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Snakes in Movies
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All Movie Snakes
Must Die!
All Movie Snakes
Want to Kill You!
Dancing With Snakes
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as Weapons
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for Comedy
Snakes Used for
Food or Medicine
Snakes Used
Realistically
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Whipping Snakes


Kinds of Snakes
Rattlesnakes
Cobras
Black Mambas
Boas, Pythons,
and Anacondas
Unusual Species

Settings
Snake in the House!
Snakes in Beds
Snakes in Jungles
and Swamps
Snakes In Trees

Genres & Locations
Snakes In
Westerns
Snakes in
Asian Movies
Herps in
Australian Movies
Herps in
James Bond Movies
Herps in
Silent Movies
Herps in
Spielberg Movies
Snakes in Movies
 
Committed (2000)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
This is an offbeat indie road movie with a good cast that doesn't quite come together. It's about Joline, (Heather Graham) an obsessive young woman who thinks she is extraordinarily committed to her husband of almost two years, Carl (Luke Wilson). But when she returns from work one night she finds that he has moved out. After he sends her a post card from the desert southwest, she rents a car and drives to Texas where she finds Carl living and working in El Paso. She follows him and finds out he's seeing another woman, Carmen (Patricia Velasquez). After she meets Carmen, they become friends. Carmen sees that Joline is interested in magic, so she brings her to meet her grandfather "Grampy" (Alfonso Arau) who is a witch or sorcerer who lives in an isolated house in the desert.

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Grampy is resistant to taking on a student, so he tells Joline that he has a pet rattlesnake in a can and asks her to get it out for him because he misses it. Joline is concerned that it's dangerous, but he tells her he put a spell on the snake so she shouldn't worry. He's testing her faith in his magic powers. She opens the can and starts to reach inside, but he yells to her to put the lid back on and get away from the snake. (Of course, this means that he does not have the power to put a spell on a snake to make it harmless.) He lets Carmen know that he is impressed with how much faith Joline has in him, and he agrees to teach her to use magic to protect Carl. (Carl is in danger because Carmen's ex-lover wants to kill him for stealing Carmen from him.)

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Joline returns to see Grampy and finds him sitting in the yard holding his pet rattlesnake. She asks him how he can free-handle a venomous snake that could kill him and he tells her that he scratched himself with rattlesnake fangs to gradually introduce the venom to make himself immune to it so he could handle rattlesnakes without fear. Of course, that won't stop a snake from biting him, which could still require a visit to a doctor.


Later, after Joline has been committed to a mental hospital because her obsession with using magic to protect Carl made her mentally ill, Grampy comes to get her out. She tells him she's too sick to live out in the world. He tells her "Maybe you were not sick enough. Maybe you needed a little poison in you to live among the rest of us and not get killed."


I think the snake we see in the oil drum is a Red Diamond Rattlesnake, which is only found in Southern California. According to the credits the snake was provided by Reptile Rentals which is based in southern California, so that makes sense. Except for the brick red color, it looks very much like the Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnake which is found in El Paso. The snake we see in Grampy's hands might be a different snake, but it is definitely a live rattlesnake. How did they get away with having the actor, Alfonso Arau, hold a live rattlesnake? Maybe its venom glands were removed or its mouth was sewed shut. I'd love to know.