Snakehead Terror
Directed by: Paul Ziller
Written by: A.G. Lawrence, Patrick J. Vitale
Starring: Bruce Boxleitner, Carol Alt
The introduction of the northern snakehead, an East Asian species of fish, to the American ecosystem caused a mild media panic back in 2002. The non-native species was killing off all of the local aquatic wildlife and the Department of Natural Resources had to poison the waters to stop the invasive fish. That story is true. The inelegant solution employed by the government apparently wasn’t good enough for the producers of Snakehead Terror, who decided to give this minor news item a sequel. Say hello to Snakehead Terror.
When the [insert name of town here] was forced to poison their lake because of the snakehead incident, it destroyed their whole fishing tourism industry. The last thing that the town needs is a series of unexplained deaths to drive people away. Being a Sci Fi channel original movie, this is exactly what they get. Town Sheriff Patrick James (Bruce Boxleitner) wants to close the lake off especially after his daughter’s boyfriend became fish chow. The Mayor has seen Jaws though, and knows his role. He vehemently opposes the Sheriff because someone has to think about the economy. Grabbing a page from Roy Scheider’s playbook, James enlists a marine biologist, Lori Dale (Carol Alt) to identify the killer. Apparently, the snakeheads are back and they’re bigger than ever. They discover that a couple of well-meaning townies were dumping Human Growth Hormone in a misguided attempt to revive the town’s tourism (We Have Mutant Fish!).
Speaking of misguided attempts, the Sheriff’s daughter Amber and her friends decide to go on a fishing trip for vengeance. Unsurprisingly, this ends with most of their party dead and the teenagers trapped on a patch of land littered with snakeheads (Did we mention that they can crawl on land?). If things weren’t bad enough, a Godzilla sized snakehead appears but James and his sexy marine biologist come to the rescue.
In the end, they needed a creative solution from the Sheriff to rid the town of the snakehead terror. Sheriff James and Amber hug and the film ends.
If you’ve seen Jaws or any other b-grade monster movie in the past 30 years you could pretty much write Snakehead Terror yourself. Start with a small town Sheriff, add a couple of unexplained murders, a skeptical government official, an unauthorized hunt to up the body count and a scientist/expert for exposition and you got yourself a monster movie. Not that there’s anything wrong with following the Jaws template, hell we didn’t care when Maneater did it. But when you already share the same danger in the water theme with Jaws maybe you should change it up a little.
All in all, Snakehead Terror is a by-the-numbers monster flick that only watchable for Bruce Boxleitner. He may have been playing a stock small town sheriff but I always want TRON to win in the end. I am so not looking forward to Frankenfish.
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