Book VS the film - *Spoilers for both*

I just finished reading the book "Death Bite" which this film was based upon and thought I'd compare the two for anyone whom cares, and given what a mess the film was that may be very few.

Warning - there are MAJOR spoilers for both:

- The effects of the snake's bite in the book aren't nearly as spectacular as the movie. Albeit extremely potent and able to kill within just a few minutes, it causes no swelling and effects people like one would expect normal cobra venom to. Nausea, dizziness, vomiting, etc, then death.

- For whatever reasons the names of the main characters were changed for the movie, in the book Jason Kincaid is Scott Miller, Suzanne Cavadon is half Asian / half European and is named Ioka, and Dr. Tom Brasilian is named Marc Wrightson.

- Unlike the movie Miller has no psychic connection with the snake, and was so intent of capturing it is because his friend and mentor, Ioka's father (not his brother), was killed by one while saving Miller's life during an attempt to capture it. Miller has enormous survivor's guilt since he fled when it killed his friend and wanted to prove to himself and Ioka that he isn't really a coward. He has built a public zoo primarily focusing on poisonous snakes and wants to put the killer snake as its main attraction to help prove all this.

- The book starts off with a professional snake hunter leading a group being paid by Miller to capture one of the snakes alive, and two of them are killed while doing so. The book and movie are the same as far as the legends of the snake's origins, although in the book nobody lives on the island.

- In the book Wrightson is a neurologist whom is conducting research into using snake venoms as drugs for various disorders, he is not involved in anything related to psychic phenomenon. Miller hires him simply because he is an expert on dangerous snakes, has the facilities to care for one and is in desperate need of funding for his research. Since importing such an obviously dangerous animal is highly illegal, Miller has it smuggled in to the country and gets Wrightson to help with an offer of funding and supplies of venom from his zoo.

- There is no "snake cult" in the book and Thanner and his assistant (Gordon in the book) are nothing like their characters in the movie. Thanner is a wispy looking, long gray-haired smuggler of exotic animals while Gordon is a black self-taught reptile expert from the Bayou and very bigoted against white people. Thanner wants to get his hands on Miller's snake only because, aside from the enormous amount of money it would bring, he has a grudge against him because he inadvertantly hurt his smuggling business while going about obtaining all the rare snakes to put in his zoo.

- The snake gets loose in much the same manner as the movie, although Suzanne/Ioka doesn't make any attempt to kill it by turning up the heat in the crate, and only Gordon is killed in the scene.

- The attack on the ship plays out almost the same in both the film and book, although the victim had no ties to Crowley, and opened the crate because he wanted to steal some of the drugs he suspected the ship's captain was smuggling.

- In the book the snake is 19 feet long, of a dark brown color and belongs to the real-life species of deadly snakes known as Taipans. The book hints at it being of an evil nature, but it never shows any supernatural powers and more or less only behaves like an unusally malicious animal.

- Like the film in the book the snake attacks three co-eds in their home, however unlike it two of them survive, including the woman in the shower whom uses its hot water to keep the snake at bay. Also in the book there's an attack at a farm that kills a farmer and one of his horses.

- There is a funny scene in the book where an escaped pet Boa Constrictor belonging to a heavy metal band inadvertantly wreaks havoc at a large birthday party populated by elderly people.

- Crowley is the one character who is pretty much the same in both the book and film, and the late Al Waxman did a good job portraying him. Crowley was an ex-CIA surveillance expert who was driven out of the agency because of his involvement in a covert assassination job which accidentally killed a couple of undercover agents, and because of this he has more than a few screws loose when it comes to being accused of "botching jobs". He is killed at the end of the book when hellbent on completing his job no matter what he forces Wrightson at gunpoint to lead him to where Miller and Ioka are hunting the snake. After being bitten several times he climbs up a tree and falls to his death when the poison overcomes him.

- In the book the snake's crate is made of bamboo and is not a high-tech stainless steel box of the film. It was initially sealed in a cloth bag to make opening the box safer, but the victim on the boat leaves it undone after being attacked. This is the main reason why it was able to later get free and launch itself at Gordon as soon as the crate was opened.

- Unlike the film the book ends with Miller, Ioka and Wrightson pursuing the snake into the hills. Ioka breaks her leg climbing down a cliff but Miller saves her and is killed in the process while trying to strangle the snake with his bare hands, having had a drop of venom drip into an open cut. For a moment the snake appears dead but it revives itself (ala "Friday the 13th"), looking briefly like it is going to kill Ioka whom is totally unaware while mourning Miller's death. But Wrightson arrives just in time and finishes it off with a shotgun blast to the head, which is where the book abruptly ends.