Snakes On A Plane Director's Death A Mystery

 Police are investigating the death in South Africa of David R Ellis, the director of Snakes On A Plane, the 2006 movie starring Samuel L Jackson.

The body of 60-year-old Ellis, who had worked as an actor and stuntman earlier in his career, was discovered in the bathroom of his hotel room in upmarket Sandton in Johannesburg.

He had last been seen by a friend in a restaurant last Saturday.

"Nothing was found to be missing from his room and no foul play is being suspected at this stage," said police spokesman Lt Col Lungelo Dlamini.

He added: "The US Embassy has been informed and are believed to be making necessary arrangements for the body to be taken to his own country."

A post mortem examination has been carried out but the cause of death is unknown.

Snakes On A Plane veered between humour and horror and became an internet sensation even before its release.

Ellis was in Johannesburg working on Kite, a remake of the 1998 Japanese anime film that was also to have starred Jackson, who tweeted his condolences after hearing of the director's death.

Snakes On A Plane alternately delighted and appalled critics.

Jackson played a law enforcement agent whose job it is to protect a murder witness - as the criminals who would rather the man did not testify try to take him out by releasing poisonous snakes on a long-haul flight over the ocean.

Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire called the movie, "intense and suspenseful, scary and gory, darkly funny and sometimes giddily hysterical".

It helped that bloggers created an Internet buzz that heightened anticipation before the film's release in a case study of how social media could spotlight what many might have dismissed as campy, B-grade, forgettable movie fare.

In the years since its release, occasional discoveries of smuggled or concealed snakes in airports or aboard airplanes around the world invariably draw comparisons to Ellis's thriller.

Jackson has had memorable roles in numerous movies, but not all of them contain dialogue with the same kind of expletive-laden punch as his standout line in Ellis' snake movie: "I have had it with these ... snakes on this ... plane."

He is survived by his wife and three children.