The COVID-19 pandemic was a weird time. Eric Goode made it weirder. As we all settled into our locked-down lives, making sourdough amid amassed stockpiles of toilet paper, Goode, a night-life impresario turned documentary filmmaker, hit us with Tiger King. Like the caged beasts in the series’ low-rent zoo, audiences were held captive in the bizarre, bleached-mullet, big-cat-mauling world of Joe Exotic. Goode’s next act, 2024’s Chimp Crazy, covered similar territory, exploring the twisted relationships between “chimp moms” and their primate charges. All along, as Goode drew viewers deeper and deeper into the exotic animal trade, few knew that he was closer to his subjects than he let on.
Goode’s latest series, Monsters of God, which premiered August 6 on HBO Max, might be his most outrageous yet. It moves in the dark, violent underworld of illegal reptile trafficking, where disreputable figures smuggle king cobras, bush vipers, Komodo dragons, and other scaly saurians across borders like narcotics. It’s a multibillion-dollar black market, one Goode is more intimately familiar with than most.
Goode’s Lifelong Obsession With Turtles and Tortoises Fuels ‘Monsters of God’
Monsters of God’s cast of characters include Southern-fried snake handlers, buzzed couriers who move through airports with suitcases packed full of turtles, and fevered zookeepers all-too willing to bypass the 1973 Endangered Species Act. Like Chimp Crazy’s Tonia Haddix, whose nickname was “The Dolly Parton of chimps,” there’s also a rightfully feared Malaysian animal smuggler known as “The Pablo Escobar of reptiles.” On their heels are a dogged group of federal agents, who pursue the reptile purveyors in a manner that parallels the stings and ops of the war on drugs. Then there’s Goode himself, whose obsession with turtles and tortoises began when he received a pet turtle at age six. From there, he admits he was hooked. “It’s a world I’ve been involved with my entire life,” Goode recently told People. “I’m a reptile guy, obsessed with the forbidden, the rarest of the rare, willing to pay almost anything. It’s been a lifelong fascination.”
That personal connection shows up on screen. Goode even admits that he’s done business with some of his subjects, including self-styled “Lizard Whisperer” Tommy Crutchfield, from whom he ordered contraband reptiles by mail. Over five episodes, Goode’s knowledge of the trade’s mores and inner-workings helps Monsters of God achieve a resonance beyond the “look-at-the-freaks” spectacle into which Tiger King and Chimp Crazy sometimes devolve.
Goode Isn’t Exactly Like His Subjects, Which Is a Good Thing
Though Goode freely admits he’s been part of the problem, he’s also done much to mend his errant ways. In 2005, he started the Turtle Conservancy, a public charity committed to protecting vulnerable species, anchored by a 90-acre compound in Ojai, California, where he breeds turtles and tortoises, some of which have gone extinct in the wild. From Mexico to South Africa to the Philippines, the Conservancy has secured thousands of acres for critically endangered species. It also has almost single-handedly brought the ploughshare tortoise – a blackmarket darling once worth $100,000 per animal – back from the brink of extinction, becoming the first to breed the species outside its native Madagascar.
Goode’s distance from his former self also shows up on screen. Though the series elicits a form of empathy for the folks in the throes of reptile fever, Goode never justifies their practices. Subjects like Anson Wong, the Malaysian trafficker compared to Escobar, are clearly the bad guys. Nevertheless, Goode is not in the business of condemnation, leaving final judgment to the viewer. As such, his been-on-both-sides perspective gives Monsters of God the nuance his other efforts often lack. Despite his best deeds in Ojai and beyond, Goode admits he can’t shake a nagging self-doubt that in the end, he might be no better than the likes of Joe Exotic. “I make the judgment that, hey, my tortoises are living a pretty good life, but I could be drinking the Kool-Aid,” he told Vanity Fair. “Maybe they’re not. And I recognize that all of my animals that I keep here would be better off in the wild.”
- Release Date
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2026 – 2026-00-00
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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Eric Goode
