New Alcatraz [2002]

One of many titles from director-producer-writer Phillip J. Roth's United Film Organisation [UFO] outfit, slinging together disparate elements to come up with a plodding B picture. An experimental international prison deep under the Antarctic ice, reserved for the worst offenders [in an unexplored twist, political dissidents rather than serial murderers], is bothered by a giant prehistoric snake which picks off all the guards, forcing the whiny warden [Craig Wasson] and a married team of Antarctic reptile experts [Dean Cain, Elizabeth Lackey] to let loose the cons – a Chechnyan 'Minister of Defence' [Morgan Sheppard], a super-hacker who 'brought down AOL' [Dana Ashbrook], an IRA member with a fear of snakes [Amanda Reyne], etc – to organise an escape before everyone is constricted or swallowed. Like many similar monster movies [cf: Octopus, Python, King Cobra, Spiders, Arachnid], it has a long first act which keeps switching settings and moods in order to set up 'the good stuff', which is then disappointingly conventional. The snake is feeble CGI, as expected, and the cons a lot less entertaining than they ought to be.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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