La mujer serpiente

American G.I.'s who trespass in on a forbidden Hindu ceremony are relentlessly hunted down by a beautiful woman who has the power to metamorphose into a snake.

While the film gets a bit slow in the middle, the end is exciting and so is the beginning. What made this film great, for me, was the talented snake dancer from the cult. Her face is obscured, but her body is capable of amazing bends and twists.

One of the only really big drawbacks to the film is that the audience knows what is going on from the very beginning. We see the men try to solve a mystery we already know. The urge to yell "you are so stupid" is hard to suppress. And they really are not that stupid -- they simply have not reached the illogical conclusion we already know to be true.

Richard Long, David Janssen, Marshall Thompson, Jack Kelly, and William Reynolds are four G. I.s on terminal leave in India. Looking for a souvenir, they bribe their way into the ceremony of a snake cult. When they are discovered, they are cursed with death, one by one, in the form of Faith Domergue, who follows them back to the US and kills them in the form of a cobra.

This is one of those 1950s Universal horror/scifi movies that, in the hands of someone like Jack Arnold, would turn out to have something sensible and even witty to say about the way we lived in that decade. In the hands of competent but uninspired Francis D. Lyons, it turns into a decent thriller which, if it had anything to say except "Don't be boorish", I can't see it.

I came across this movie by accident as part of a collection. Not reading any reviews ahead of time I was surprised to see so many well-known actors; then I realized this is 1955 and a lot of them were just starting.

American G. I.s who trespass on a cult called Lamia.

Lamia - a mythical monster, with the body of a woman or with the head and breasts of a woman and the body of a snake, said to prey on human beings and suck the blood of children.

You know what happens next as they get cursed, and someone must pay.

Great formula and suspense; we get to see the shadow of metamorphosis and sometimes even root for the misunderstood dispatcher.

Trailer - "From halfway around the world she had come to make friends with five unsuspecting young men. And when she walked in the night, death followed swift and violent."

In Asia, six airmen from the American Air Forces break in a secret cult of Lamians that worship a cobra goddess. However they are found in the temple and need to flee from the ceremony. They are cursed by the priest that sentences them to die, one by one. Back in New York, Sergeant Paul Able (Richard Long), who will marry the actress Julia Thompson (Kathleen Hughes), and G.I. Tom Markel (Marshall Thompson), who also loves Julia, are best friends and roommates. When Tom stumbles upon the mysterious Lisa Moya (Faith Domergue), they immediately fall in love with each other. Meanwhile their friends are dying and soon the coroner discovers snake venom in their blood.

"Cult of the Cobra" is an entertaining horror film with the storyline of a group of arrogant American G.I.s that breaks in a cult without any respect and are cursed by the priest to die. The gorgeous and exotic Faith Domergue is a goddess with the ability of turning into a cobra that travels to New York to revenge the worshippers. The negative point of the story is that she falls in love with one of the trespassers. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Maldição da Serpente" ("Curse of the Snake")

Six army buddies decide to do some sight-seeing among a cult of shape-shifters when they should have stayed in the bar and had a few more beers.

The movie's not as bad as the title suggests, thanks mainly to enthusiastic performances from Thompson, Kelly, and Long. You might expect them to walk through their parts in a low budgeter like this, but they don't. Instead they inject needed vitality into the far-fetched premise. Now, if Domergue could just suggest some menace in an otherwise deadpan performance as the snake lady, we might get a hint of a coming shape-shift. No wonder director Lyon has to use a pin light on her expressionless face to indicate she's no lady after all.

The bowling alley sequence is the movie's only scary part. Too bad Lyon doesn't play up the suspense in the other stalking sequences. Instead, we go from snake shadow to dead body, leaving out the scary part. Then too, I wish they had more than one staircase street set. If I catch this flick again, I'll try counting the times they use and re-use it. In my book, the movie isn't bad enough to make it as camp. Instead, it's a not-very-good horror flick, mainly because of Domergue. But at least the guys went on to starring success with TV.