poe-48833 THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW boasted one of the greatest trailers I've ever seen; the movie, unfortunately, didn't live up to its promise. Bill Pullman in the lead was a big part of what went wrong: his delivery throughout is as dull and monotonous and as lifeless as... a zombie... There ARE a couple of good scenes: the scene where the missing man, Christophe, turns up (...) in a graveyard and the scene where Pullman is buried alive. The Big Finale drags on for far too long and it doesn't help that Craven employs the same type of stunts he used in SWAMP THING (which were not unlike the stunts we saw every single week on THE INCREDIBLE HULK teleshow). For all that, I still think this is the late Wes Craven's best effort.

Wuchak In 1988's "The Serpent and the Rainbow" Bill Pullman plays an anthropologist who goes to Haiti to investigate a rumored drug that can make people seem dead, but they're really not. In other words, the plot addresses the reality behind the zombie myth. The story's supposedly based (loosely) on factual material contained in Wade Davis' book. Davis reportedly wanted noted director Peter Weir to direct the film, but he got stuck with horror maestro Wes Craven. Wes is great for cartoony horror flicks, like "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the "Scream" series, but he was apparently out of his league here. I hate giving bad reviews to movies because I realize no one intends to make a bad film. Making decent movies is expensive and takes a lot of work by scores of talented people. "The Serpent and the Rainbow" had the funds, talent, locations and music to make a quality film, but it horribly fails.Over the years it's taken me four attempts just to get past the 20-40 minute mark. I finally forced myself to watch the entire film last night and it was a chore. It starts out intriguing, but immediately fails to engross. The story's fine, but the way it's told is bad, which includes the puzzling editing. It's incoherent and you soon find yourself bored watching interesting images and cool percussion-oriented music, but characters and a tale you don't care about, mainly because you were never allowed to comprehend it.There's a shallow love story with the requisite beautiful native (Cathy Tyson) and the second act gets a little better with Brent Jennings as Mozart, but the third act spirals into to ultra-horror cheese. Some scenes are so ridiculously bad they're laugh-out-loud funny. For instance, a classy white woman suddenly jumps on the dinner table radically attacking the anthropologist; a torture-chair moves across the room by itself on a couple occasions; someone's head falls off; a scorpion walks out of someone's mouth; something alien and diabolic comes out of someone else's mouth (or head); etc. On top of this, there are so many dream/hallucination sequences that they become tedious. These scenes were obviously included to up the ante with horror props and – hopefully – jolt the audience, but they utterly fail because, after a while, you suspect that what's going on isn't really happening and it's hard to be scared by illusions. Most of the time, they just make you laugh, like the (supposedly) creepy hand coming out of the soup (rolling my eyes). Don't get me wrong, scenes like these CAN work in horror films, but they have to be done right and in the right context, which isn't the case here, unfortunately.The only reason I'm not giving it an "F" is because of the positives noted above.The film runs 98 minutes and was shot in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Boston.GRADE: D

TheRedDeath30 In our modern horror cinema, the "zombie" genre has been overtaken by flesh-eating ghouls and infection films that come from the Romero/ Fulci family tree. However, before Romero's Living Dead films, the word "zombie" often had a very different connotation, going back to the voodoo rituals that would create mindless slaves. From classic horror movies like WHITE ZOMBIE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE to Hammer's PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, this was the archetype that Hollywood explored when it talked about zombies and it is this territory that Craven hearkens back to in this late 80s classic.There is a lot to love about this movie, starting with that general concept. Though lovers of classic cinema may be familiar with the films I mentioned, most "modern horror" fans hadn't really seen a voodoo zombie movie before. To me, as a 13 year old kid when this was released, this was something completely new, exploring a culture that was wild and exotic and more than a little creepy.That creepiness pervades this movie. There is so much atmosphere created. Craven does a great job of introducing his main character to psychotropic drugs right in the beginning. This allows him to play with some surreal dream imagery thereafter and create all sort of bizarre images for us, all wrapped under the guise of our heroes mind being opened up to the spiritual. Beyond the dream images, Craven injects all manner of wonderful imagery into this movie, using the Haitian landscape, human fear of being buried alive, catholic and voodoo iconography and some of the creepiest cemeteries you'll see. All of it creates this world where just about anything is possible and most of it will be nightmarish.The writing is actually pretty good, for a horror movie. They work in the requisite budding romance, without it ever feeling tacked on and unnecessary. They manage to add in several subplots, as well, that add to the movie instead of detract, created a very layered film that not only explores voodoo, but the temperature of the Haitian political climate at the time.Some of the effects now look a little dated, but I'm not going to hold that against a movie. They are products of their time, naturally. If they are one of those lucky films that manages to hold up, even better, but many look dated 30 years later.The biggest negative to me and the thing I notice the most on recent viewings is that Bill Pullman is just...bad. He's presented to us as an almost Indiana Jones type of explorer and I'm not buying it for a minute. His vocal tone seems more high-pitched than I remember him being in his other roles. The worst parts of his performance come when he's relied on to perform the more physical aspects such as the torture scene, or his big moment when he's been drugged and looking for help. He just looks really amateurish to me in these moments and I find that he's the biggest thing keeping this from being a little higher rated in my opinion.

Girish Gowda Dennis Allan (Bill Pullman) is an anthropologist who goes around the world searching for rare traditional cures from the far corners of the world. He visits Haiti on the strength of a rumour of a drug which renders the recipient totally paralyzed but conscious. The drug's effects often fool doctors, who declare the victims dead. Could this be the origin of the "zombie" legend? Alan embarks on a surprising and often surreal investigation of the turbulent social chaos that is Haiti during the revolution.. Alan must decide what is science, what is superstition and what is the unknown in an anarchistic society where police corruption and witch doctors are commonplace.This is a very underrated movie directed by Wes Craven and based on a true story (book). Dennis comes off as an Indiana Jones kind of protagonist in this adventure horror film. While he does take some questionable moronic decisions, he's not completely unlikable. The stereotypes of the Haitian community in the eighties are wholly embraced by the writers. Most horror movies that deal in some way with voodoo have absolutely no idea what it is really about. The movie is genuinely creepy because it showcases some of the real kind of voodoo effectively. Voodoo is not all black magic as glorified by terrible Hollywood movies.The visuals are powerful and the dream sequences are terribly eerie and fantastic. Allen is often attacked in his dreams (and in real life as well as shown in one very disturbing scene where a nail is driven through his scrotum) and the situations can cross the line of reality and still be plausible. Him being pulled into the earth while being grabbed at by a rotted corpses is a notable example. A villain and a leader, Dargent Peytraud (Zakes Mokae) and Marielle Duchamp (Cathy Tyson) are really good in their roles. The last 10 minutes is typical Hollywood nonsense which is a damn shame because what preceded it was very engaging. Probably the most realistic take on the phenomenon that is 'zombies'.7/10