Short Takes

Maybe the original wasn't THAT bad after all. ANOTHER cargo plane carrying ANOTHER government-engineered, 85-foot, 12-ton bellycrawler tumbles from the sky. This time felled by a Chechen missile. Miraculously the snake survives in its 8-foot, stainless-steel Pet Taxi. Not so amazing that it lived, but that the big ol' beastie can FIT inside the goldang thing. No wonder it's so anxious to vacate when some rube springs the lid. A disgraced American baseball-pitcher-turned-trucker and his Russian bride (Dana Ashbrook and Simmone Mackinnon) are enlisted by Karate Kid bully Billy Zabka to recover Uncle Sam's lost "cargo" from the bowels of a military facility filled with partially digested human value meals. Lest CineSchlockers forget, Billy stops down the action about an hour in to remind everyone that he actually helped kill the giagundous snake in the LAST movie. That's also when he tells how he made the career leap from rural peace officer to globetrotting CIA spook. Too bad he can't explain why, by the final reel, there's suddenly TWO laughably-animated serpents slithering hither and yon!?! No breasts. 21 corpses. Killer snake cam. Gratuitous slow mo "strut" sequence. Multiple explosions. One Mexican standoff. Fire extinguisher to the brainpan. Multiple acid loogies. Mr. Zabuka says with a straight face, "You guys aren't afraid of snakes are you?" (2001, 89 mins, 1.85:1 anam, DD 5.1, Trailers.)