Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a confession to make: Ever since I was a little boy, I wanted to be a pilot. While other kids were making cardboard-box spaceships or prancing with a toy horse between their legs, I had my arms outstretched flying around my backyard. But everything changed when there was an unexpected addition to my mental crew list, and my dream of being a pilot went out the 30,000-foot high window. Suddenly there were motherf*cking snakes on my motherf*cking plane.

So why did I watch a film that could kill my lifelong ambition? Not the question to ask. The bigger riddle is why more didn’t do the same. The film seemed to have everything a person could want: action, adventure, Samuel Jackson Tasering snakes. But it brought in a disappointing $15 million on opening weekend, so what went wrong?

‘It looked like the movie was going to be made by the Internet,’ said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television and a professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. ‘For a while it looked like the Internet was going to be to ‘Snakes on a Plane’ what (it) was to Howard Dean. But like the Dean campaign, what ‘Snakes’ proves is that the Internet can get you to a certain point, but it cannot take you over the line.’

If you are one of the many who hasn’t seen the film yet, I guarantee that ‘Snakes’ deserves that energy. I loved watching it. It was so cheesy, so over-the-top, so bad it became good. So good, in fact, I demand you see it now.

The Snakes

Throughout history there has always been a fascination with snakes, dating back to biblical times. They have been feared as the personification of evil. It only makes sense that snakes should presently scare the crap out of theatergoers everywhere.

‘They wanted my input so we had a meeting, and I told them certain points of what looks threatening to me. But in Hollywood, it doesn’t look very good if (the snake) just stares at you,’ said Jules Sylvester, the snake handler for ‘Snakes on a Plane.’ ‘They always have to make it so it looks more threatening than it is.’

Through a combination of CGI graphics and the 500 live snakes Sylvester brought, there certainly is a plethora of the painfully graphic attacks. And through it all, even though you may jump in fright, you can’t help but laugh at the extreme ridiculousness.

‘There was a woman getting sick and she went to throw up in her vomit bag and a snake came out and bit her on the tongue. I found it hilarious,’ said Chris Leone, a junior broadcast journalism major. ‘The deaths were over the top, the lines were cheesy and there were stock characters all over the place. It was your stereotypical bad movie.’

There really is nothing like the fright you get from something jumping out on the screen as the entire audience screams out in surprise. But that fear can actually be a positive thing when dealing with deadly animals.

‘I think a lot of our fascination with snakes stems from fear, which is hard-wired into our brains,’ said Dr. Sean Bush, star of Discover Channel’s ‘Venom ER’ and professor of emergency medicine at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Medical Center and Children’s Hospital. ‘I also believe learning how to face fears can confer a survival advantage. Snakes are truly dangerous, and a lot of people around the world die from venomous snakebites You always hear, ‘Don’t panic,’ but a little fear is OK; it helps you survive. And don’t mess with snakes, if you come across one.’

The Plane

Everyone who has flown on a plane before knows the horrors of airline travel. Delays, long lines, cramped seats, crying babies, in-flight movies starring Nicholas Cage – it’s a miserable experience. So when it’s combined with an unnatural terror, it’s enough to make anyone scream.

‘There’s high drama as you are flying (at) 20,000 feet in a pressurized tube high above the ground and you’re pushing mach eight,’ said Morgan Durrante, spokesman for US Airways. ‘You’re in your seat (and) basically you’ve got nothing to do until the plane lands. So if you’re making a movie, it’s a pretty interesting setup for making drama.’

Movies about airplanes are inherently scary because the traveler is unable to escape. Once the terror begins, it ends only when the parking break is up and the captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign.

‘I don’t think anyone is going to be scared. It’s entertainment,’ Durrante said. ‘Once they step on the airways, we’ll take good care of them and there won’t be any snakes on board.’

The Samuel Jackson

A wise man once said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Very true, but only if the ‘we’ refers to human beings. Snakes have another reason to be terrified.

Samuel L. Jackson is no stranger to dealing with deadly animals. He’s had to fight everything from sharks to dinosaurs and, most recently, Julianne Moore’s overacting. But when fighting legless reptiles he really shows his stuff. I am prepared to say that no one could have pulled off the role of Agent Neville Flynn other than Jackson. He whipped snakes by their tails, helped pilot the plane and nobody, I mean nobody, can swear like he can.

‘This is a guy that can pull off a tongue in cheek action adventure,’ Thompson said. ‘There’s almost that Samuel Jackson glint his eyes, which tells you that he knows how silly it is, but it works.’

And that’s exactly what it is, a perfect combination of snakes, a plane, Samuel L Jackson and a whole bunch of B-movie goodness.

So although I no longer have the need to fly as captain, I am absolutely sure I can still find a way to get high. Especially when I’m watching ‘Snakes on a Plane.’

Published on August 27, 2006 at 12:00 pm