Nice effects though.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This movie is very entertaining and should be added to every collection of excellent B-movies. This movie was intentionally made to be humorous as well as gruesome. Wonderful and hilarious dialogue and lovable characters are only a couple of qualities that make this movie so good. This film also includes some graphic and gory death scenes which every horror needs. The acting was perfectly fitting for any comedy-horror and every character was unique in their own way. The 'Geek Scene' remains one of my favorite scenes of all time and deserves to be famous. All in all, very well played and hit spot-on. CGI is only okay, but hey, it is a comedy-horror after all. A great flick that should leave a good impression in the movie world.

I give the Basilisk props. In one confrontation, he bites the hottie with the scepter in her hand and rips her dress off. Instead of, oh I dunno, say, running for her life, she sits there in her undies and yells at the Basilisk for ruining her dress. The Basilisk stares at her for two seconds, then chomps her torso off. Not only is it a comically bad scene, but we also got to see Yancy Butler in her skivvies. Tremendous. As for the rest of the movie, it's your standard SciFi Original fare. People find relics of an ancient creature somewhere in Persia. Despite warnings from the locals to leave well enough alone, they take everything home to a major metropolitan museum and the thing comes to life. Military grunts come in talking all big and bad about how they'll blow this thing to smithereens, then run like little girls after it starts ripping them to shreds. Science geeks study its habits and try to find a way to kill it. The Basilisk looked pretty cool. The ending was a little dumb, so that pulls the overall rating lower. But if you're in the mood for some bad horror hijinks, "Basilisk: The Serpent King" (kind of a silly title, since toward the end of the movie the Basilisk was proved to be female) will fit the bill.

"Basilisk: The Serpent King" is an incredibly enjoyable Sci-Fi Channel original creature feature.**SPOILERS**On a dig in Persia, Professor Harry McCall, (Jeremy London) and his team Rudy Skeeters, (Griff Furst) and Sierra, (Sarah Skeeters) find a series of ancient statues depicting soldiers and a large unknown creature. Meeting up with fellow scientist Rachel Donegan, (Wendy Carter) they attend a party honoring the discovery, and during an eclipse, the creature statue comes to life as a Basilisk and goes on a rampage. While trying to escape, they find Col. Douglas, (Cleavant Derricks) and his National Guard unit fighting the creature. When they realize that the only way to fight the creature is a scepter held by thieves Hannah, (Yancy Butler) and Brock, (Doug Dearth) they race to get it back before it continues it's rampage.The Good News: This one really surprised me by how good it was. A giant snake loose in a major city is one of the few ideas left in this series, and here it works magically. Rather than just having out in the middle of nowhere with very few targets, the snake is loose inside an urban center, which holds the possibility for tons of damage and tons of fun, which this has plenty of. The snake itself goes on a major rampage, biting off limbs, decapitating a couple, having objects crushed when they collide with them, and even the requisite number of people turned to statues. Those are handled very well, not really looking very CGI at all and looking quite natural. The various action scenes are all nicely paced and quite exciting, keeping it moving forward and always on the move. There's very little down-time between pretty much anything, as the pace moves along very rapidly from once scene to another. The snake itself is out and about very rapidly as well, coming out very early and staying that way for most of the most of the movie. The reawakening is a great action set-piece, with tons of bodies flying everywhere and a general mass panic. The mall sequence features some great action parts as well, making it a real highlight. The fact that the mystical creature gets explained in here with some factual evidence gives this one some more weight to it that most don't really have in the science background, and really sounds quite credible. Though it does look quite fake, the snake does have a rather creepy look to it in certain scenes, with a snake-like body mixed with a crocodilian jaw and a set on horns along the side of the body. Far better film than it should've been.The Bad News: It's getting very tiresome to call these films on the very badly-done CGI, and this one is no exception. Here, the same applies. Very rarely does the CGI used to make the creature look anything close to being believable. The CGI is apparent on the creature whenever it moves for a period of time, but when it doesn't really move is when there's a believable appearance, but it's still pretty easy to tell it's not a real creation. This is a common problem, and one that really doesn't show a lot of signs towards ending, and must really be endured more so than most other films. However, this is the one main problem with this. It's really not all that bad.The Final Verdict: Far better Sci-Fi Channel original than it had every right to be, this falls into the upper echelon of their pantheon of films and features a lot to like about it. Sure, there's the fact that it doesn't look real at all, but that is becoming par for the course with these films and is now a given. Fans of the past films should see this one immediately.Rated R: Graphic Violence and some Language

"Basilisk" is on right now, the latest CGI monster flick from Sci-Fi, inspired by medieval bestiaries (remember "Manticore"?).The effects are bad, the characters and situations predictable, the monster really badly drawn, but it's another one of those movies that is so bad, you can enjoy laughing at it. And if it weren't for movies like this, actors like Stephen Furst wouldn't have anything to do.At least we get to see Yancy Butler running around in a little cocktail dress.Now I see that there is a minimum line requirement to these comments, so I have to add more content. Let's see...The soldier popping up out of the manhole, begging for help, only to get pulled back in, that's predictable.The lone garbage man who sees the monster as he walks to the dumpster, that's a cliché, too.Oh, and the producers fulfilled another horror movie requirement by having the monster attack a shopping mall. Take that, you blind consumerist sheep!Ooh, and the monster came to life at a university museum, at a reception for wealthy patrons. Take that, capitalists! Throw in a nutty sidekick, and a hot blonde archeology professor, and we have plenty of the expected building blocks of a shake-and-bake monster movie.Is that enough lines now?I see that it is. Who's idea was that requirement, anyway?