"My name's Eddie. Get it? Like Eddie Izzard! What, do I have to dress up in women's clothes to get a laugh?"

If the words "from the writer of Anaconda" don't have you ducking for cover, you may be a bad movie lover. If some twisted form of lip-smacking zeal was inspired in you by a late night viewing of Bats, your crap cinema addiction may indeed be terminal. But if you ever wish to test your dedication to all things schlockfilmic, might we suggest Komodo?

The thing about Komodo dragons is that despite their bitchin' moniker, they're not really on the Top Ten List Of Scary Animals That Might Show Up In A Horror Movie. In fact, you'd have to search pretty hard to find someone who would even consider the noble Komodo dragon for his list of phobias, especially when compared to bats, rats, spiders, lions, dogs, and all those other fearsome animals to which we have had more exposure. The irony here is that Komodo dragons are among the worst of predators with which you might want to find yourself in actual contact: they can grow as large as 10 feet long and weigh over 300 pounds, and have been known to kill humans occasionally. Most of us are simply unaware of these facts because the Komodos are a relatively rare species which live only on a few Indonesian islands.

A woman, some guns and a dead body. Just another party at Robert Downey's place.

The setup, as they say, is simplicity itself. Back in the swingin' Seventies, some dude in a beat-up van dumped some Komodo eggs on an island along the North Carolina coast. Why? We don't know. Flashing forward to a more recent history, a young man named Patrick (Kevin "Air Bud" Zegers) finds himself at the mercy of the grown-up Komodos, who share his family's summer island with an oil company that is expanding its operations on the island. The lizards (who somehow manage to remain unseen to Patrick) eat his parents and dog, leaving him mentally traumatized but physically unscratched. Why? We don't know. A few years after that, Patrick's shrink Victoria (Jill Hennessy) takes him back to the island in an attempt to break his state of post-traumatic surliness. Okay, we know why on that one, but it still seems dumb.

When they say 'change is for customers only,' they mean it.

With only two possible victims left, more lizard snacks -- we mean characters have to be introduced. Enter Oates (Billy Burke) and Denvy, who are on the island killing the lizards for EvilCo. A guy with an Australian accent heads EvilCo, and we never caught his name, so we're going to call him Mr. Blackheart. Oates is in contact with Blackheart by radio, and though these conversations we find out what going on. EvilCo is hiding the fact that there are Komodo dragons on the island because they are endangered, and EvilCo is afraid the company would be forced off the island if this fact was well known. Of course, in the real world even the staunchest environmentalist would recognize the fact that the Komodos are 9000 miles from their natural habitat. And couldn't EvilCo just move the lizards, maybe even turn their miraculous existence into a public relations coop? No, because they're evil and need to do stupid stuff so that we can watch a movie about it.

"Hey, is this one of the new ones from Honda? It's really roomy back here!"

Apart from the fact that the characters are boring and change their motivations as required by the next set piece, the screenwriter hasn't thought through the scenario very well. What, precisely, did authorities think happened to Patrick's family? What about Oates' back-story, in which he and his geologist wife visited the island? Mrs. Oates was supposedly eaten by a komodo, but the cops think that Oates did it. Blackheart got the poor guy out of jail and is now essentially blackmailing him into hunting the lizards. But doesn't Oates have all the proof he needs that he didn't kill his wife? Al he has to do is bring a huge, freshly-killed lizard head and leave it on the counter at the police station. What are they going to say? And didn't the cops notice a bit of a pattern, what with the disappearance of Patrick's family?

Never feed your lizard Taco Bell.

As bad as the script is, the lizards are good. They are realized through animatronics and computer graphics, and what with the Jurassic Park dudes on the case, it's no wonder that they're convincing. These Komodos are bigger than the real thing, and a lot more aggressive, but that's to be expected in a movie. (If small, shy lizards made for good cinema, this movie could have been shot at the reptile house of the local zoo.) But while a lot of money was thrown at the lizards when they appear, they do tend to kill an awful lot of people off camera. After the third person turns around with U.L.W. (unexpected lizard wound), it gets kind of annoying.

The special effects are so good we wondered if this movie was originally intended to go into wide theatrical release. Apparently this film isn't ready for the big time, and considering that Anaconda played successfully in theaters, that's saying something. Even on film with the ability to hunt humans down, the Komodo dragon gets no respect.