolithic studio system and the retreat of independent horror movie mavens to video, it’s rare that a fast-paced, goal-oriented, exploitation film hits the local theatre. I crave something that delivers exactly what it promises with no frills or tacked-on moral or ulterior motive. And it’s not that I’m against screaming out loud or freaking out friends in the theatre, I just prefer it to be somewhat organic, responding to what’s actually happening onscreen as opposed to ignoring the movie entirely and trying to entertain a roomful of strangers with preconceived notions or, God help us, a script.

To help combat this trend, The Horror Blog will be spending the next week with an emphasis on Snakes on a Plane. Fasten your motherfucking seatbelts.

Warren of 150 Days of Sodom has been quite insistent in getting the word out concerning the T & A-laden video for Captain Ahab’s song Snakes on a Brain. The song was chosen to be featured in the upcoming feature film spectacular Snakes on a Plane, and if you watch carefully you may be able to spot Warren’s co-pilot, Cub.

For some reason this Captain Ahab duo remind me of Right Said Fred.

This has been your obligatory Snakes on a Plane post of the day.

Sometimes I feel like a beautiful maiden with two handsome suitors vying for my affection. Only substitute “beautiful maiden” with “ruggedly handsome horror blogger” and “two handsome suitors” with “killer snake movies”.

Asylum has released a trailer for its highly anticipated knock-off, Snakes On A Train. I love that, in lieu of their usual big-ticket imitations, Asylum is inadvertently reclaiming exploitative schlock from a major studio. And to top it off, they seem to deliver on the promise of their promotional art!

Trailer courtesy of Dread Central.

I haven’t posted a Snakes on a Plane update in awhile.

The official site has a batch of new trailers up.

Snakes on a Blog points us in the direction of a Snakes on a Plane logic puzzle.

Six of the passengers–Barbara, Cindy, George, Mike, Ralph, and Tina–had particularly harrowing encounters with venomous snakes (a black mamba, a boomslang, an taipan, a gaboon viper, a king cobra, and a rattlesnake), but Samuel saved them all from certain death (he strangled one snake with his bare hands). Can you figure out what type of snake each person encountered and how Samuel took it out?

And Warren of 150 Days of Sodom relates his disasterous Snake on a Plane-related trip to San Diego with zen-like patience and understanding.

This has been your obligatory Snakes on a Plane post for the day.

The only piece of bling I’ve worn in the past two decades is an old Iron Maiden pendant I bought from the Welland fair. Now it looks like something else may join Eddy around my neck. I introduce to you, the Snakes on a Plane pendant. Can you dig it? I knew that you could.

As everyone already knows, a new Snakes on a Plane teaser trailer has hit the internet. I’m still excited about the film, but the teaser trailer left me a little cold. With all its quick cuts, sloppy pacing and weak score it felt more like a gangly teen fumbling open a bra than the second coming of cool. And if you’re introducing Samuel L. Jackson as the most dangerous mother fucker on the plane, show a close-up of his snarling, bleeding face, or a shot of him punching a snake, not a long shot of him walking through a door and giving a guy a high-five. That shit’s whiter than me.

In other Snakes on a Plane news, upon the advice of Snakes on a Blog I took a peek in my local bookstore to see if they had mistakenly placed the novelization on the shelf prematurely. They had. I am now the proud owner of the Snakes on a Plane novelization. For a sneak peek at the first exciting paragraph, click the link above.

The Horror Channel has been obsessing over Asylum’s riff on Snakes on a Plane. Sure it’s an obvious rip-off, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be any good. Besides, there have already been Scorpions on a Plane and Snakes on a Sub movies. It’s not like this territory hasn’t been exploited before.

A couple from Mexico must make it to Los Angeles in order to cure the wife of the Mayan curse that was cast on her. As she worsens, snakes wriggle out of her every pore and threaten to infect and kill every passenger.

Fuck me, that sounds like fun. If you aren’t interested in Snakes on a Train, you’re dead to me.

This has been your Snakes on a Plane-related post for the day.