Dennis Alan is funded by a pharmaceutical company to travel to Haiti – of which he has some prior knowledge – to bring some of the so-called ‘zombie powder’ home which, to all intents and purposes, makes the body’s systems slow down so much that the subject appears to be dead. It is considered that study of the ingredients may eventually allow it to be used as a harmless anaesthetic in difficult operations and therefore save many lives. A local woman acts as his guide and starts by attempting to track-down a man who has recently been ‘zombiefied’. When he tries to do a deal with a black-market seller for the powder, he incurs the wrath of an evil and sadistic dictator who rules the people and the police through fear of his powers...

Director Wes Craven really has made a mixed bag, hasn’t he? I didn’t like The Last House on the Left, because of its content which was not so much fantasy violence as a depiction of real and tasteless subject matter. A Nightmare on Elm Street was clever fantasy violence with a relevant backstory which is exaggerated to the point of silliness in the sequels. Scream is a spot on send-up of the teen horror flick, and The Serpent and the Rainbow is… somewhere in between. It weighs in with apocryphal stories of threats to the film crew and damaged prints, as well as inferring it has a semblance of truth in that scientists have been studying the substance without being able to find out what makes it work. It all aids the publicity of the film, I suppose.

I don’t think Bill Pullman is a particularly good choice for the lead; he displays little or no character, and emotionally he doesn’t change much between when he’s making love and when he’s being tortured. Perhaps for this character they are pretty much one and the same. I have to say that at times I felt the torture myself – of watching, that is. No human being in their right mind would keep returning for more pain and suffering like Dennis Alan does. Inside an hour and a half, he is threatened, beaten-up (more than once), made to suffer terrifying visions and dreams, restrained, tortured, buried alive, ‘zombiefied’, burned – and still he comes back for more. Not very likely. The horror, rather than violence, seems to be forgotten until the last moments, when the imprisoned souls – now released by our struggling unlikely hero – group to attack the bad guy. In fact, the climatic struggle takes place amidst a revolution which is timely, to say the least.

It’s not as derisory as I’ve probably made it sound, but it’s certainly nothing special. Having watched and reviewed this film before, my opinion hasn’t really changed that much. For the majority of the running time, I was obliged to mentally force myself not to fast forward through the woefully slow and basic plotline. Everything of real interest happens during the final fifteen minutes, with certain supernatural elements, including the movements of the torture chair and, essentially, the release of the captured souls who take their revenge on the overthrown dictator. There are a couple of earlier scenes of interest, such as the dream sequence and the stunning candlelit winding procession through the hills. Oh, and I have to mention the under-utilised Michael Gough, a legend of Hammer and beyond.

The Blu-ray image is clear; however, I don’t believe it has been remastered since its previous release. There is no choice of sound quality, no subtitles, and no extras aside from a trailer. The added incentive here is the new double-sided poster of new artwork, which is also on the cover, but this still remains somehow lacking as a package. The banner of "The Fabulous '80s", does seem like a somewhat desperate attempt to have this film included in the wealth of original horror (and sometimes notorious) films from that decade.

5

Ty Power