Thunder of Gigantic Serpent

  • Großbritannien Thunder of Gigantic Serpent

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Few things can elicit such unabashed audience enthusiasm as the sight of a rubber monster demolishing miniature cardboard cityscapes. But forget the japanese classic Godzilla (1954). It’s time for our second encounter with the frankensteinian production of Hong Kong based producer Joseph Lai. Made with his trademark "cut-and-paste" technique, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent tells a simple story of a little girl and her pet snake. Well not that simple as it involves terrorists, scientists working on a secret formula, bratty kids, gunfights, martial arts, panicking crowds, the police, the military, Pierre Kirby and all culminating in a rampaging monster reptile being shot at by fighter jets. All power to the imagination! (The Shockproof Film Festival)

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Englisch Though Godfrey Ho did not directly bring this Frankenstein’s monster to life, as he merely served as the screenwriting Igor to his colleague Charles Lee’s Dr. Frankenstein, the signature of IFD Films & Arts Ltd. clearly remains. Thunder of Gigantic Serpent is another purchased B-movie that was dissected and put back together with passages containing audience potential, a sequence with western faces plus some fight scenes, and the whole thing is given a new soundtrack with dubbing based on the “original” script. Fortunately for lovers of trash, the source material was a hopeless Taiwanese attempt to paraphrase Japanese kaiju films. But instead of Godzilla, the mock-ups of the urban environment are decimated by a genetically enlarged snake, which is befriended by an annoying little girl. The original has rewarding elements, from the blatantly naïve special effects (where it is possible to see the strings being pulled by the central monster’s puppeteer, even in the miserable picture quality) to the exaggerated acting and the insipid action sequences, to minor gems like the fact that the red berets worn by soldiers are adorned with Harley-Davidson patches. By trimming the original’s dialogue passages and adding fight scenes with third-rate martial artist Pierre Kirby, the resulting cake of Joseph Lai’s dog and Betty Chan’s cat is one of the absolute highlights. In this case, the tagline “All power of the imagination!” takes on fantastical, unthinkable and amazing levels. ()

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