Komodo(1999)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

On their first night on Emerald Isle, Victoria (Jill Hennessy), Patrick (Kevin Zegers), and Patrick’s aunt, Annie (Nina Landis), come under attack from a Komodo dragon in Patrick’s family’s vacation house, which ends with Annie getting killed by it and Victoria driving a broomstick into its left eye and breaking it off before escaping with Patrick in Annie’s car. While they are driving through a field of tall grass, they find themselves confronted by two more Komodos ahead of them on the road, and then the ferry captain, Martin (Michael Edward-Stevens), suddenly appears, having just suffered an attack from the lizards that has left him badly wounded and dying from a severe infection (thanks to bacteria in the Komodos’ saliva). Victoria puts him in the car and drives past the Komodos, but suddenly, their car crosses paths with the truck driven by Oates (Billy Burke) and his co-worker, Denby (Paul Gleeson), causing both vehicles to swerve to avoid each other and then crash.

After Oates and Denby crawl out of their truck, they find a freshly-dead Komodo on the ground before going to help Victoria and the others out of their car. Denby helps Patrick out first, and after Patrick sits down beside the dead dragon’s body, Oates speaks to Bracken (Simon Westaway), the head of Pontiff Petroleum, over his radio and tells him that there are three tourists here, one of whom is badly hurt, and he needs to send in medical transport. However, Bracken refuses, citing the need for Oates’ job to remain a secret and then reminding him that he is a man with “serious problems” and that they have an “arrangement.” Soon after, while Victoria and Oates are arguing over what to do with Martin because the scent of his wound will draw in the lizards, Patrick takes out the dead Komodo’s heart and then runs off into the field. Victoria tries to go after him, but Oates keeps her from doing so to spare her from a possible attack from the Komodos.

Victoria, Oates, Martin, and Denby walk to a nearby oil drilling station, and after they get inside, they take Martin into the infirmary. Oates orders Victoria to stay with Martin while he and Denby search the station for any Komodos that might be around, and moments later, Martin tells Victoria to find Patrick before dying from his infection. Victoria exits the infirmary to look for Oates and Denby, and she soon eavesdrops on another conversation that Oates has with Bracken over his radio in a nearby office. Bracken asks Oates for an update on his progress, and when he replies that several lizards are still living, Bracken reminds him about how he is wanted for killing his wife and no-showed his trial to do this job for him, then warns him that he will tell the authorities where he is if he doesn’t succeed. Oates counters that he will inform said authorities about how the lizards have killed innocent people on this island and that Pontiff knew about it and covered up the deaths, but Bracken replies that he shouldn’t even think about doing that because he won’t leave the island alive, because if the Komodos don’t kill him, he will. Oates then leaves to continue his search, and Victoria goes into the office, where she finds a bag containing Patrick’s father’s wallet as well as a copy of a newspaper article in the tray of a fax machine stating that Oates is suspected of murdering his wife.

Oates then returns, and he soon converses with Victoria about the Komodos, during which he explains that somebody dumped the lizards into the island’s swamps 20 years ago and they have been trying to survive here ever since. She then basically reveals that she overheard what Oates just said to Bracken over his radio, and Oates explains that, if people found out that Pontiff was recklessly slaughtering a bunch of endangered reptiles, a huge environmental crusade would start against the company and badly hurt their business. He also adds that these particular Komodos are really dangerous because they are starving; they have nothing to eat thanks to Pontiff’s drilling poisoning the environment. Suddenly, he and Victoria hear a noise out in the hallway, and after Denby radios him about it since he heard it as well, he tells Denby that the sound came from the laundry room and he’ll meet him there. Unfortunately, by the time he and Victoria get there, they find Denby bleeding badly from the neck due to a Komodo attack. The dragon that attacked him then reappears, but Denby manages to shoot and kill it before falling to the floor. Oates radios Bracken and tells him that they need a chopper at the compound now so they can help Denby, but he gets no response, and after Denby hands Oates a cigar that he had been saving and tells him to smoke it for him, he dies.

