Imitating the success of a certain horror classic is quite easy. Everybody did it back in the early 80's. All you had to do was steal the basic concept of a great film and/or box office hit, add more nastiness and preferably some sleazy sequences as well, and you had yourself an insignificant but enjoyable horror movie. Ain't nothing to it. One thing that does require a lot of courage (and tasteless insanity, for that matter), however, is to simultaneously rip off TWO legendary horror classics even though their plots have absolutely nothing in common! The title of this shameless piece of 80's cheese reveals it all: we are dealing here with a cash-in of both "Jaws" AND "The Exorcist". How can you possibly blend the concept of animals on the rampage with satanic possession, I hear you ask? Well, you can't… Surely the first draft of the screenplay made this clear as well, but they went along and made the movie anyways. In a godforsaken rural town in Alabama, Satan suddenly and for no apparent reasons possesses a rattlesnake. Or maybe He simply just appears in the form of a virulent snake? Actually, that would explain why it suddenly turns into a King Cobra. I don't know, either that part of the script didn't get explained properly or I wasn't paying enough close attention. Numerous dead bodies, mutilated with giant gaping holes in their faces, have to pop before the local priest decides to come into action. He's a direct descendant of a family of Druids, so if anyone can exorcise this slithery venomous demons, it's him. In good old Jaws tradition the town's prominent council members also refuse to admit there's a problem, since they just opened a fancy dog-racing track and hope to lure many tourists with this attraction. "Jaws of Satan" is a delightfully inept and imbecilic low-budget horror flick, typical for the early 80's, with clumsy effects and laughable "stunts". This is the type of movie that wants us to believe one of the characters comes into face to face contact with a deadly snake, even though you can clearly spot the dirty Plexiglas that separates them. Another character, the female lead heroine, spends an incredibly long time on the bed with a snake whilst nothing happens. She calls her boyfriend for help, and even though he's in his motel room a couple of streets away and still needs to get dressed first, the snake patiently awaits his arrival before launching attack. There are a bunch of underdeveloped sub plots that lead nowhere, like a rapist biker chasing the heroine or a spiritual medium lady that can't even predict her own death. On a slightly more positive note, the snake-bitten faces of the victims are quite cool (although it's the exact same make-up repeated 6 times) and the rural Alabama filming locations are very enchanting. And yes, that cherubic little blond girl is indeed the future Kelly Bundy in her very first appearance.

Aside from being Christina Applegate's debut, there is really nothing notable about this failed attempt at combining religious hokum with animal life on the attack. Fritz Weaver guts it out and turns in a decent performance as a small town priest whose ancestors are responsible for a curse being brought upon his parish. It seems that hundreds of years prior, his ancestor stamped out a druid cult and now their spirit is reborn in the form of a king cobra! And this king cobra happens to have jumped off a circus train after killing the crew just as it passes through this small Alabama town!!! YES You heard that right!! Now, the cobra casts its spell on other snakes in the area and causes them to randomly attack anyone they encounter! All this while a new dog racing track is about to open. And the mayor and the guy building it of course won't let anything delay the grand opening! No matter how many people get bitten! It's up to the priest to re-discover his faith and drive out the evil snakes!!! As you can tell from the above paragraph, this film is laughable. At least Snakes On a Plane apparently knew not to take itself seriously. (I've never seen that one, but that's what I understand) But Jaws of Satan plays it straight and only generates unintentional laughs! So many goofs! Plexiglass between the snakes and cast members is clearly visible in some scenes. In one scene, the sheriff is called to stalk a dangerous snake in a hardware store. The snake is clearly just a harmless gopher snake, but they try to make it seem like its attacking him!! We hear a gunshot, even when he clearly did not fire the pistol. Then, the snake just kind of slumps onto the floor... clearly not dead or harmed! The music is absolutely wretched, the film is filled with padding like people driving or taxiing down a runway in a little plane. Thought I was watching R.O.T.O.R. for a moment with all that padding! Lots of ancient clichés abound. We get a morgue attendant who leaves food lying around dead bodies and acts casual while eating next to corpses. Seen that one in so many others.... We see an expert brought in from out of town, but he doesn't amount to anything. Just serves as a love interest for a female town doctor. I don't know where to stop with my criticism, so I'll just do it here. Awful film! 2 of 10 stars.The Hound.

The best thing about "Jaws of Satan" aka "King Cobra" are the snakes. This bottom of the barrel horror movie grafts together the plot from "Jaws" and "The Exorcist." Satan slithers into a rural Alabama town where a race dog track is going to open and starts killing the residents. Seems that the hooded cobra has eyes for Fritz Weaver's doubting Catholic priest. Gretchen Corbett plays a m.d. who wants to get to the bottom of the mystery. Veteran character actor Norman Lloyd has a brief role as an older priest. This movie flopped big-time, and like somebody else said here, the director Bob Claver made this his only theatrical film. Not bad enough to be funny, just bad enough to be bad. When I was a TV news reporter working in Columbus, Mississippi, I got to interview Weaver and a couple of the crew while they were making this dogie across the line in Eutaw, Alabama. As a matter of fact, Eutaw had had a dog racing track. Most of the film was shot on location, too, and that antebellum house is the real deal. What I most remember about reporting on this movie was the snakes. They used real snakes and they didn't put Plexiglas between the actors and the snakes, because the snake wrangler somehow convinced them not to worry. Anyway, a real stinker. Again, like somebody else said, the rattlesnake in the bathtub was a letdown scene. All the shots of the snakes still look great, especially the king cobra's close-up. Talk about a snake-bit movie.

During the 1970's and into the early 80's movie viewers were routinely given the opportunity to see the latest "Nature running amok" film where some animal/mammal/fish starts to pester decent folks and when the few courageous people try to stop it they run into bureaucrats who don't want to be bothered. This story is about Satan that has taken the shape of the King Cobra and after getting loose from on board a train it pops up in a small Alabama town where the snake is trying to track down Father Tom Farrow (Fritz Weaver) whose ancestors were druids. The Cobra is able to control the local rattlesnakes and make them start acting aggressively and biting people. Doctor Maggie Sheridan (Gretchen Corbett) who works at the hospital is suspicious of all the snakebite victims and some of the wounds look stranger than usual. She calls a snake expert in to investigate and Dr. Paul Hendricks (Jon Korkes) flies in. *****SPOILER ALERT*****After more victims are found Maggie and Paul try to persuade Mayor Grady Thorpe (Jack Gordon) to let the townsfolk be aware of what is happening but he says no and a successful businessman named Matt Perry (Bob Hannah) who has a new business opening starts to call the shots. This film was directed by Bob Claver who is a very respectable television director but this is the only theatrical film that he directed. As I started to watch this film I started to think that this was made for television but I double checked and it was released in theaters. The whole look of the film has T.V. movie of the week written all over it. No style to the filmmaking at all and in certain scenes as it looks to fade out I kept expecting a commercial to come on. This was trying to capitalize on the successes of films like "Jaws", "Orca", "Food of the Gods" and even "Grizzly" but those at least had an enemy that truly spooked viewers but this fails on that level. I had to laugh at the actor who was obviously separated by glass from the cobra, the glass was dirty. You couldn't miss it. For you trivia buffs out there Christina Applegate makes her film debut here and actress Nancy Priddy who plays her mother is actually her real mother! Silly and unscary film tries to capitalize on the success of this genre but fails on all levels.