The Serpent and the Rainbow | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Wes Craven |
Screenplay by | Richard Maxwell |
Story by | Adam Rodman |
Based on | The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis |
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | John Lindley |
Edited by | Glenn Farr |
Music by | Brad Fiedel |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 98 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $7 million |
Box office | $19.6 million |
The Serpent and the Rainbow is a 1988 American horror film directed by Wes Craven and starring Bill Pullman. The script by Richard Maxwell and Adam Rodman is loosely based on the non-fiction book of the same name by ethnobotanist Wade Davis, wherein Davis recounted his experiences in Haiti investigating the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was allegedly poisoned, buried alive, and revived with a herbal brew which produced what was called a zombie.
In 1978, a Haitian man named Christophe mysteriously dies in a French missionary clinic, while a voodoo parade marches past his window. The next morning, Christophe is buried in a traditional Catholic funeral. A mysterious man dressed in a suit who was outside Christophe's hospital window on the night he died is in attendance. As the coffin is lowered into the ground, Christophe's eyes open and tears roll down his cheeks.
Seven years later, Harvard anthropologist Dennis Alan is in the Amazon rainforest studying rare herbs and medicines with a local shaman. He drinks a potion and experiences a hallucination of the same black man from Christophe's funeral, surrounded by corpses in a bottomless pit.
Back in Boston, Alan is approached by a pharmaceutical company looking to investigate a drug used in Haitian Vodou to create zombies. The company wants Alan to acquire the drug for use as a "super anesthetic". The corporation provides Alan with funding and sends him to Haiti, which is in the middle of a revolution. Alan's exploration in Haiti, assisted by Dr. Marielle Duchamp, locates Christophe who is alive after having been buried seven years earlier. Alan is taken into custody, and the commander of the Tonton Macoute , Captain Dargent Peytraud—the same man from Christophe's funeral and Alan's vision in the Amazon—warns Alan to leave Haiti.
Continuing his investigation, Alan finds a local man, Mozart, who is reported to have knowledge of the procedure for creating the zombie drug. Alan pays Mozart for a sample, but Mozart sells him rat poison instead. After embarrassing Mozart in public, Alan persuades Mozart to show Alan how to produce the drug for a fee of $1,000. Alan is arrested again by the Tonton Macoutes, and tortured by having a nail driven through his scrotum, and then dumped on a street with the message that he must leave Haiti or be killed. Alan again refuses to leave and meets with Mozart to create the drug.
Alan has a nightmare of Peytraud, revealed to be a bokor who turns enemies into zombies and steals their souls. When Alan wakes up, he is lying next to Christophe's sister who has been decapitated. The Tonton Macoutes enter, take photos, and frame Alan for murder. Peytraud tells Alan to leave the country and never return, lest he be convicted of the murder, executed, and then his soul stolen by Peytraud. Peytraud puts Alan on a US bound plane, but Mozart sneaks on board and gives Alan the zombie drug. Mozart asks Alan to tell people about him, so that Mozart can achieve international fame. Alan agrees and returns to Boston with his mission apparently completed.
At a celebration dinner, the wife of Alan's employer is possessed by Peytraud, who warns Alan of his own imminent death. Alan returns to Haiti, where his only ally, a houngan named Lucien Celine, is killed by Peytraud and Mozart is beheaded as a sacrifice for Peytraud's power. Alan is then sprayed with the zombie powder and dies; later, Peytraud steals Alan's body from the hospital before the death can be reported to the US Embassy. Peytraud takes Alan to a graveyard where, helpless in his coffin, Alan sees that Peytraud has captured Marielle and will sacrifice her. Peytraud shows Alan Celine's soul in a canari. Alan is then buried alive with a tarantula to "keep him company". Waking up in his coffin a few hours later, Alan is rescued by Christophe who was also turned into a zombie by Peytraud.
Having escaped Peytraud's trap, Alan returns to the Tonton Macoute headquarters looking for Marielle. There, Alan defeats Peytraud through a battle of wills, using Celine's white magic to drive a nail into Peytraud's groin, and sends his soul to hell. As the Haitian people celebrate the downfall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Marielle proclaims "The nightmare is over".
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2019) |
The Serpent and the Rainbow was filmed in Boston, Massachusetts, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and in Haiti. [2] During production in Haiti, the local government informed the cast and crew that they could not guarantee their safety for the remainder of the film's shoot because of the political strife and civil turmoil that was occurring during that time; as a result, production was relocated to the Dominican Republic for the remainder of the shoot.
In an interview, Craven stated that unlike his previous films that had problems with the Motion Picture Association of America, the first cut got an R rating without any problems. [3] According to an article from Fangoria #71, the original cut was 184 minutes long but Craven felt that it was too long and talky so he cut it down to 98 minutes. It was then test screened to the audience and their reactions were favorable.
The Serpent and the Rainbow was released theatrically in the United States by Universal Pictures on February 5, 1988. It grossed $19,595,031 at the box office. [4]
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2019) |
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Serpent and the Rainbow holds an approval rating of 62%, based on 37 reviews, and an average rating of 5.7/10. Its consensus reads, "Although it's occasionally overwhelmed by excessive special effects, The Serpent and the Rainbow draws on a chilling atmosphere to deliver [an] intelligent, politically informed story." [5] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [6]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the movie three stars out of a possible four, praising Pullman's performance and the "stunning" visuals, while also noting The Serpent and the Rainbow seemed to take Haitain voodoo more seriously as a religion and cultural force than most horror movies with similar themes, which merely use voodoo as a "gimmick". [7]
The film was first released on DVD by Image Entertainment in 1998, [8] though this version is now out of print. It was subsequently re-released by Universal Studios in 2003 and in 2016 on Blu-ray from Scream Factory. [9]
Damballa, also spelled Damballah, Dambala, Dambalah, among other variations, is one of the most important of all loa, spirits in West African Vodun, Haitian Voodoo and other African diaspora religious traditions such as Obeah. He is traditionally portrayed as a great white or black serpent, but may also be depicted as a rainbow. Damballa originated in the city of Wedo in modern-day Benin.
