Prison Flicks

Rating: (2 out of 5)

Starring: Dean Cain, Elizabeth Lackey, Mark A. Sheppard, Grand L. Bush, Dean Biascucci, and Craig Wilson.

Directed by: Phillip Roth

See also the Jabootu review.

Elizabeth Lackey and the multitalented Dean Cain help make Boa (2000) a truly “special” movie. Sort of like the Special Olympics, but not as heartwarming.

When Ken Begg of Jabootu.com recommended that I watch this movie – or perhaps more accurately, challenged me to sit through it – I knew it would be a stinker. I was sort of expecting something a little more deliriously wacky, but actually this is a pretty straight-forward actioner, no dumber in many ways that the average Jerry Bruckheimer & Michael Bay “blockbuster.” Actually, in a way Boa is more appealing for its more modest tone. Which is not to say that Boa is a good movie. It is a bad movie. It is bad and stupid. It is bad, stupid, and completely derivative – indeed, one of the fun things to do with this movie is to figure out which scene was stolen from which other movie, because basically every single scene was lifted from somewhere else. Now, this sort of “homage” is actually a well-established film making convention; dozens of movies every year are little more than loose remakes of another successful movie with only a different setting or some such. Boa is Alien/Aliens set in a prison (which, you may recall was the case with Alien3 as well). What really differentiates Boa is the way scenes from past movies are more or less cobbled together at random. There is little rhyme or reason to most of the scenes. Character traits established early on in one canned scene never come back into play. The movie also demonstrates some of the worst decision making one is likely to see in a movie. I don’t mean that the characters do stupid things, although, of course, they do. Rather it seems that every time the film makers had an opportunity make a decision, they made the wrong one. Boa almost seems like a film that had some sort of saboteur hidden away at the highest levels of the production, working diligently to ensure that no one could ever take this movie seriously. I think this point should become quite clear as I proceed.

Okay, so the setting is a new “escape proof” prison set in Antarctica. Not only is it set in Antarctica, but is 12,000 feet underground. Oh, yeah, it is also a secret prison, designed to house the “worst of the worst” – people charged with crimes against humanity and the like… and, um, hacking. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the concept of an “escape proof” prison, set in some sort of inaccessible location sounds good until you actually think about it and maybe run a few numbers. How much would it cost to build a prison complex 12,000 feet underground in Antarctica? Later on, we find out that they plan to house 25,000(!) prisoners there. How would you transport them all? Feed them? How about guards? You’d need a work force of several thousands guards for a prison that size. Where would they live? How much would you have to pay them to take this kind of assignment? It seems pretty clear to me that for the cost of building and maintaining this prison in Antarctica, you could establish some pretty damn secure facilities in more populated areas. Heck, you could probably afford to assign five guards to watch over each prisoner 24/7 for the costs involved.

Poluso and the warden debate drilling options.

As per convention, the prison at the beginning is only half-finished. Although there are already guards there and a control room, the engineers are still apparently doing some basic drilling. None of this makes much sense really. The drilling is temporarily halted because around 12,000 feet they run into a hollow rock formation. The engineers want to go slow, but the warden is on a deadline and he orders them to drill through the rock. It seems a little odd that the engineers would report to the warden, who, after all, probably wouldn’t know a hell of a lot about construction, but whatever. Plus, having already drilled down several thousand feet, I am not sure why it would be so important to get down to 12,000. It a prison set in Antarctica 6,000 feet underground easy to escape, while one 12,000 feet down is escape proof?

Our friendly CGI prehistoric snake.

