Isle of the Snake People (1971)

A Disappointing Continuation

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

SNAKE PEOPLE is one of the infamous 'Mexican quartet' of films that Boris Karloff shot on the cheap shortly before his death in 1969. This one was filmed in 1968 but didn't actually get released until 1971, making it his penultimate screen appearance. I've seen three of the four of these films now and they're all similar in that they're extremely low budget horrors, made with a little imagination and lots of choppy editing that sometimes makes it feel like you're watching two films joined together, like those Godfrey Ho ninja flicks of the 1980s. SNAKE PEOPLE is one of the most disappointing of the four, because it has a lot of scope and a lot of potential. As usual, directorial chores are shared between exploitation king Jack Hill and Juan Ibanez. Individually, scenes are well shot, atmospheric, and contain a great visual style, but this is a film that's less than the sum of its parts. The editing is poor beyond belief, the script is flat and lifeless and too many ideas have been crammed in here with none of them coming to full fruition.The movie kicks off on a surreal high as a bespectacled dwarf, nicknamed Baron Samedi, sets about digging up the body of a recently deceased woman. There's a kind of madness hanging in the background, a sense of voodoo lurking unseen nearby and this is the film's best asset: a creepy atmosphere throughout. After this we're thrown into a plot involving a bullish police 'capitan' attempting to teach the pesky natives a thing or two, while the island's soldiers are dispatched with machetes and garrotes and Boris Karloff wanders around in his study, talking about telekinesis. Occasionally we go back to the evil dwarf and meet some zombies who are a cross between the willing slaves of 1940s zombie flicks and the flesh eaters of Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The film ends with a fully fledged voodoo ceremony but the climax is mishandled, just like the rest of the flick.The cast isn't really worth mentioning, other than Karloff who puts in his usual good performance – this actor never shows anything less than complete integrity. Too much time is spent with ageing real-life dancer Tongolele, who adds nothing to the plot other than a poor makeup job, and then there's the padding: endless scenes of dancing, of native mumbo-jumbo, sexist comments, repetition in the extreme, and then a ten minute dream sequence that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie! This bit involves attractive starlet Julissa finding herself trapped in a cave with her ghostly doppelganger. Like the rest of the film, it looks cool although makes little sense. Add into the mix some poor special effects, hints at necrophilia and lesbianism, and you have a could-have-been movie that's an ultimate disappointment. I rated this on par with DANCE OF DEATH, with ALIEN TERROR being the best of the four so far.

It is entirely worth watching for the performance of Santanón, a Mexican dwarf actor who is the voodoo priest. Capering about with a maniacal grin, in a top hat and bizarre costume, whipping the dancing girls, invoking Papa Labas (or one of those voodoo gods), his performance is riveting. I kept rewinding the film to watch him. I'm still not sure if it was a good performance, but it was a performance unlike any I've seen before and oddly convincing. The actor seemed to be having a great time with it, and were the whole movie his, it'd be one of my favorite cult films.Unfortunately, there's a bunch of other stuff wasting time in this film, a ridiculous police department plot, a temperance gal and her colonialist uncle (Karloff, forgettable), and too much that's non- voodoo ritual.

First off, if you've come here as a Karloff fan, the film is on Youtube.com and it seems like a decent print. The same media channel on Youtube has put out tons of other B movies there as well, they probably also released them on DVD, so you can check it out there for free.I don't know why so many are so critical of this film, it looks above average to me in terms of late 60's early 70's drive in horror movies. If you want to compare it to something done by an HBO now (like that Vampire series), yeah it sucks probably, but among it's peers, it's above average. Many say this movie is slow moving, but I mean the first scene has a real animal sacrifice (a chicken) and the newly risen zombie woman is made a sex slave! That's some pretty racy stuff for me! The movie was not slow to me, but it was hard to root for the Hero, or even know who the Hero was until about the end, I got the feeling that the Zombie cult was the Hero, lol.It does rap up abruptly but thankfully painlessly and I liked it. Many reviewers were turned on by the middle aged cultess, I was not but she did freak me out with those eye close ups. The black zombie chicks turned me on with their pretty faces and hot lips. If you are into chicks dancing with snakes, you will like this movie. And if you get down to it, there were not many movies up to that time that featured chicks with snakes like this one did, this movie was pushing boundaries if you ask me.Karloff's disappearance at the last part is sad, and he's not the sole reason to watch, the voodoo rituals take that honor; but he does have a couple of decent dialog scenes I guess and the movie is better off with him in it then without.Compared to other crappy horror movies of it's time this rates a 7 of 10 from me, it would have rated higher with some heavy doses of nudity (there is none). Worth watching on Youtube.

Yes, I put poople on purpose. I will admit that I was finishing an "art" project for the first fifteen minutes or so, but even then, when I wasn't really paying attention, I could tell that this was going to be a terrible movie. First off, I'd like to say that I truly feel sorry for Boris and Bela. During their later years, not only did they do awful films, they did films that are considered the worst of all time. That's okay, though. Karloff is barely even in this shipwreck. The dubbing was terrible. I don't even think that was Karloff's real voice. Most everything else was deplorable as well, including a painfully slow pace. I will say this about the film. The odd dream sequence brings the old "Making out with oneself" gag to an entirely different level. Other than that and a few exotic dance scenes,it really has nothing going for it. I haven't been through such cinematic agony since my attempt to watch an uncut version of "Manos the Hands of Fate".