FANGS

CONTAINSSSS SSSSOME SSSSPOILERSSSS

Staggeringly dull seventies obscurity in which fully half the movie goes by before anything happens, most of it takes place in the dark anyway and what little you can see is half lost in the murk of a dodgy transfer to a medium-definition YouTube upload from something that wasn't exactly shot in sparking 70mm in the first place. There's really nothing to be gained from slogging through Fangs except a thorough waste of a Monday evening, and any points it might earn from its arrant silliness it loses for sheer, petrifying boredom and more John Philip Sousa than any sane person would ever sit and listen to in a lifetime.

Somewhere out in a desert small town, an assortment of halfwitted locals bully and victimise snake breeder Les Tremayne (North By Northwest, The Slime People): the smug, hypocritical preacher, the obese, redneck storekeepers, the newly-married best friend who strangely wants to spend his evenings getting it on with his hot young poledancer bride instead of sitting around listening to The Stars And Stripes Forever on repeat in the company of a rambling hillbilly lunatic, even the local schoolteacher with a secret sexual fetish for snake fondling. No, really (it's called ophidicism, apparently). Eventually, of course, he snaps and starts using his collection of snakes to torture and kill his persecutors.

It's incredibly glum, with a satisfyingly bleak ending, but it takes far too long to get going, Snakey Bender (Tremayne) is a fantastically annoying villain, the soundtrack (occasional synth tracks and endless bloody Sousa marches) actively made me want to punch someone and none of his hideous victims are worth shedding a tear over. It doesn't make much sense - the local cop is an imbecile who can't remember a six-digit licence plate for ten seconds and doesn't find it remotely suspicious that all these people mysteriously left town at the same time, and no-one notices the increasing pile of the victims' cars at the bottom of a cliff - but it doesn't really matter since it's all so indifferently put together. Also known as Snakes, and nothing to do with the (somehow) even more boring Rattlers.

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