Anyway, they drill. Of course, an explosion follows. See, the rock was filled with highly pressurize nitrogen gas. Almost pure nitrogen. How they would know this is unclear. Did they have some sort of sensors, capable to making instantaneous measurements of the gas released? Also, I’m no geologist, but is it possible for a rock to contain a pocket of pure nitrogen? How might that happen? Right, well, I am nitpicking at this point. The point of all of this is to release a giant, prehistoric snake, which was apparently kept in some sort of suspended animation down in the nitrogen chamber. I’m not actually giving away spoilers here. The snake appears at 7:50 into the movie. Now, in addition to not being a geologist, I am also not a biologist, so I don’t actually know if being placed in a pressurized nitrogen chamber induces suspended animation. Later on, we are told that nitrogen is an inert gas, which, I guess, might explain why something stored in nitrogen would not biodegrade over time, but if the nitrogen would prevent microbes from breaking down organic material, wouldn’t the pure nitrogen also kill any organic material? Also, how did the snake end up in a nitrogen chamber? Even if a nitrogen chamber could form, could it form instantaneously, thus trapping and putting into suspended animation a giant creature? See, again, I’m not an expert, but this all seems unlikely to me.

Having set up the monster, we now cut to a college campus (Princeton no less) where Dr. Robert Trenton (Dean Cain (!)) is lecturing to his students. Cain was actually in his early/mid-30s at the time, so although he looks a little young, he could actually be a tenured professor if he was a real hot-shot in graduate school. Anyway, he’s lecturing about how 20 million years ago, Antarctica was a jungle, full of huge reptiles. Now, I’m not an expert in plate tectonics, but I am pretty sure that 20 million years ago Antarctica was already down at the South Pole, and climate change or not, it was never warm enough to support a jungle biosystem. Now, if the number had been 200 million or 400 million, it might be different. But here is an example of a bad choice, right? They could have used those other numbers as easily, and indeed a 200 million date would have better fit with giant reptile-type creatures roaming the earth. About 5 minutes doing research on the internet would have been enough to create a thin sheen of plausibility on this story, but that would have been too much to ask apparently.

Princeton professors Platt and Trenton. Yes, indeed, no credibility gap here.

Anyway, Trenton introduces this argument about Antarctic reptiles – which he admits is controversial (only his wife apparently supports his contentions) – about five minutes before the end of the last class of the semester. After a couple of exposition-justifying questions from a student, Trenton and his wife Dr. Jessica Platt (Elizabeth Lackey), stand up to say that they’ve enjoyed teaching, but that they are off to do some field work. Needless to say introducing new material at the end of a class isn’t standard pedagogy. Indeed, don’t most college classes end with teacher evaluations and discussions about final papers and exams? There is then a bunch of goofy, time-wasting, credibility-straining banter between Trenton and Platt. She teases him about getting a better score on the GMAT, which stands for Graduate Management Admission Test and is the standardized test people take to go to business school. Aspiring paleontologists would probably take the GRE, not the GMAT. Getting this one right would have taken 30 seconds on the internet. Then Trenton and Platt have this big debate about accepting a grant to do some field work. Apparently doing so would entail “walking out on tenure.” See, Trenton would sort of like to settle down and maybe, it is hinted, start a family. Platt resents that because she would have to give up her career, while he kept his, blah blah blah. Needless to say, this sort of discussion seems completely canned. Worse, this movie has no idea how universities function or how paleontologists work. Accepting a grant to do field work would hardly involved surrendering tenure – quite the opposite, finding money and doing field work is essentially a requirement of surviving in a competitive university position. Their department would not resent their leaving for a semester, they would reward it with big raises and publicity. A 3 minute phone call to any paleontologist in the UC system would have cleared up this misconception. But anyway, what is really annoying about all of this sloppiness is that it is completely unnecessary since this conflict over careers vs. family, tenure vs. field work, etc. plays absolutely no role in the denouement of the movie.

American jets pursue, and then blow off a nuke to bring down a civilian jet. I’m pretty sure a Sidewinder would have worked instead.

