Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent but underrated film

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

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

Clark Newman (J. Eddie Peck) is bitten by a radioactive snake while on a road trip with his girlfriend Lisa (Jill Schoelen), after which his hand mutates into a deadly snakey-arm thingy.The best part of an hour has passed before anything memorable happens in The Curse 2: The Bite, the first 50 or so minutes focusing on Clark and Lisa's relationship and the trial and tribulations of travelling salesman Harry (Jamie Farr) as he attempts to track down the couple after administering the wrong antidote. Fortunately, a wonderfully bonkers final act just about makes the waiting worthwhile, the good stuff kicking off with a cop having his still-beating heart pulled out of his mouth, followed not long after by a poor nurse getting her jaw yanked off.The film ends with Lisa, dressed only in shirt and panties, being pursued by her rapidly mutating boyfriend, who lashes at her with his snake-hand's prehensile tongue before losing an eyeball and spewing reptiles from his mouth. After chasing the girl through a muddy building site, Clark impales himself on a steel pole in an attempt to end the horror, but his head splits open and a shonky snake creature slips into the mud, only to be blown to smithereens with a shotgun by Harry. Great stuff—it's just a shame about all the inconsequential guff that precedes it.

As a standalone goes, this isn't bad and is miles ahead of its terribly lame unrelated second sequel 'Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1991)'. Still even here, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed with the final outcome. What begins promising and ends so (mainly centring on Screaming Mad George's tremendously vivid and killer first-rate special effects) has too much time on its hands when it should be more exciting than it actually is with an odd, colourful assemble of sub-plots hanging off its already creative premise. The problem is it seems to want to only the scrape the surface with minimal details, than delving in deep with any sort of lasting imprint and ends on a whimper. So the comparisons to Cronenberg's cerebral remake of 'The Fly' seemed to be unjustified, with only the transformation effects ringing true. Leaving it as a simple, taut and silly b-grade cautionary on-the-road feature. Although expect something dreary, downbeat and utterly horrifying. Likable leads Jill Schoelen (who's always a complete delight) and J. Eddie Peck (the poor guy goes through the slivering changes) make the trip an easy ride. There's fun support in the shape Jamie Farr, Bo Svenson, Sydney Lassick and Savina Gersak. The atmosphere might be lacking (even though the well presented photography frames the blistering sand bowl locations to good effect), but it has a real nasty streak abound (the plastered shocks and unnerving deaths) and the macabre effects are grotesque and leave sickening punch in the guts. It looks like they were trying to blow you away, and it mostly does good at that. I guess we know what the main selling point is here.

A sterling example of how a threadbare and unpromising premise can be made genuinely creepy and effective thanks to a proficient execution. Granted, the story ain't much: Young fellow Clark (affable J. Eddie Peck) and his sweet girlfriend Lisa (a winning performance by late 80's flash-in-the-pan scream queen cutie Jill Schoelen of "The Stepfather" fame) are driving their jeep across the parched, desolate Arizona desert. The pair take an ill-advised detour off the main road and discover an old abandoned nuclear test site. Things turn sour when one of the jeep tires goes flat. Things get worse when Clark gets bitten by a radioactive snake. And, naturally, things become all the more hairy and freaky when Clark's bitten arm starts to mutate into a foul, icky, highly deadly and disgusting snake monster! As I said before, the hackneyed plot leaves plenty to be desired. However, with this supremely yucky and revolting horror movie gross-out splatterfest it's not the story that counts; it's Screaming Mad George's astonishingly vile and revolting make-up f/x and Federico Prosperi's commendably able direction which really make the difference here. Among the picture's sickening highlights are a woman's jaw being torn off, a man's heart being yanked out of his throat, and Peck vomiting forth dozens of steaming slithery snakes. The acting is uniformly tops as well: Peck and Schoelen are credible and likable leads, with solid support from Bo Svenson as a mean, intimidating jerk sheriff, Jamie Farr as a friendly, helpful salesman, "Midnight Ride" 's Savina Gersak as a kind, pious Baptist lady, Sydney Lassick as a meek, squeamish motel clerk, and "Parasite" 's Al Fann as a belligerent gas station attendant. Roberto D'Ettorre Piazoli's crisp, fluid cinematography, the eerily forbidding atmosphere, Carlo Maria Cordio's spare, shivery score, the superbly spooky use of arid, swelteringly hot and sticky New Mexico locations, and the spectacularly grotesque and hence immensely upsetting bummer ending further enhance the overall flesh-crawling uneasiness of this harrowingly unpleasant and unnerving fright film surprise.

After a young man is bitten on the hand by a radioactive snake, his hand changes into a lethal snake head, which attacks everyone he comes into contact with. Also, his body becomes filled with snakes. Now, he must prevent himself from hurting others. "Curse II" is not only poorly made, but is also boring as watching paint dry. There are some gruesome parts, and screaming mad George's special effects range from really bad to acceptable, but the script is awful, the acting is so-so, and the music is extremely annoying. Don't watch 'Curse 2: the bite". it's a typical excuse for a sequel. (By the way, what does this have to do with the original?) 2-2.5/10.