The Tonton Macoute or simply the Macoute, was a Haitian paramilitary and secret police force created in 1959 by dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Haitians named this force after the Haitian mythological bogeyman, Tonton Macoute, who kidnaps and punishes unruly children by snaring them in a gunny sack before carrying them off to be consumed for breakfast. The Macoute were known for their brutality, state terrorism, and assassinations. In 1970, the militia was renamed the Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale. Though formally disbanded in 1986, its members continued to terrorize the country.
Zakes Makgona Mokae was a South African stage and screen actor. He was well-known for his work with playwright Athol Fugard, notably in The Blood Knot and "Master Harold"...and the Boys, the latter earning him aTony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Edmund Wade Davis is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and writer.
Clairvius Narcisse was a Haitian man who claimed to have been turned into a zombie by a Haitian vodou, and forced to work as a slave.
The Plague of the Zombies is a 1966 British horror film directed by John Gilling and starring André Morell, John Carson, Jacqueline Pearce, Brook Williams, and Michael Ripper. The film's imagery influenced many later films in the zombie genre.
The Comedians (1966) is a novel by Graham Greene. Set in Haiti under the rule of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his secret police, the Tontons Macoutes, the novel explores political repression and terrorism through the figure of an English hotel owner, Brown.
I Walked with a Zombie is a 1943 American horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton for RKO Pictures. It stars James Ellison, Frances Dee, and Tom Conway, and follows a Canadian nurse who travels to care for the ailing wife of a sugar plantation owner in the Caribbean, where she witnesses Vodou rituals and possibly encounters the walking dead. The screenplay, written by Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray, is based on an article of the same title by Inez Wallace, and also partly reinterprets the narrative of the 1847 novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
A bokor (male) or caplata (female) is a Vodou priest or priestess for hire in Haiti who is said to serve the loa, "'with both hands', practicing for both good and evil." Their practice includes the creation of zombies and of ouangas.
Voodoo Dawn is a 1991 American horror film directed by Steven Fierberg and starring Tony Todd, Raymond St. Jacques, Theresa Merritt and Gina Gershon. It was written by Jeffrey Delman, Evan Dunsky, Thomas Rendon and John A. Russo, and produced by Steven D. Mackler.
Zombie Nightmare is a 1987 Canadian zombie film produced and directed by Jack Bravman, written by John Fasano, and starring Adam West, Tia Carrere, Jon Mikl Thor, and Shawn Levy. The film centres around a baseball player who is killed by a group of teenagers and is resurrected as a zombie by a Haitian voodoo priestess. The zombie goes on to kill the teens, whose deaths are investigated by the police. The film was shot in the suburbs of Montreal, Canada. It was originally written to star mostly black actors but, at the request of investors, the characters' names were changed to more typically white names. While Bravman was credited as director, Fasano directed the majority of the film. Problems occurred between Fasano and the production crew, who believed him to be assistant director and ignored his directions.
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.
A zombie is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies are most commonly found in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magical practices in religions like Vodou. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as fungi, radiation, gases, diseases, plants, bacteria, viruses, etc.
The Comedians is a 1967 American political drama film directed and produced by British filmmaker Peter Glenville, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Graham Greene, who also wrote the screenplay. The stars were Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Ustinov, and Alec Guinness. Paul Ford and Lillian Gish had supporting roles as a presidential candidate and wife, as did James Earl Jones as an island doctor.
Arnold Antonin is a Haitian film director. A man of diverse careers, Arnold Antonin is known both inside and outside Haiti for his social, political and cultural commitment. He was honored for lifetime achievement with the Djibril Diop Mambety award at the International Film Cannes Festival in 2002. He received the Paul Robeson African Diaspora best film award at FESPACO in Ouagadougou in 2007, 2009, and 2011. He also received numerous awards and accolades at festivals for his documentaries and fiction movies. He was president of the Haitian Filmmakers Association (AHC) from 2005 to 2009.
Luckner Cambronne was a high-ranking political figure in François Duvalier's regime in Haiti.
Max Gesner Beauvoir was a Haitian biochemist and houngan. Beauvoir held one of the highest titles of Voudou priesthood, Ati or "Supreme Serviteur", a title given to Houngans and Mambos who have a great and very deep knowledge of the religion, and status within the religion. As Supreme Serviteur, Max was seen as a high authority within Vodou.
The Dead Don't Die is a 1975 American made-for-television neo-noir horror thriller film set in the 1930s, directed by Curtis Harrington from a teleplay by Robert Bloch, based upon his own story of the same title that first appeared in Fantastic Adventures, July 1951. The film originally premiered on NBC on January 14, 1975. The film uses the traditional Haitian concept of zombies as resurrected slaves of the living.
Zombi Child is a 2019 French drama film directed by Bertrand Bonello. It is based on the account of the life of a supposed zombified man in Haiti, Clairvius Narcisse. It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
Murder Legendre is a fictional character and the antagonist of the 1932 black-and-white horror film White Zombie where he was portrayed by actor Bela Lugosi.