Okay, having now slogged through two pointless, error-ridden establishing scenes, we now a third one, and this one is the worst of the bunch. A Gulfstream is flying over the Indian Ocean. Two Russia-type guys are sitting in the passenger compartment having an incoherent discussion about the North Koreans and Chinese. By incoherent, I mean that literally; all we get are snippets of dialogue that don’t refer to anything we’ve seen on screen before nor will we see after. Anyway, two jets suddenly begin to pursue the Gulfstream. The pilot tries to contact the interceptors, but they refuse to answer. Suddenly, the jets fire their weapons and the Gulfstream takes evasive measures and avoids the missiles. I doubt that most civilian jets have the capability to detect and track missile launches, and though I am not an aeronautical engineer, I am pretty sure that even the most advanced Gulfstreams would be unable to evade several modern air-to-air missiles fired directly from the rear at nearly point-blank range. This is especially true since we don’t see the Gulfstream dump chaff or flares, and a civilian plane is unlikely to have a full suite of electronic jamming capabilities. Anyway, they avoid a direct hit, but guess what? It turns out these missiles have nuclear warheads! Yes, shortly after missing the plane, oen of the missiles detonates sending out a blast wave and frying many of the Gulfstream’s circuits. This, um, seems like overkill. And since we later learn that these are American jets, all of this rings even more false. The Gulfstream loses altitude quickly and gets corralled by the jets and is forced to land at Diego Garcia – an American naval base in the Indian Ocean. What makes this funny is that given how quickly they arrive at Diego Garcia, it seems likely that the nuclear blast would have been right in the vicinity of the base. In short, two American jets need a nuclear missile to bring down a civilian jet, and in doing so, they detonate a nuclear explosion close to one of their own bases. Wasn’t there someone on the set who might have pointed out the absurdity of all of this?

“Chechen” Yuri, meditating.

Anyway, the Russians are soon brought to “New Alcatraz.” The leader is Yuri Brescov (Mark Sheppard). Brescov is, it turns out, not a Russian. He’s actually the “defense minister” of Chechnya. (Is Yuri a Chechen name?) He’s in prison for having bought two IRBMs, and his arrest is a preemptive action to prevent his use of nukes – which is sort of ironic, since the Americans are shown using nukes to bring down his plane. He was tried in secret by the “International Protective Council.” Yes, indeed, I can certainly see Jesse Helms signing off on that sort of thing. We never find out why the defense minister of Chechnya was flying over the Indian Ocean in the first place. Seems like an odd place to be unless he was traveling from, I don’t know, Vietnam to Madagascar or something. With the addition of Brescov and his crony Peter Yuvov (Richard Tanner), there are now 6 prisoners in New Alcatraz. Again, it is hard to imagine that it makes sense to fill the prison with ones and twos, but whatever. The rest of the prisoners include super-hacker Kelly Mitich (Dana Ashbrook), IRA killer Patricia O’Boylan (Amanda Reyne), South American terrorist Jose (Robert Madrid), and an Iraqi chemical weapons builder whose name I never quite caught. Mitich makes a pass at O’Boylan, who rebuffs him by saying, “I would have lesbian sex with your dead grandmother before I’d even consider the likes of you.” Nice. I don’t know if Amanda Reyne is Irish or not, but I’d suspect the latter from the way her accent fades in and out. Don’t worry too much about the prisoners. Even though they exchange some ominous banter about escaping, we don’t see them again for over 40 minutes, and when we do they are all still quietly in their cells. Oh, and none of their established traits – hacker, terrorist, killer, etc. – actually come into play ever again. I was sure that Mitich would hack something at some point, but he doesn’t. Odd. Very odd.

When the snake isn’t eating guards, he’s drilling passageways through ice.

The thing to remember is that, in the end, this is a movie about a big-ass snake. We haven’t actually seen the snake for almost thirty minutes, but we do get to witness some of the snake’s handiwork. At least I think we do; it isn’t completely clear. The warden and his men discover a hole in the prison walls, and a circular tunnel bored through the ice from a ventilation shaft. Poluso (the engineering foreman, played by Greg Collins) argues that the tunnel must have been carved by a gas explosion. Hmmm. Earlier they were able to diagnose the contents of the hollow rock with extreme precision, but now we’re supposed to be believe that a big gas explosion occurred with no one noticing? Plus, it isn’t clear to me why a gas explosion would carve a round, level, and straight passage. But on the other hand, I can’t see how the snake can be responsible either. How would a snake bore a passage through solid, Antarctic ice? And why would it? Later on we’re told that as a cold-blooded reptile, the snake will probably seek out the warmest sectors of the prison, which doesn’t seem consistent with tunneling through ice, but then again, I am not an expert on the behavior of snakes. Anyway, the warden decides that a guard has to watch the new tunnel. I don’t think it takes a psychic to predict that said guard will soon turn into snake chow. Amusingly enough, when the guard does get chomped, Poluso and head guard Sgt. Quinn (Grant Bush) get into an arguments over who should check things out. Poluso argues that this isn’t a job for engineering, while Quinn retorts that his men are asleep. Now there is a good attitude. Anyway, Poluso and his assistant go into the tunnel, and, of course, they get chomped too.

