Sssssss | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Bernard L. Kowalski |
Written by | Hal Dresner Daniel C. Striepeke |
Produced by | Daniel C. Striepeke |
Starring | Strother Martin Dirk Benedict Heather Menzies Richard B. Shull Tim O'Connor Jack Ging Kathleen King Reb Brown |
Cinematography | Gerald Perry Finnerman |
Edited by | Robert Watts |
Music by | Patrick Williams |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 99 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $1,030,000 [2] |
Box office | $1 million (US/Canada rentals) [3] |
Sssssss (released as Ssssnake in the United Kingdom and as Mysterious! The Vampire Human Snake in Japan) is a 1973 American horror film starring Strother Martin, Dirk Benedict and Heather Menzies. [4] It was directed by Bernard L. Kowalski and written by Hal Dresner and Daniel C. Striepeke, the latter of whom also produced the film. The make-up effects were created by John Chambers and Nick Marcellino. It received a nomination for the Best Science Fiction Film award of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films in 1975. [5]
Dr. Carl Stoner, a herpetologist, sells a mysterious creature in a crate to a carnival owner. He later hires college student David Blake as an assistant, claiming that his previous assistant had left town to attend to a sick relative. Unbeknownst to David or anyone else, Stoner is a delusional man.
Stoner begins David on a course of injections, purportedly as a safeguard against being bitten by a snake in his lab. David's skin slowly starts to change and even peel like a snakeskin. He begins to have strange nightmares and goes into a coma when having dinner with Stoner, not waking up until a few days later. He also begins to lose weight, but Stoner tells him those are side effects from the venom. David begins a romance with Stoner's daughter Kristina, although her father objects and insists that she not have any sexual relations with him.
When David wakes up the next morning, he looks in the mirror and screams in horror. Later, a distraught David is in the lab, where Stoner gives him another injection. Meanwhile, Stoner's suspicious colleague, Dr. Daniels, arrives to inspect the property. Stoner attempts to hide David in a corner, but David gets enough strength to walk to a window, allowing Daniels to see that his face has become green and scaly. Before Daniels can react, Stoner knocks him out and feeds him to a python, and David collapses.
Kristina visits a carnival freak show and is horrified when she sees a bizarre "snake-man", whom she recognizes as Stoner's previous assistant. Distraught, she races back home to save David, who is currently mutating into a king cobra, brought about by Stoner's injections. Stoner is bitten by a real king cobra from his lab and dies, just as David's transformation is complete. Kristina arrives home and finds her father's body with the real cobra next to him. Growing suspicious, the police arrive and shoot the cobra before heading to the lab where a mongoose is attacking David's neck, attempting to kill him. The police do not have a clear shot, and as Kristina screams David's name, the movie ends abruptly, leaving their fates uncertain.
The film's executive producers were Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who went on to produce Jaws .
The venomous snakes in the film were not defanged during production. Five king cobras were imported from Thailand for this feature, ranging from 10 to 15 ft in length. They were recently caught in good health from the wild with full venom potency. The "Snake Park" milking scenes were real and meant to mimic what Bill Haast did at his Miami Serpentarium in Florida daily. About one ounce of venom was collected during each take with no harm to the snakes. A different cobra was used for each take. The filming of this part of the movie took most of a day, as the cobras spent most of their time trying to escape the fenced enclosure rather than rising up in the traditional cobra attack mode.[ citation needed ]
Sssssss remained unreleased on home video in the United States until 1997, when it was issued by MCA Universal. [6] It also received VHS releases in Japan [7] and Spain [8] by CIC Video, under the titles Ssssnake and Sssilbido de Muerte, respectively.
