The Most Dangerous Game

Weird things happen in Oklahoma. Maybe that's why so many Oklahomans move to Austin and make movies. Duncan, Okla., native/Austinite transplant Rebecca Elliott temps as a dental hygienist by day. Neil Reece is a file clerk from Kentucky. After spending some time at a snake-handling festival in Waurika, Okla., they made a documentary for "pennies." Blood, guts, and reptiles for cheap. Entertainment, Sooner style.

Austin Chronicle: I've seen two documentaries made by Oklahomans, and they're both about these crazy hunting people.

Rebecca Elliott: Yeah. I guess you could say we took partial inspiration from Okie Noodling. I saw it, and I was like, "Wow. That's another quirky Oklahoma topic."

AC: What is the deal with Waurika? What makes those people overzealous about butchering snakes?

Neil Reece: It's just the snake population itself. It's giant. If they don't do something about it, the snakes will actually take over their land. All the money from the festival every year goes to financing their volunteer fire department. And they have an incredible fire department as a result of it. Brand-new trucks. Everything.

AC: What was the craziest thing you saw?

RE: The heads still biting 30 minutes after being chopped off.

NR: Anything in the butcher bin. The heart beating on the table by itself or the two heads with no bodies. One head looked at the other and bit it. It was creepy.

AC: Tell me about that female snake butcher.

RE: Miranda Brown. She grew up with her dad and brothers hunting and cleaning deer, cleaning fish, and hunting birds. And I do suppose at one point it was always a woman's duty to clean the game. So it's not that weird if you think about it in that way. But the fact that it's a venomous game makes it crazy. But by the time she gets the snakes, their heads are already chopped off.

AC: There's one character who intrigued me the most in your film. He really enjoyed putting on a show.

NR: That's Michael Wolf.

AC: I found him a little disturbing, actually.

NR: He is disturbing.

RE: Yeah, I was standing there, and I was like, "I can't believe you're cutting a snake's head off with scissors."

NR: He told us he was the Michael Jordan of snake handling.

Snake Hunt screens as part of the Lone Star States program at the Alamo, 3/19, 12mid, and 3/20, 12mid.