Wow, paleontologists doing field work. How scandalous.

We now cut to an outdoor excavation site, with the time “1:46 pm” helpfully shown on screen. Needless to say, there is no reason for provide a precise time here. Drs. T and P are working in the sun, arguing again about having kids. I’m guessing someone associated with this movie thought this might give the characters depth. It doesn’t. Again, it doesn’t take a psychic of predict what happens next. A bunch of military guys led by Captain Thomas (Christopher Michael) show up asking for help. Basically, Trenton asks why he has been so honored, and the military guy replies that Trenton is the foremost expert on “undocumented Antarctic reptiles.” Do I need to point out that in academia, you can’t move get hired or promoted on the basis of “undocumented” evidence. I’m not even sure what that means. Undocumented by whom? Doesn’t Trenton’s dissertation count as documentation? Ugh. Whatever. Of course, Trenton and Platt squabble a bit about whether they can up and leave their current dig to go help the military. Trenton urges caution. Platt wants to live life to the fullest. Blah blah blah. Ugh. Whatever. They decide to go.

Doesn’t Major Larsten look a little young to have that rank?

So Trenton and Platt end up on a military transport with a four soldiers led by Major Larsten. Majors in the U.S. Army, by the way, rarely have command responsibilities, since that is a “tweener” rank between company commanders (Captains) and battalion commanders (Lt. Colonels), and even if a Major was sent on this mission, it is unlikely that he would have just four soldiers with him. They are flying in a C123 cargo plane… which is also unlikely, since no such plane exists. It is a small plane. Larsten and Trenton are sitting on opposite sides of the plane, and they can still talk to each other even over the engine noise. I don’t think a plane this size would have the range to fly to a spot “20 miles north of the South Pole.” The soldiers are all clutching their firearms, btw, which also seems more than a little odd and dangerous for that matter. Oh, did I mention the apparent lack of seat belts? Instead, all the passengers have to clutch webbing draped along the interior shell of the plane. I’ll also note that I am not sure you can fly to the South Pole in the middle of winter. A few years ago, an American woman doctor had to treat herself for breast cancer precisely because it was impossible to land a transport at her base. A Russian doctor a few years earlier had to perform an appendectomy on himself (!) for precisely the same reason. So, big-ass snake or not, I’m not sure any of this is possible.

Of course, because the military in movies is always assumed to be incompetent or pathologically secretive, no one has briefed Trenton and Platt on the possibilities that they will see a real, live prehistoric reptile. Larsten says that “Old Captain Thomas is a little light in the loafers when it comes to giving out information.” I really, really have no idea what that means. Isn’t “light in the loafers” a euphemism for gay? Larsten, btw, doesn’t have much of a military bearing, as anyone who has served in the military – or hell, even watched a Veteran’s Day parade – could tell you. Anyway, Trenton and Platt are shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that they are going to a secret, underground prison. But before we can explore this anymore, the ol’ plot-o-matic kicks creakily into action.

The C123 pilot tries to raise the prison, but no one answers. There are also no runway lights or beacons. Can they turn back? No, of course not because, everyone together now, they’re “flying on fumes.” They need to essay a crash landing. “Hold on, hold on!” Trenton advises as the plane touches down, because as I am sure you all know, if you just hold on tight, you can avoid injury in a plane crash. Happily they survive and the plane is undamaged. But the party has only twelve hours to find out what’s happening because the plane has to leave then because otherwise, “all the fluids will freeze” and the plane will the stuck there until next summer. And if the plane leaves? It will be 30 days before the next flight comes. Why 30 days? After all, this seems like an unscheduled trip, so it isn’t clear why the next one would take a month to arrange. IITS – It’s In The Script.

