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Category:    Home > Reviews > Horror > Thriller > The Killer Snakes (1974/Horror/Image/Celestial/Shaw Brothers)

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


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