Ren she da zhan (1983)

User Rating:

6.1/10   

Director:

Chi Chang

Writers:

Chi Chang (screenplay)
Kang Nien Li (screenplay)

Release Date:

1983 (Taiwan)

Genre:

Horror

Cast

Lei Chang
Chung-Lien Chou
Tung-min Huang
Yuen Kao
Ying Lee
Pi-ling Lo
Wei Lu
Yi-lan Lu
Sha-fei Ouyang
Jen-chi Shen
Ping-Ao Wei
Hun Sui Wong
Yen Wu

Also Known As:

Calamity of Snakes (International: English title)

Country:

Taiwan | Hong Kong

Language:

Mandarin

Color:

Color

Company:

Chi He Film Company

Movie Connections:

Edited into The Serpent Warriors (1985)

The title ain't lying, this is a real calamity. Barmy HK snakesploitation

I'd wanted to see this for a while, after reading that it was one of the most bonkers of the early eighties HK horror outings. I generally really like those films and the reviews on this page really intrigued me. Calamity of Snakes pretty much lives up to its awesome name, in a tale of snake vengeance after a colony is decimated underneath a construction site. Of course, the survivors don't like this one bit so come to cause mayhem for the unwelcome humans. The film gains a tremendous amount of power from its use of real snakes, in their hundreds and deploying them in some real nutsoid situations attacking humans in cars, baths and numerous other places as they go about their human business. Im pretty sure some of the scenes must have been pretty dang dangerous for the cast unless all of the copious snakes had been de venomed. At the very least, the scenes have a real squirmy intensity to them because just the thought of having lots of live snakes crawling over you is pretty nightmarish. The use of live snakes does lead to the main problem that I had with the film. Because the attack scenes have real snakes, the film lacks any significant gore inflicted upon the humans, presumably because it would have been near impossible to coordinate fake gore effects on a person at the same time as having live snakes crawl over them without ruining the continuity. The attacks are still very effective but the only real gore of the film comes from a lot of real snake slaughter. Snake lovers, PETA members and any animal rights whiners should give this film a very wide berth, because the snake body count is easily in triple figures and they often die in gruesome fashion. There's stomping, hacking, slicing, burning and other methods and its pretty reprehensible stuff if it bothers you. I wasn't too bothered, but it is kinda disturbing. A slightly lesser problem is that it takes a fair while for the snakes to mount their full on attack and the first hour has the odd slow moment (though there are still several jaw dropping scenes, especially one involving mongoose). In all, if totally barmy Hong Kong whack job cinema or films about calamities are to your taste and you can stomach remorseless massacring of our slithering friends then Calamity of Snakes is highly recommended.