Can John Woo sue for copyright infringement here?

Larsten and the others wander around in the snow. They get lost despite have some sort of direction finder. But then this resolves itself almost instantaneously. Indeed, it resolves itself so quickly that it is hard to figure why the film makers even raised the issue. Anyway, they find the entrance, but the power is out, so the doors are jammed. Or something. One of the soldiers has to use an electronic gizmo to override the door lock. Once inside, Larsten whips out a key and opens the doors into the prison proper. He then notes that he has the only key, which, I think, means that even the warden and guards were locked in. Or something. The power, btw, seems to be on after all. The movie now rips off Aliens shamelessly. The corridor is a mess, with makeshift barricades in place. Larsten’s soldiers fan out, weapons at the ready. Only, instead of a snake, they come across Quinn and his men also armed. We then get a standoff as both sides keep their weapons aimed at one another. Why? Did the snake sometimes disguise itself as soldiers? Why would Quinn and his men keep their guns pointed at the soldiers? This is just an awful, mindless scene.

The warden (Craig Wasson) brings the scientists and soldiers down to his control room. He shows them some film of the snake taken by a surveillance camera. Platt mutters something about this creature possible being the “missing link.” The “missing link” between what and what? That term is usually used to refer to the pre-human ancestors of man and other primates. I’ve also seen it used to refer to the supposed transitional creature between dinosaurs and birds. But given the date we’re given of the age of the snake – 20 million years – I’m not sure what this missing link might refer to. Then we get an awful exchange where Trenton says, “this is like a real life Jurassic Park.” Quinn replies, “I saw Jurassic Park. Everybody got killed.” At which point, the warden chimes in with, “This isn’t a movie. I’ve got a prison to run here.” Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Larsten comes up with a plan to drive the creature back into the heat exchanger to kill it… a plan that naturally involves all of his men separating in small groups. No one protests the idiocy of this plan, except for Platt who, as the girl in the group, of course wants to capture rather than kill the snake. She’s shouted down and never broaches the topic again.

The snake chomps one of the soldiers.

I’m tempted to write “yadda yadda yadda” here because you all know what comes next. Larsten leads his men into the tunnel. They separate and of course this snake is able to sneak up on one of the soldiers. I’m not sure how an 80 foot long snake sneaks up on someone. Nor is it clear to me how no one can seem to spot the snake despite the literally hundreds of surveillance cameras in the prison. I mean, the snake must be deliberately avoiding the cameras or something. Now, the warden is sitting in the control room, and suddenly he has a motion detector at his disposal. He tries to warn Larsten that the snake is sneaking up on him, and the warden urges Larsten to open fire blindly. Larsten refuses at first, but then panics and fire wildly down a corridor. Does he wound the snake? Of course not, he kills one of his own men instead. So now Larsten is down a couple of guys – the one he killed, and the one killed by the snake – so he tells Quinn to get his butt down into the tunnels with the rest of his guards. Again, we get a debate over whether this is an appropriate job for the guards, but finally the warden orders Quinn to go, threatening to fire him if he doesn’t. Quinn smirks at the empty threat, but then he goes after all. Huh? Seriously, a random number generator would create a more coherent screenplay. Wait, it gets worse. As Quinn is leaving, Trenton says, “I’m coming with you.” Quinn replies, “Welcome to the party.” Which sounds cool, but doesn’t make any sense since Quinn has, throughout the movie, been the biggest whiner around. Of course, Platt decides to go too.

One of many unlikely explosions.

So, Quinn, the other remaining guards, and the two paleontologists head down into the tunnels. They’re riding in these little electric cart creatures, when suddenly Trenton has an epiphany. Snakes don’t have ears. Ah, so that means they are drawn to vibrations. Trenton tells Quinn to get out of the carts because they will attract the snake – although why walking would not create vibrations is left unexplained. It is left unexplained because, well, it conflicts with what we have seen of the snake’s behavior. We’ve seen four or five guys killed by the snake thus far, and not a single one was in a moving cart at the time. But of course, this time is different. Quinn and his men are too lazy to walk, and sure enough they attract the snake. Goofiness ensues. One of the soldiers empties his M16, and then instead of reloading, he tosses the weapon aside and pulls a shotgun out of a pouch on his back, which I don’t think is U.S. Army approved procedure. Then, someone manages to puncture a gas line, and although the snake is unharmed, all of the guards and remaining soldiers get killed in the resulting explosion.

