Best movie of this year hands down!

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

"People are both fascinated and repulsed by snakes", a character in "Stanley" says. And with this movie, it's all about the "money shots" - the snake shots. Everything else has been built around them, and everything else is secondary. Some of those money shots are indeed memorable, like the quicksand pit scene, or the inspired freeze-frame of Alex Rocco's face as he realizes, mid-dive, that he's about to land in a snake-infested pool! Too bad the rest of the movie is so inert - not to mention overlong. And the acting of some supporting characters is amateurish. But the use of real snakes in most scenes does give it a certain authenticity that would be missing from a modern CGI-ed remake. ** out of 4.

The 1971 movie, WILLARD, was a very clever film about a lonesome loser who uses his pet rats to exact revenge against the nasty folks who wronged him. Now, a year later, the film was essentially remade by schlock director William Grefe--but this time using rattlesnakes instead of killer rats. The films are very similar. Both involve an outsider who had weird and dangerous pets as well as had fathers that were destroyed by his evil business partners.While STANLEY is not a good film, you can't put all the blame on schlock film director William Grefe (just most). While he was never a particularly competent or inspired director, this sort of trashy film was in style in the 1970s and lots of directors made a ton of them because people were willing to pay to see them. However, practically none of the ones made after WILLARD had decent acting or decent story ideas. They just churned out one low-budget crap film after another, starring such things as killer frogs, piranhas, ants and even bunnies! However, most were not like STANLEY or WILLARD--where a man fell in love with the animals and controlled them. The rest were simply mindless animals running amok--and it sold.This film begins with Tim Ochopee living in the Florida swamps. He's been back from Vietnam for several months and is sick of society and its violence. Now he's like the Dr. Doolittle of snakes--living in a house filled with the critters. He earns money capturing rattlesnakes to be milked for their venom, but otherwise has no use for people. Into his ideal world comes Alex Rocco and his scum assistants--trying to get Tim to betray his beloved snakes and sell them for their hides! While this disgusted Tim, what eventually drives him over the edge is learning that Rocco's thugs had murdered his father--and Tim and his best snake friend, Stanley, are out to even some scores.Having a killer snake is pretty funny, as much of the time it does what all real snakes do--not much. At one point he tells Stanley to bite a dying man on the hand...and the snake doesn't even more a millimeter towards the guy! It's all pretty funny and at least Willard's rats were mobile! Since Stanley is pretty much a bust most of the time, Tim also uses water moccasins (though they were really just harmless water snakes) and other nasties to kill off the enemies of the reptile world. It's actually pretty funny seeing the victims of these bites die almost instantly! These must be some snakes!! After dispatching several well-deserving jerks, Tim decides to kidnap Rocco's sexy daughter. He says that he "needs an Eve in his Garden of Eden". Well, this plan works about as well as you'd expect--especially since by this point Tim and his snakes had already killed the girl's father! You'd think that even the college educated Tim would see the flaw in this logic! Later, in a tender moment when Tim is trying to woo her, he says "I want to rape you...bed you...love you". Wow. It's hard to imagine any girl resisting this come-on line...unless she isn't brain dead!! During this dopey kidnapping and subsequent love(?) scene, the most insipid and cloying music drones on and on in the background. You see no snakes in this scene, by the way, because they were all throwing up...as were many in the audience! Later after they made sweet love (i.e., he raped her), they awaken and she confronts him with the fact he's 100% insane as well as a lousy lover (insert your own snake comment here if you'd like). He doesn't take this very well and begins overacting horribly...at which point, she also begins overacting and screaming. Perhaps this is just angst in realizing how bad the movie is. When they quiet down, it's now his turn to overact as he yells at Stanley to "kill her"--and the stupid snake just lays there doing nothing. I think killer sloths or slugs would have been more animated than snakes. Finally, tired of the whole dull affair, Stanley finally turns on Tim and bites him--but you never see this! Tim yells and holds his neck--but the snake didn't move an inch!! I guess he was just too fast for the cameras to see (yeah, right).Overall, this is a bad film but probably just about as bad as any other crazed animals attacking mankind film of the era--they were mostly all very bad and silly.

If your looking to be scared, or seriously enjoy a movie, don't watch this. But... if you want to bust a gut laughing, I highly suggest "Stanley". Full of cheesy movie effects, hilarious dialog, and obvious plot holes, it will crack you up! At least, it did me. The acting is bearable and at least it tries to convey a good message, so thats the only reason I gave it 1 star. Though the beginning is actually o.k., boring, but o.k., eventually the cheesiness mounts to be ridiculous, and it is impossible to resist laughing. I have watched this 20 times at least, and we crack up more and more every time! So gather up some friends, get some popcorn, and get ready to laugh your butt off!

Crap! Another bad killer snake movie. Actually, this movie is pretty much just "Willard" with snakes instead of rats. Chris Robinson plays a Vietnam Vet and a Seminole Indian (neither very convincingly) whose only friends are poisonous snakes. He uses these "friends" to take revenge on greedy developer and snakeskin dealer (Alex Rocco, who appeared in "The Godfather" the same year)who was also conveniently responsible for the death of his father, and on a skanky stripper who bites the heads off of snakes as part of her act (because, of course, THAT'S a real turn-on).There are several problems with this movie. First, it is somewhat believable that rats might have affection for humans and do their bidding, but it is far less believable that snakes would (and the character here isn't given any special psychic powers over them a la Jennifer Connelly in "Phenomenon"). Second, poisonous snakes aren't very good at attacking people. Even when confronted with a large number of poisonous snakes, all the victims would have to do is run away--it's not like snakes are going to chase you. (The most ridiculous scene has Rocco's character attacked in his swimming pool by dozens of water moccasins). The movie really goes off the rails at the end though when Robinson suddenly falls in love with and kidnaps Rocco's sexy, bare-midriffed blonde daughter. After she spurns him, he tries to get the snakes to bite her, but they refuse, so he reacts in an unintentionally hilarious "Willard"-esque fashion and finally gets his just desserts.On the plus side this movie was directed by Willam Grefe who would go on to do equally ridiculous but much more entertaining movies like "Impulse" with William Shatner. It's also certainly no worse than many other killer snake movies-"Jennifer, "Rattlers" , "Spasms", "Venom", or more recent CGI crap like "Boa", "Python" and "Anaconda". Maybe filmmakers should just give up on these killer snake movies.