The Serpent And The Rainbow

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

Runtime: 98 minutes

Directed by: Wes Craven

Starring: Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield, Brent Jennings

From: Universal

Or: I finally learn how to Shudder properly.

For all the months and the movies I've streamed on Shudder, would you believe it was just a few days ago (via a mutual's review) that informed me there was a way to find the information on what was leaving the service & when? After a brief conversation-thanks to this individual, BTW-there is more than one day to do so. Besides a Reddit thread from the official staff that may be more accurate anyhow, that info is displayed in the app itself; look in the Collections tab, the Featured Collections subsection to be exact. I couldn't have been the only one that had no idea...

Anyhow, this is how I discovered it would only be on Shudder for April and as it sounded interesting to me (not to mention “directed by Wes Craven”) it was worthy of a stream. Thankfully this was pretty good despite some moments I could pick some nits at. There is occasional narration which seemed like “this was done after the fact at the studio's request” yet it does not ruin the movie—it's no “Blade Runner narration”.

Most of the movie is set in Haiti (and in fact part of it was filmed there... only to have to move across the island to The Dominican Republic because of strife in the country, which was a real life aspect incorporated into the plot) and for those unaware, for decades the country hasn't been doing well. Among other issues, the “wonderful” father and son duo of “Papa Doc” and his son “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who killed many of their own citizens, corruption ruled the day and they had a private military force best described as “jack-booted thugs”. The time period of the movie was '85/'86 for a specific reason; the Duvalier family is mentioned by name and it was suggested that it was awful how the nice people in the country had to deal with them and the loathsome toadies who followed the government's lead. As just last year the leader in the country was assassinated... sad to say not a lot has changed.

Bill Pullman plays an anthropologist from Harvard who is asked by a pharmaceutical company to go to Haiti to investigate what drugs are used to create the effect of... zombies. Indeed voodoo is well-practiced there and believe it or not, this movie is rather loosely based on a real life claim of how via drugs a Haitian man named Clairvius Narcisse was poisoned, “died”, then was revived as a zombie to work on an A-hole's sugar plantation, but after the A-hole died the effect wore off and he became “normal” again. Wild, right? Not to crap on the entire Vodou (as it's officially known) religion but the drugs used to create that spell... scientifically it's been proven to not work as advertised. BTW, the opening explains that in the religion the serpent represents Earth and the rainbow represents Heaven.

Ignoring that, the story here is that the drug could be used as a better anesthetic for surgery (!) so Pullman better try and get it. In Haiti, he soon discovers how bad the rulers are, and specifically an individual known as Dargent Peytraud is pretty repugnant as he uses voodoo & creates zombies for his own gain. The movie is a nice examination of a world too often ignored, has enough effective scares-of course given the director there are a few nightmares shown-and has a quality score from Brad Fiedel that is appropriate for such an exotic setting. However, it is the character of Peytraud and the performance from Zakes Mokae that helps make the movie work. It was nice to see the likes of Paul Winfield and like others it is a shame that Cathy Tyson did not have a better career but Mokae was the standout.

I now regret not giving this a shot sooner, and hopefully the other “lesser” Craven I check out in the future will be as rewarding a journey.