Written by Federico D.
Let's talk about some serpents and rainbows, two things that obviously don't match.
Directed by Wes Craven, The Serpent and the Rainbow stars Bill Pullman (Scary Movie 4, The Grudge) as Dr. Dennis Alan, an anthropologist commissioned to search Haiti for a drug rumored to revive the dead. The locals define it as zombification; nevertheless, the American pharmaceutical company sees the drug’s potential for extending life. Dr. Alan is used to traversing all terrains to collect drugs for science, but Haiti unveils a world where his past luck becomes inadequate, leaving him facing tortures he has never encountered. Premonitions of danger haunt his sleep, warning him to return to America before he and all of his associates are killed. As Captain Dargent Peytraud (Zakes Mokae) warns during Dr. Alan’s stay in Haiti, “The physical pain is nothing like the pain I can cause in your mind.”
I know that I’ve praised Wes Craven’s work in most of my past reviews; well, this is no exception. I really enjoyed this film. The beautiful Cathy Tyson played a convincing physician as Dr. Marielle Duchamp. I sympathized for the victims in her hospital and was curious about the zombification method of her patient Christoff. The film disclosed that Christoff was obsessed with death and that a powder taken before death caused him to come back to life, though slightly from his original self.
Although I am a full-grown man, I acknowledge that my reviews express my past and present fears of films. I am stable enough in my manhood to say that this movie scared the crap out of me as a kid. Literally, there was a scene that made me not want to go to the bathroom as a kid, so I just doo-dooed on myself. I know that’s not a formal enough word to use; however, it describes exactly what happened after watching The Serpent and The Rainbow. I even feared doo-dooing after watching this woman in the film eat glass. I wondered how much it would hurt to come out.
Furthermore, Captain Peytraud scares me to this day. That gold tooth with the light shining on it still haunts my sleep. He pushed the envelope of physical pain that I never want to experience: the scene with Dr. Alan’s balls (scrotum for the formal) being at the captain’s mercy. I’m wincing just typing this, so I won’t go any further.
Guys, just check out the film and tell me what you think.
Also, how do you guys feel about the movie’s take on zombies’ acting more like humans instead of the traditional, feral actions we are all accustomed to viewing?
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