Trenton and Platt are the only ones left alive. The snake chases them down a corridor. They try to climb a ladder to escape, but only Trenton makes it. Platt has to duck into a smaller passageway. Even though the snake seems determined the get Trenton, the minute Platt disappears, so does the snake, allowing Trenton to run down the corridor calling his wife’s name without getting chomped. Okay, so riding a cart makes you a target. Sometimes walking makes you a target. But running around while screaming doesn’t. Wow. The things you learn in a bad movie.

How is it that with all these video screens the snake is still able to move around undetected?

Trenton is surprisingly composed after having apparently lost his wife. He makes it back to the control room, and with a minimum of recrimination begins to think about next steps. I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I had just had my wife killed by a giant snake, I think I might be a little more shaken up. Trenton’s next brainstorm is to release the prisoners, who interestingly enough, have been sitting peaceably in their cells for weeks as this snake situation played itself out. The warden doesn’t want to let them out. Trenton argues that the more of them are working together the better. The warden sagely points out that the prisoners might not be the best allies. Trenton though wins the day by pointing out, “These people know a hell of a lot more about breaking out of prison than we do.” Which is (a) probably not true, since the warden knows all the plans of the prison, and (b) does not seem to be borne out in practice because the best suggestion they come up with is to climb up the heat exchanger and then blow a hole through the ice with explosives. I’m pretty sure I could have come up with (b) myself.

Mitich drives away, only to get inevitably munched.

There is some crazy stuff now. It turns out that there are two ways to get to the heat exchanger, and the group decides to split up on the assumption that the snake can’t be in both places at once. True, but since the snake could be in the heat exchanger itself (as the characters themselves point out), the benefit of splitting up seems to be mostly in multiplying the opportunities to the snake to chomp characters in a creative way. Anyway, they split into two groups. The warden, Trenton, O’Boylan, and Mitich are one group. Brescov, Yuvol, Jose, and the Iraqi are the other. Why put O’Boylan and Mitich together? After all, there is some tension between them. Because as Brescov points out to the warden, if they’re fighting with each other, they are less likely to turn on the warden or Brescov. Hmmm. As it turns out, this does not work out well because Mitich basically goes nuts and begins insulting O’Boylan, calling her at one point a “Protestant whore.” I have no idea if this was meant to be particularly insulting because as you may know the IRA is Catholic, not Protestant. Anyway, Mitich finds one of those electric carts, fires some shots in the air and then drives off. For an IRA killer, O’Boylan turns out to be a lousy shot and is unable to plug the fleeing hacker with her assault rifle. Happily the snake gets him, although in the process setting of another gas explosion that kills the warden but again leaves our giant monster unharmed.

Wow, how much would it cost to carve out a room like this underground near the South Pole?

Elsewhere, the Brescov group is roaming through a huge, open room with hundreds of columns. It is a storeroom of some sort, but as I saw it all I could think about was that it seems unlikely that they would carve out such a cavernous place underground. I also though that it was pretty obvious that the set had been designed solely for the purpose of a “cool” scene where the snake moves gracefully among the columns. As expected this scene occurs shortly, leaving Brescov the sole survivor except for… surprise… Platt who stumbles onto his group.

We now cut back and forth between the two remaining couples. O’Boylan and Trenton approach a doorway. She refuses to through because of fear of snakes. As she points out, there are no snakes in Ireland, which means that snakes are “evil creatures.” She makes Trenton promise that he won’t allow her to be carried away. Um, there is a fine line between foreshadowing and giving away the store. In the meantime, Trenton takes point as they move forward…. remember, he’s a paleontology geek. She’s a professional killer. Yeah, she’s a girl, but she’s also obviously more qualified to take point, fear of snakes notwithstanding.

