Avanaida – Todesbiss der Satansviper (1983)

Avanaida – Todesbiss der Satansviper: Directed by William Fruet. With Peter Fonda, Oliver Reed, Kerrie Keane, Al Waxman. A gigantic serpent is captured on a remote island and shipped to an American college for experimentation. A British millionaire and an American scientist find themselves in hot pursuit of the beast when it escapes from captivity and starts to kill innocent people.

“For years I heard reports about how utterly bad this movie was, so when I finally got a chance to see it, I wasnu0026#39;t expecting much – especially knowing the movie was also shelved for two years before getting a release.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003enAs it turns out, I didnu0026#39;t find it completely bad. For starters, the production values were above average for a Canadian movie of the time (except for when we see the snake at the end – it does indeed look like it was made out of paper mache.) There are a few impressive gore effects (though not as much as you might think), and the sorority house attack sequence is pretty amusing. It was slow at times, but seldom could you find it boring.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut I wonu0026#39;t deny that the movie is filled with problems. The editing is quite bad at times, with scenes cut short and some information seemingly missing. The whole u0026quot;snake cultu0026quot; subplot turns out to be for NOTHING – the movie would need very little additional rewriting if it was completely cut out. The scenes are mixed together with clumsiness – after Peter Fondau0026#39;s character is introduced, it takes about half an hour before he returns! Ultimately the movie completely falls apart around the last 20 minutes or so, leading to an awful climax and ending. Not just awful, but abrupt – itu0026#39;s pretty clear the ending was considerably tinkered around with in the editing room for some reason. Could it originally have been even more awful than this? Quite possibly.”