The film made its DVD debut on 7 September 2004, via Universal, who would re-release the film three additional times in 2009, 2011 and 2014. The 2011 release was part of a four-film "Cult Horror Collection", with The Funhouse , Phantasm II and The Serpent and the Rainbow . [9] A DVD was also released in Japan on 7 April 2010. [10]
Sssssss received its first Blu-ray release on 26 April 2016, via Shout! Factory, [11] which included new interviews with stars Dirk Benedict and Heather Menzies as bonus features. [12] It also received a Blu-ray release in Australia on 1 February 2017, via Shock Entertainment. [13]
Howard Thompson of The New York Times called the film "a ss-surprise. Were it not for the lurid, starkly flapping windup, this would be recommended in toto as a gripping, quietly imaginative hair-curler. It is the only movie fiction I have ever seen that sustains a scholarly, informative attitude toward the world of snakes. This aspect is fascinating and chilling, as a gentle old venom researcher, Strother Martin, putters around with cobras and pythons in a country lab." [14] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4, writing, "Even after 40 years of improved film technology, the climactic scene in Sssssss fails to match the drama of that moment when Frankenstein's monster sits up on the table." [15] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "highly amusing and genuinely creepy," and praised the "spectacular makeup." [16] Keith Alain of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that an "attractive streak of humour suggests in the early stages that Ssssnake may turn into a macabre little thriller on the lines of The Fly ," and lamented that "parody is eventually jettisoned in favour of portentous horror ... The rather disparate and ludicrous plot is not made any smoother by Bernard L. Kowalski's direction, which manages to be lumberingly predictable even in its borrowings (the Freaks -ish sideshow sequences, for example)." [17] Leonard Maltin gave the film three out of a possible four stars, praising the film's "exceptional" make-up effects. [18]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 36% based on 11 reviews with an average rating of 4.1/10. [19]
Year | Award / Film Festival | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
1974 | 3rd Paris International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Film | Best Special Effects | John Chambers, Nick Marcellino | Won [20] |
Dog Soldiers is a 2002 British action horror film written, directed and edited by Neil Marshall in his feature directorial debut. Starring Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd, Emma Cleasby and Liam Cunningham, the film follows a squad of soldiers fighting to survive an attack by a pack of werewolves during a military training exercise in the Scottish Highlands.
The Wolf Man is a 1941 American gothic horror film written by Curt Siodmak and produced and directed by George Waggner. The film stars Lon Chaney Jr. in the title role. Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Patric Knowles, Bela Lugosi, Evelyn Ankers, and Maria Ouspenskaya star in supporting roles. The title character has had a great deal of influence on Hollywood's depictions of the legend of the werewolf. The film is the second Universal Pictures werewolf film, preceded six years earlier by the less commercially successful Werewolf of London (1935). This film is part of the Universal Monsters movies and is of great cinematic acclaim for its production.
Silver Bullet is a 1985 American horror film based on the 1983 Stephen King novella Cycle of the Werewolf. It stars Gary Busey, Everett McGill, and Corey Haim, with Megan Follows, Terry O'Quinn, Lawrence Tierney, Bill Smitrovich, Kent Broadhurst, David Hart, and James Gammon in supporting roles. The film is directed by Dan Attias, written by King and produced by Martha De Laurentiis.
The Howling is a 1981 American horror film directed and edited by Joe Dante. Written by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless, based on the novel of the same name by Gary Brandner, the film follows a news anchor who, following a traumatic encounter with a serial killer, visits a resort secretly inhabited by werewolves. The cast includes Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, Christopher Stone, Belinda Balaski, Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, Slim Pickens, and Elisabeth Brooks.
Five Deadly Venoms, also known as The Five Venoms, is a 1978 Hong Kong martial arts mystery film directed and co-written by Chang Cheh and produced by Runme Shaw for the Shaw Brothers Studio. It stars Chiang Shieng as Yang Tieh, a martial arts pupil who aims to follow his master's dying wish: to find the new identities of the master's five previous pupils, and kill them if they have turned towards evil. While doing so, Yang stumbles onto a web of murders and investigations involving all five pupils. Each of the master's previous pupils practices a unique animal-themed style, with the animals being based on the Five Poisonous Creatures of Chinese folklore.
Night of the Creeps is a 1986 American science fiction horror comedy film written and directed by Fred Dekker in his feature directorial debut, starring Jason Lively, Jill Whitlow, and Tom Atkins. The film is an earnest attempt at a B movie and an homage to the genre. While the main plot of the film is related to zombies, the film also mixes in takes on slashers and alien invasion films. Night of the Creeps did not perform well at the box office, but it developed a cult following.
Venom is a 2005 American supernatural slasher film directed by Jim Gillespie, and starring Agnes Bruckner, Jonathan Jackson, Laura Ramsey, D. J. Cotrona, Rick Cramer, Meagan Good, and Method Man. The film follows a group of teens who fight to survive a man-turned-zombie after he becomes possessed by evil spirits.
