American cinematic portrayals of voodoo, and of anything even related to African or Afro-Caribbean culture, might historically have tended to be reprehensible, but it's hard not to at least enjoy a movie which begins with a cackling dwarf. As the opening scenes unfold, the dwarf (played by ostensible Mexican mainstay Santanon) alternately cackles in riotously evil ecstasy and moans in what seems to be some kind of jealous covetousness. As is the nature of mute, cackling dwarves, his motives tend to be kind of inscrutable.

His actions aren't a whole lot clearer. The film technically begins by talking about the outrageous rites and rituals of primitive peoples, using voodoo as a blanket term for all primitive religion. Especially, the narrator mentions that many people have turned pretty girls into zombies so that they could have beautiful, exotic slaves. Now... look, I realize that there are a wide, wide variety of fetishes out there. But honestly, how many people dig the idea of getting it on with the walking dead? And of those, how many would actually have the resources to make it happen? And after that, they can either choose to live in whatever village they had to travel to forever, or... well, what? It's not like no one will notice the pallid walking corpse boarding the plane with you. And it's not like that corpse is going to get a Visa or a passport, either.

The narrator goes on to tell us: "There are many existing opinions about the living death. The truth is that many strange and horrible stories are told, like the one that happened in Korbai to Captain Pierre Labesch." I find those lines fascinating, in part because neither sentence seems quite to link up with the other. It's kind of like in Deathstalker II when the eponymous hero quips, "I don't mind a woman getting a good beating when she deserves one, but that doesn't look like much of a contest"... leaving us to wonder what deserved beatings and credible contests have in common. But hey, I overthink things, and that's one flaw which the narrator of The Snake People staunchly lacks. Scanning a printed world map as the narration closes, the camera zeroes in on islands that someone doodled into the eastern Pacific ocean--and then it's dwarf time.

The dwarf is marching along in some kind of grotto, accompanied by some skinny white guy whom I at first mistook to be Pierre Labesch. I should mention that the dwarf, who is actually listed as the character "dwarf," is wearing sunglasses, a weird pimp-like suit, and just going sacrifice-happy on some chickens in this grotto. They stop in front of a mound of dirt that's oddly coffinlike in dimension, and then start digging out what transpires to be... a coffin. After pumping some sacrificed chickens around in the air, and responding to queries from his companion with cackles and groans, dwarf gets the corpse in the coffin to rise up. She looks beautiful for someone whose face is covered in blue "I'm a zombie" powder...

We're then brought back into the daylight to find Pierre Labesch and Anabella Vandenberg riding into town. Pierre, it eventually turns out, is coming in to lay the firm hand of the law down on these lax primitive peasants and their black magic, while Anabella is coming to save the world through the miracles of prohibition, stating that "Modern science has shown that alcohol is responsible for 99.2% of all the world's sins." Obviously, they will both succeed wonderfully in their endeavors, because what 1970s patron of cheap horror films would tolerate the depicted failure of militarism and prohibition?

Hm.

Later, we're introduced to Anabella's uncle, Carl van Mulder, who's played by Boris Karloff in one of his last roles--this was one of his three final films, each made with the same writer/director duo in different configurations, of which The Snake People seems to have been the high point. Take that as you will.

Anyway, the film continues on with its plot, but unless you're interested for scholarly reasons as I am, there's really no reason to bother with it. Plots are, in effect, the connections that make sense of otherwise random images; the constellation to the stars of events. The sheer attempt to make any sense out of this movie is only an insult to the viewer's intelligence, even if the viewer is a drunken and mentally debilitated chimp. So, there'll be no more about the plot in this review.

Imagewise, there are some scenes of voodooists dancing to music which I guess is meant to be voodoo music, though the central players are always white in films like these. The scenes include several involving the aforementioned dwarf, who tends to either be shaking headless chickens at things or whipping attractive female zombies in some kind of ceremony that's weird even for fake voodoo; we're also introduced to Kalea (played by Tongolele), who is apparently the lead dancer for the ceremonies, and can also make things combust by staring hard at them. Finally, there's the "head priest" named Damballah who, in keeping with a longstanding tradition involving Occidental cinema and representations of voodoo, ends up being a white guy behind a black mask (and I don't mean that figuratively).

I could also mention that this film's telling us that "Baron Samedi, god of death" is the head god of voodoo, and that Damballah is "his servant" is about as accurate of real voodoo, or vodou, or vodoun (the latter two being more politically correct thanks to films like the snake people), as telling us that Zeus was Hades' bitch, or that Satan booted God out of Hell and turned renegade demons into angels. Said from the mouths of unbelievers, I guess it's not blasphemy or heresy per se, but it's pretty ignorant. Baron Samedi (or Simitye, which translates to "Baron Cemetery," I gather), is indeed important in voodoo, as far as my limited understanding extends, but Damballah is regarded as a creator spirit of sorts, and is hugely important--in fact, Damballah is the "serpent in the rainbow" in Wade Davis's book and Wes Craven's regrettable drivel that was 'based off' of it. So Damballah isn't, as far as I know, anyone's underling, much less some white guy living on the fictional island of Konai.

Boris Karloff at least turns in a sincere, if poorly-scripted, performance in one of his final trips out, though even his presence in the film has little impact. This film, like most dealing with voodoo, pulls the viewer in two directions. On one hand, it's ignorant, insensitive, ethnocentric, and ridiculous; on the other, it's full of dancing, a crazy dwarf, sacrifices, zombies, "cannibal women," and is generally ridiculous. And at the end of the day, enlightening is all well and good, but a bacchanal of absurdity and zombies tends to be the trump card. It's not a film to respect, but The Snake People is a film well worth watching.

Labels: Horror: Just Plain Weird