Monsters of God Review – Explosion Network

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I don’t like snakes. I don’t like lizards. I don’t like crocodiles. I’m not a fan at all of the reptile features in Monsters of God, the new five-episode series from HBO, which focuses on the underworld market for these animals and the people who are fascinated by them. It’s interesting to hear people look at and describe snakes as these beautiful animals when I see these creepy little creatures. What have films like Anaconda done to my brain? Possibly the same way Jaws changed the view people have on sharks.

People love snakes, it turns out, and there’s a huge market for them and other exotic reptiles. They’re treated as that, for the most part, too. They’re “exotic,” because of their rarity, and the scarier and more likely they are to kill you, the more exotic they become. And the more money you can get people to pay for them. Both in the legal way, fronting them to zoos, and in the illegal way, to traders sneaking them across borders and into the hands of collectors or other sellers looking to turn them around.

This series from Eric Goode, one of the filmmakers behind Tiger King, has a love for reptiles and uses this to dig deeper into the illegal trade as well as the people behind the decade-spanning history of reptiles in America, which crosses from the start of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 through to the current day. The people included in the series include reptile dealers, Tommy Crutchfield, Hank Moult, and the man considered the godfather of reptile trading, the mysterious and scary Anson Wong. These people often start fascinated with reptiles, often in childhood. Maybe it’s spotting some snakes as a kid, possibly seeing a snake, a croc, or coming across snakes for the first time in a magazine or a film. From there, they want them. And as the series shows, although a lot of the traders here turn their passion for trading in reptiles into a profitable business, often the desire for the rare things, not even necessarily for the money, but simply for the sake of owning it, is what gets them into trouble.

Ray and Mike Van Nostrand are good examples of the two sides of this reptile love and business. Ray starts it with a fascination, grows a business by buying and breeding them and has something good going for him. After some underground dealings, he’s jailed for a time, and his son, Mike, takes over; he doesn’t have the love for the reptiles, but he can see the money in it. When the two get back together, they’re pulled back towards the underground market once again for different reasons. The desire to have and hold what we humans shouldn’t, and the money that is attached to holding and selling these animals.

How you trade and get these animals across the world is a sad and scary affair. They’re often packed in tight, unsafe spaces. When it comes to getting them in illegally, other animals are stuffed on top to die on the sword of secrecy, to scare off board security checking the boxes as they enter the U.S. It begins to beg the question of just how much some of these people who, apparently, have such love for these magical creatures truly have for them. And by the end of the series, you have a better idea of who these people are. There’s an example of someone who’s come to see how some of the ways he’s treated these animals aren’t okay, and you can truly see the sorrow on his face. And at the same time, there’s a U.S Wildlife person who’s sworn to protect and fight against all the terror and is seen to be doing the type of thing he was apparently fighting against all the years prior.

Monsters of God is super-interesting as an exploration of the reptile market, and it builds upon what many other series and doco-films have explored: how we, in particular when it comes to zoos, treat animals terribly. It’s not new information, and even as someone who wouldn’t want to hold and pet any of these animals, I believe they deserve better. But I’ve never seen something dig deep into the underground world as this series has, and how it works when it comes ot breeding, transportation and sale. Plus how the DEA and other organisations go about tracking and proving the illegal trade. One example of such was very smart.

Eric Goode gets more front-and-centre at the end of the series as he begins to chase down the last person on his interview hit-list, Anson Wong. But it left me wishing for just one more episode for Goode, an admitted reptile lover, to digest the doco and the journey he’s been on himself. The four episodes prior hadn’t been about him, but with the last one, I felt I was going to get a bit more self-reflection than I ended up with.

The characters in Monsters of God aren’t as wild as those seen in Tiger King, so fans of that series solely for its Zoo cast might be left disappointed. However, there are still some truly bizarre and intriguing people featured in this series that left me continually asking myself how and why some people can think the way they do and walk about their day.

(Screener provided to Explosion Network.
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