The Killer Snakes (1974/Horror/Image/Celestial/Shaw Brothers)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: C+ Film: C+
To
capitalize on Willard and Ben, two films where a rejected
antagonist gets revenge my making a special connection with a natural predator
that can kill humans, The Shaw Brothers decided to respond with director
Chih-Hung Kwei’s The Killer Snakes
(1974) which substitutes the rats with snakes and goes all out in ways Squirm and Ssssssssssss could not touch.
The film
has a rough start, but before you know it, it somehow gets on track and the
horror begins. If you find snakes
creepy, this will be hard to handle, made creepier by being a film without
digital snakes. In addition, the
psychological story of the anti-hero being exposed to and the victim of
violence, some with sexual overtones, is handled in the usual shallow, sloppy
way such genre films handle these things.
However, once out of the way, there are some remarkable moments of
chills here fans will enjoy. I just wish
it were more consistent, but it is still one of the Shaw’s best releases.
It
reminds me of Fritz Lang’s joke that CinemaScope (the frame this is shot in) is
only good for funerals and snakes. This
film delivers both!
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 film may be dubbed in ShawScope, but is really
shot in real 35mm anamorphic Panavision by Director of Photography Chi Yu. Color can be good and it is a newer print,
but this is too soft for a new DVD release in this HD era. Still, it is more than clear enough to make out
the nudity, blood and snakes. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mandarin sound is stereo-boosted and shows its age, but the 2.0
Mono English is very flat, old, dull and sometimes barely audible. A third newer English dub should have been
made. Extras include several dozen
trailers for other Shaw Brothers films, including this one and one of our
favorites, Super Inframan that Image
recently issued on DVD. See our import
review at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1799/Super+Inframan+(Region+3/NTSC)
- Nicholas Sheffo