To keep the lizards away from Denby’s body, Oates and Victoria take it up to the top of a tower at the station. Moments later, a curious Victoria asks Oates if he really didn’t kill his wife, then asks him to tell her what really happened. He explains that his wife was a geologist and one of his co-workers at Pontiff Petroleum, and they came to the island to do a routine survey. However, when they went off in separate directions to collect samples, she disappeared, and a subsequent three-day search yielded no trace of her. Victoria asks him if the Komodos got to her, and he replies that he doesn’t know; all he knows is that he didn’t kill her. However, the police saw it differently, and he was arrested for murder. When Victoria then asks him what he is doing back here, he explains that, after he got arrested, Bracken paid his bail and hired a bunch of lawyers to represent him in court. However, all the lawyers did was push back his trial date several times, and since Bracken knew that Oates lacked any evidence to prove his innocence (something that Oates himself also accepted), he came to Oates with an offer: Kill all the Komodos, and in return, he’ll give him a passport, some money, and a boat to leave the country with. When Oates asks Victoria why she is here, she tells him that she has been trying to help Patrick, but she feels that she has been doing a really lousy job at it, and she now believes that her presence here led to the deaths of Annie, Martin, and Denby. Oates replies that those deaths are not her fault, and when she asks him about Patrick, he tells her that, if he is still out there, he has an idea of where he might be. They then leave Denby’s body and take a boat through the swamps to an old filter station, which Victoria recognizes as the same building that Patrick had drawn in his notebook and had claimed as his hideout.

Victoria and Oates go into the station and split up to find Patrick. Victoria eventually comes under attack from a Komodo, but she is saved by Patrick, who seemingly kills the dragon by catching its neck in a snare trap that he made, then raising it to the ceiling and driving two metal rods through its body. Victoria tells Patrick that they need to get out of here right now, but he refuses, telling her that he doesn’t need her, Oates, their weapons, or their fear, and he orders her to leave him alone before disappearing. Another Komodo then appears and chases after Victoria, and Oates also comes under attack from one and manages to kill it, but he sustains a bite wound on his left forearm. Victoria hangs onto the supposedly-lifeless Komodo to avoid the living one, but that Komodo is shown to still have some life left in it and shakes her off, causing her to fall to the floor and get buried under some debris that gets knocked loose from the ceiling. Before the moving Komodo can harm her, Oates appears and shoots it dead.

They get outside, and Victoria soon finds Patrick up in one of the station’s towers, so she goes up to speak to him while Oates remains on the ground to dress his wound and reload his weapon. Victoria tells Patrick that she knows now that he blames himself for his parents’ deaths because he thinks that he led the lizards to their house that fateful night, but she assures him that the blame really falls on Pontiff Petroleum; they knew that those reptiles were here and how dangerous they were, but they covered it up in order to protect themselves, and if they hadn’t, his parents would still be alive. Suddenly, the Komodo that Victoria fought back at the vacation house appears and gets hers and Patrick’s attention, but moments later, Oates uses the scent emitting from his wound to lure the dragon away from the tower, giving Victoria and Patrick a chance to get to the ground so they can escape. Oates has the Komodo follow him into an area where there is a lot of spilled oil lying around, then lights Denby’s cigar and uses it to set the oil on fire in an attempt to burn the lizard alive. However, the Komodo leaps out of the fire and lands in front of Victoria, but before it can attack her, she kills it by quickly picking up a rock and then using it to drive the broken broomstick deep into its head. Oates vanishes from the scene without explanation, and Victoria and Patrick walk off in the direction of the coast, presumably to use Martin’s ferry to get back to the mainland.

Bracken and some of his subordinates are then seen arriving at the drilling station by helicopter, presumably to find and kill Oates. However, moments after they and the pilot step inside the station, Oates appears on the scene, starts up the chopper, and flies off with it, having decided to leave Bracken and company trapped on the island with the surviving Komodos (with one of them actually hiding nearby). Meanwhile, Victoria and Patrick reach the edge of a cliff along the coast, but they soon find themselves facing another lizard. Thankfully, Oates flies in and lands the chopper between them and the Komodo, and after they get on board, Oates kills the dragon by shooting a flare into its throat.

The trio fly back to the mainland and stop to rest on a street curb as the sun rises. Sheriff Gordon (Brian McDermott) then pulls up in his car and asks them if they are okay, to which Patrick replies “never better,” a sign that he is finally coming to terms with his parents’ deaths.