Motel Hell is a 1980 American comedy horror film directed by Kevin Connor and starring Rory Calhoun, Nancy Parsons, and Nina Axelrod. The plot follows farmer, butcher, motel manager, and meat entrepreneur Vincent Smith, who traps travelers and harvests them for his human sausages.
Tarantula is a 1955 American science-fiction monster film produced by William Alland and directed by Jack Arnold. It stars John Agar, Mara Corday, and Leo G. Carroll. The film is about a scientist developing a miracle nutrient to feed a rapidly growing human population. In its unperfected state, the nutrient causes extraordinarily rapid growth, creating a deadly problem when a tarantula test subject escapes and continues to grow larger and larger. The screenplay by Robert M. Fresco and Martin Berkeley was based on a story by Arnold, which was in turn inspired by Fresco's teleplay for the 1955 Science Fiction Theatre episode "No Food for Thought", also directed by Arnold. The film was distributed by Universal Pictures as a Universal-International release, and reissued in 1962 through Sherman S. Krellberg's Ultra Pictures.
Leprechaun 4: In Space is a 1996 American science fiction comedy horror film directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, and written by Dennis Pratt. Warwick Davis stars as the titular leprechaun, who terrorizes a Marine crew aboard a spaceship in order to retrieve a princess he intends to wed.
Fade to Black is a 1980 American psychological horror comedy film written and directed by Vernon Zimmerman, and starring Dennis Christopher, Eve Brent and Linda Kerridge. It also features Mickey Rourke and Peter Horton in minor roles. The plot follows a shy and lonely cinephile who embarks on a killing spree against his oppressors while impersonating classic film characters.
The Undying Monster, also known as The Hammond Mystery, is a 1942 American mystery horror film directed by John Brahm and written by Lillie Hayward and Michel Jacoby, based on Jessie Douglas Kerruish's 1922 novel of the same name. The film stars James Ellison, Heather Angel and John Howard, and focuses on a series of mysterious deaths within the wealthy Hammond family.
Waxwork is a 1988 American comedy horror film written and directed by Anthony Hickox in his directorial film debut and starring Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, David Warner, Dana Ashbrook, and Patrick Macnee. It is partially inspired by the 1924 German silent film Waxworks.
Cult of the Cobra is a 1955 American black-and-white horror film from Universal-International Pictures, produced by Howard Pine, directed by Francis D. Lyon, that stars Faith Domergue, Richard Long, Kathleen Hughes, Marshall Thompson, Jack Kelly, William Reynolds, and David Janssen. The film was released as a double feature with Revenge of the Creature.
Bernard Louis Kowalski was an American film and television director of Polish descent, nominated for two Primetime Emmys.
Thirst is a 1979 Australian horror film directed by Rod Hardy and starring Chantal Contouri, Max Phipps, and David Hemmings. It has been described as a blend of vampire and science fiction genres, influenced by the 1973 film Soylent Green as well as drawing on the vampire folklore of Elizabeth Báthory – one of several vampire films in the 1970s to do so.
Deadtime Stories is a 1986 American horror comedy anthology film co-written and directed by Jeffery Delman in his directorial debut. In the film, a babysitting uncle tells his nephew three stories. The first story involves a slave used by two witches, who are attempting to resurrect their sister. The second story is based on "Little Red Riding Hood", where a teenage girl mistakenly picks up a werewolf's medicine for her grandmother. The third story, based on "Goldilocks", tells about three escaped mental patients who share their hideaway with a murderess.
Venomous is a 2001 American direct-to-video disaster horror film directed by Fred Olen Ray, credited as Ed Raymond, and starring Treat Williams, Mary Page Keller and Hannes Jaenicke.
The Kindred is a 1987 American science fiction horror film directed by Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter. Obrow also produced the film, and co-wrote it along with Carpenter, Earl Ghaffari and John Penney. Starring David Allen Brooks, Amanda Pays and Rod Steiger, The Kindred was released on January 9, 1987 and grossed just over $2 million.
Rituals is a 1977 Canadian horror-thriller film directed by Peter Carter, and starring Hal Holbrook, Lawrence Dane, and Robin Gammell. It centers on a group of doctors who are stalked and murdered while on a wilderness trip in remote Northern Ontario. The film was also released under the alternate title The Creeper.