Glucedee
It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
AshUnow
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Griff Lees
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
amosduncan_2000
Stanley is enjoyable Drive In hokum, but it might have been a real classic if director Grefe had kept a little pace and not let long pauses and other nonsense pad the action. This film could lose about 25 minutes and be all the better for it. It's like they were afraid it was going to come out too short so they had everything go SLOW........
An obvious attempt to cash in on the success of "Willard" it is interesting that both central charactors start sympatheticly and turn bad. Actually, a more distinct arch in this case as Willard is kind of a creep from the get go.
gridoon2018
"People are both fascinated and repulsed by snakes", a character in "Stanley" says. And with this movie, it's all about the "money shots" - the snake shots. Everything else has been built around them, and everything else is secondary. Some of those money shots are indeed memorable, like the quicksand pit scene, or the inspired freeze-frame of Alex Rocco's face as he realizes, mid-dive, that he's about to land in a snake-infested pool! Too bad the rest of the movie is so inert - not to mention overlong. And the acting of some supporting characters is amateurish. But the use of real snakes in most scenes does give it a certain authenticity that would be missing from a modern CGI-ed remake. ** out of 4.
Michael O'Keefe
Tim Ochopee(Chris Robinson)is a young Seminole Indian returning from the war in Vietnam with emotional scars, bitter and seeking revenge for his father's death. He wants to spend his life in seclusion with his pet rattlesnake Stanley and mate Hazel. Tim makes a meager living by selling snake venom to a clinic for snake bite antidote. He is being pressured to sell his houseful of snakes to a snakeskin clothing manufacturer(Alex Rocco). Tim refuses and is being bullied by the same men that "accidentally" killed his father. The young Seminole will rely on his pet Stanley and family of rattlers as protection from his attackers. This movie is filled with too much dead time between situations. This low-budget horror flick lacks dialoge and seems to lumber along. Also in the cast: Susan Carroll, Paul Avery and 1960's singer Steve Alaimo.
Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic)
Sorry, I'm not going to give this one a pass, and whoever decided it would be a swell idea to repackage this barbaric little piece of tripe for the DVD generation deserves to be squashed with a gun butt like the poor little baby snakes unforgivably killed while filming the big massacre scene. Then another adult snake is blown to bits by a shotgun blast, with the film crew apparently using live ammunition on the set. They should have used it on each other.Maybe that is the lesson of STANLEY. Here is proof that our culture has actually evolved since 1972, when all of these proceedings were considered good drive-in movie fun. They even slapped it with a PG, and I can't help but wonder how many kids were sent crying under the back seat at seeing the poor, helpless, barbarically exploited animals brutalized for the cameras. But don't let me rain on your nostalgia parade, especially with the super duper restored special edition widescreen super limited edition restored direct to digital super remastered ultra super Grindhouse edition DVD releases. Go out and buy one and watch the animals murdered, laugh it up -- many reviewers here write mockingly about how FUNNY this movie is -- enjoy your walk down Memory Lane, remember what it was being the idiot who found this entertaining back when you were just a little Neanderthal crawling out of his cave. The guilt will creep up later when someone else bugged by it will ask, "Do you think those were real snakes they were killing in that stupid f***ing movie you made me watch?" Try to rationalize it away. Those poor little things were butchered, you sat there laughing until it happened, and then the fun was over.I saw this on Sunday afternoon creature feature when I was about nine just like anyone else probably reading this. I was horrified and nauseated then too, only now it's for a different reason. Today it's shame, shame at our culture for having been so utterly devoid of compassion to have sanctioned the creation of a movie like this, and shame that anybody would cynically decide that it needed to be revived just to sell DVDs. Don't get me wrong either, I'm not Mr. Animal Rights granola bar Phish idiot hugging trees & eating chipotle tofu wraps. I just have a limit of how much cruelty I can witness, and this movie sailed right past that point and didn't look back. If nobody else will take a stand I will: This movie is evil, cruel, and wrong.As a counterpoint to how animal killings can be redeemed, sort of, consider CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST with its turtle guttings, monkey de-brainings, pig shooting, and the truly traumatizing scene of someone consuming a hot dog with ketchup. At least that movie had the guts to get down in the slaughterhouse run-off drain with its dismembered animal parts and wallow in the bile & stomach contents flowing onto their shoes. STANLEY by contrast uses its animal killings as a plot point for character motivation like its just some sort of soap opera, like the guy wasn't motivated enough to get busy and make the movie end until his snakes were butchered. None of this was faked, nobody ate the snakes after the shoot, and the behavior is inexcusable.Animal killings aside it was a sort of interesting ultra low budget social satire piece right up until about the last 20 minutes, which in my opinion weren't needed at all. The whole bit with the girl out at Snake Boy's cabin was retarded, the film not even caring enough about her to bother showing if she made it back home after the big reptile bonfire at the end. There is even a laugh out loud Stanely Puppet used for some of the snake attack scenes that is absurdly appropriate, but its not enough. The film ain't worth the bad karma it creates. One thing did come to mind while sitting through this crap, which was wondering how many of these noted, respected thespians who elected to appear in this movie got bit by the snakes during filming. Not enough, I reckon, since enough of them survived to make a commentary for the soiled, unwholesome guilt-bomb of a DVD. They should all be ashamed of themselves, you should avoid watching it, and this movie's surviving elements should be burned.2/10; My apologies for the vitriol, and the score of two is for the film actually having annoyed me enough to want to do something about it. Art that doesn't inspire a reaction within its audience doesn't deserve to exist, though this doesn't deserve to either for an entirely different set of reasons. What a shame.