We cut back to Brescov and Platt. They make it to the heat exchanger and climb to the surface. How far are they climbing? It doesn’t look like more than a few feet, but wait, weren’t they 12,000 feet below the surface? Whatever. The absurdities continue. They crawl into a tunnel near the surface and Brescov places an explosive. They take cover nearby. BOOM! The explosion blasts a hole through several feet of ice, but somehow they survive even though they are just a few yards away. Platt doesn’t want to go though. She wants to go back to find her hubby. Brescov promises he’ll come back for Trenton. Let me just say that if we ever find ourselves in a similar situation I hope my wife would be a little more insistent because Platt agrees in a hurry. Brescov and Platt get outside, in the cold, without even gloves. Which way should they go? Remember, earlier the rescue party got lost despite a direction finder. Here Brescov seemingly points randomly off into the darkness, but somehow they find the plane. Odd.

Okay, so he’s a college prof and she’s a professional killer. Why is he taking point?

Back to O’Boylan and Trenton. They are not far behind the other two. They climb up to the top of the heat exchanger. Unfortunately, the snake attacks just as they’re about the get out. It grabs O’Boylan by the ankles and starts to haul her back into the prison. The snake is quite considerate actually. For the most part it moves like greased lightning, but in this case, it takes its time in order to allow Trenton an opportunity to take a couple of shots at the beast before realizing there is nothing he can do to save O’Boylan. So, naturally, he dispatches her as well. Trenton is a cool customer. I don’t think most university professors would be up for such an proactive mercy killing.

Trenton manages to stumble out into the blowing snow. Unlike his wife and Brescov, somehow Trenton can’t make it more than a few steps without collapsing. Happily, Brescov is true to his word and comes back to rescue the professor. Right, so they stumble to the plane and get inside. They signal the pilot to take off, which he manages to do without too much trouble. As this is happening, Trenton and Brescov have a brief conversation designed to turn Brescov into a good guy. Trenton thanks him for saving his wife. Brescov says that she reminds him of his own spouse. Trenton says that he hopes Brescov will now be able to see his wife again. Brescov unwittingly signs his death warrant by replying that his wife died in “the war.” He’s a heroic widower, not a would-be nuclear terrorist, and so as a result is doomed.

The snake bursting up into the plane’s passenger compartment.

Ripping off Aliens yet again, it turns out that the snake climbs aboard the plane… not surreptitiously mind you, but rather the snake sort of wraps itself completely around the outside of the plane. I suspect that such a large creature would throw off the aerodynamics enough to make takeoff problematic, but maybe not. Oddly the snake manages to get inside the aircraft without anyone noticing, although it would seem that doing so would involve puncturing the airframe. The first time anyone notice anything is when the snake kills the co-pilot by impaling him on the snake’s tail. I should note that this snake is incredibly creative in dispatching its victims. At various times, the snake has eaten, squeezed, punctured, crushed, and battered to death guards, soldiers, and prisoners. This snake has also been shot maybe two dozen times, at point blank range, and has survived at least two gas explosions. This is definitely a super snake. Even still, there is absolutely no reason why this snake would attack a plane, especially since doing so would involve slithering across an ice field to the runway.

Anyway, the snake is inside the plane, and Brescov is again the hero. He opens the rear door of the plane in flight and attaches a parachute to the creature. He then pulls the rip chord, the parachute deploys and pulls the snake out of the plane. Unfortunately, the snake grabs Brescov around the ankles and pulls him to his death. The snake, I should note, seems to drift slowly to the ground on the parachute, leaving open the possibility of a sequel. (Ha!) Roll credits.

Look, what is there to say? The special effects are pretty weak. The snake always looks blurry and is usually in shadows. The plot is creaky and derivative. The actors seem to be in it for a paycheck. Worst of all, the screenplay is just lazy, lazy, lazy. Seriously, a day browsing the internet would have eliminated many of the howlers. It is movies like this that make me wonder if the average IQ on a movie set is lower than the average nighttime temperature in LA. The writing credit for this movie went to Terri Neish, who played “Slave Girl #1″ in Prison Planet (1992), which I now feel compelled to review in short order.