The Snake Woman

It's obvious that The Snake Woman was made on a shoestring budget: the production values are very low, the special effects nonexistent and the film only runs for little over an hour, but in spite of that; Sidney J. Furie's film is at least an interesting example of early sixties horror. The film proclaims itself to be based on a legend and is set somewhere out in the English countryside. The plot is rather ridiculous and unlike other horror films based on similar subjects; this one doesn't quite have enough to distract from that fact. The film opens by introducing us to a scientist and his wife. It transpires that the wife has been having some mental health problems; and her husband has been treating her using snake venom. The wife also just happens to be pregnant, and naturally the snake venom treatment has an effect on the newborn child. A local midwife/witch labels it 'evil' and pretty soon the villagers are trying to burn down the couple's house...but not before they manage to get the child to safety. We pick up the story some years later; and some of the villagers have been dying in snake related incidents.

The biggest problem with this film is undoubtedly the script, which at times is just mind-bogglingly stupid. Some of the lines of dialogue are absolutely shocking and many of the characters would be strong contenders for the 'most stupid character of all time' award. It takes many of them an eternity to work out the most obvious of conundrums and it makes the plot a bit harder to swallow. The film is very short, running at just over an hour...and to be honest this is probably a good thing as I can imagine it would become tiresome if it went on for much longer. The film is without special effects for most of that duration and relies mainly on the story to pull it through. It does work fairly well; we don't really get that much information on anything (a shame, since a bit of back-story could have been really interesting!), but there's a few good ideas on display. Overall, I wouldn't really recommend that anyone goes out of their way to track this little film down - it is interesting in it's own right but in all honesty there's plenty of better examples of this sort of thing out there.

Yes for a snake woman movie don't expect to see any transformation scenes. If you go into this with these appropriately lowered expectations you'll find a fast moving movie with an engaging music score by Buxton Orr centered around a snake charmer's theme and various serial music technique's, the score is the most worthwhile element.

Mainly if you look up the writer's credits and see he later gave us THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE you'll know you're in for, silly but fast paced nonsense and overheated under thought dialogue. It's a bit shocking to see dialogue this bad in a British film and the performers are either encouraged or allowed to play it loud and big. Without fake special effects to drag the story down you have instead fake acting--from the supporting players. Should make you appreciate LEE and CUSHING who could sell this type of thing--none of these actors can. It's the type of thing where evil becomes a three syllable word.

The snake woman herself, Travers, isn't allowed to do much which is too bad as she sees alluring and has a spooky music theme augmented by bells.

The director doesn't show much promise--something you could argue his whole career fails to do, but in fairness this moves along at a fast pace. There is a nice shot of a shake slithering out of a skull's mouth and a couple of shots behind or through foreground objects--something he became briefly famous for after THE IPCRESS FILE. It all cuts together and seems like a movie, if only he could have controlled the actors--he may have had no control over the script.

The abandoned farm location is rather impressive. This movie is fun because it's never dull. Snake attack scenes aren't very good but there is a good lab fire sequence early on. Despite budget limits the plot just lurches from one unlikely premise you have to accept to ultimately come to an equally unlikely ending. Final scene adds a, ahead of its time, government conspiracy angle.

It's like but better than The Giant Leeches or Leach Woman--so I give it credit for that. I prefer the same director's other early horror film Dr. Blood's Coffin.

The film has atmosphere going for it: "mad doctor", a witch, snakes, a snake woman, lynch mobs, gothic aesthetics but the story is lacking, just really needed more to it. There isn't a lot in the way of showing the snake woman until the end of the film.

Actors are good - they take their roles and the film seriously. There are no cheesy special effects for horror - instead real snakes are used along side of cuts and film splicing for the effects.

Is the film worth watching? Well, if you need something to do on a boring rainy afternoon then this film will kill 69 minutes of your time. It's not an awful film, but it's not grand.

5/10.

Directed by Sidney J. Furie (Iron Eagle, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace), The Snake Woman opens in Bellingham, Northumberland, 1890, where herpetologist Dr. Horace Adderson (John Cazabon) has been injecting his pregnant wife with cobra venom as a way of curing her insanity. His wife dies giving birth to a daughter, who is born with no eyelids and cold blood. Spurred on by old crone Aggie (Elsie Wagstaff), the people in the village declare the child to be evil and burn down the doctor's lab with him inside; the baby, however, survives the blaze, having been whisked to safety by the village doctor and harboured by a local shepherd (John Stevenson Lang).

Twenty years later, Scotland Yard detective Charles Prentice (John McCarthy) travels to Bellingham to investigate a series of deaths, the victims seemingly bitten by venomous snakes. The scared locals talk of Atheris 'the snake girl' (Susan Travers), who lives in the ruins of Adderson's home, but Prentice is sceptical -- until he meets the cold-blooded babe on the moors...

The opening scenes of this film are so corny, with such cheesy dialogue, that they are a whole lot of fun, everyone hamming it up a treat; Wagstaff as Aggie is particulary OTT ("You're all lost. You're cursed. You're doomed!"). However, the sheer naffness of the script* and Furie's lifeless direction eventually take effect, dulling the senses and causing drowsiness. By the final act, it seems that even Furie has grown bored of his film, the director wrapping matters up with an extremely abrupt ending that is over too quickly to generate any excitement.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for lovely barmaid Polly (Frances Bennett) -- make mine a bottle of Cobra and my friend will have a pint of snakebite!

*Atheris is able to transform from snake into woman, but no explanation is given for where her dress comes from.

Snake Woman (1961)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Rare and incredibly silly horror film has a mad doctor trying to save his dying wife by injecting her with snake venom. She eventually becomes pregnant and gives birth to a little girl who grows up to transform into a snake or does she? This isn't a very original idea, not even for 1961 but what really kills the film is some of the worst acting I've ever seen. The acting provides many laughs but this goes against the serious mood of the story trying to be told by the director. A few better performances would have made this much more entertaining.