The Serpent & The Rainbow (1988)

SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW (1988)

Dir: Wes Craven

16/31 #31daysofhorror

Wes Craven should have been given the keys to the filmmaking kingdom after the release of A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984). Instead, like the rest of his early career, he put together scrappy independent features and hoped for the best. While us genre fans have our favorites among Craven’s diverse filmography prior to Nightmare or between Nightmare and Scream (1996), none of them reached the financial successes of his most famous works. The world lost a true visionary in 2015. We’ve revisited most of his works including his TV movies, episodes, and even his porn film, and after careful evaluation we keep coming back to Scream as Craven’s masterpiece. This is a difficult conclusion to come to.

In my pretentious film school days, I would have told you his reworking of Bergman’s Virgin Spring (1960) into the exploitation classic Last House On The Left (1972) is a brilliant vision of the hell we were seeing on American soil as a result of the wars we fought elsewhere. I know this as fact, because I gave presentations on this. When the pretension stripped away within the harsh light of post-collegiate struggle, I fully supported Freddy Krueger. Old Fred was nostalgia and the comfort I needed. My hatred of the Scream pantomimists began to fade as well. I held a grudge against the film. Droves of inexperience horror fans, now knew the secrets that a decade of viewing slasher films provided. They were cliff notes posers. I felt betrayed by Craven and Kevin Williamson. How dare they hold communion and baptize new genre geeks. Time eventually soothed that wound and the reasons I initially held Scream in contempt became the very reason that I hold it above Craven’s filmography. It compressed decades of horror convention into ninety minutes that were filled to the brim with references, comedic flourishes, and a killer reveal that’s difficult to beat. But we’re here to talk about Craven, prior to the creation of his masterpiece.

The years between Nightmare and Scream were filled with minor hits and many misses. Most of these films would find a cult eventually, but upon release never garnered a wide appeal. These films include: Deadly Friend (1986), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Shocker (1989), Night Visions (1990), The People Under The Stairs (1991), New Nightmare (1994), and Vampire In Brooklyn (1995). Perhaps the wider issue was that of horror’s general appeal in the early 90’s. Due to Silence Of The Lambs (1991), horror was taboo but thrillers were the way to go. Mortal Thoughts (1991), Basic Instinct (1992), Misery (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Sleeping With The Enemy (1991), Kalifornia (1993), The Crush (1993), The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (1992), and even Flatliners (1990) were all part of this new Thriller genre. All these films had horror elements; however, that was a bad word. Had People Under The Stairs debuted in the late 1980’s it would have been an instant classic. New Nightmare was also just way ahead of it’s time, but luckily Craven was able to play with those meta concepts again in Scream. Looking back, Serpent and the Rainbow, almost doesn’t fit in the director’s oeuvre. It is almost as odd as Music Of The Heart (1999).

The film opens in 1978 with Christophe Durand’s funeral. Durand is based on Clairvius Narcisse who was believed to have died in 1962 but later rose as a zombie. Narcisse was taken and poisoned with Datura, a drug that causes memory loss, and forced into slave labor. When his captors died, sixteen years later, he fled. The effects of the Datura eventually wore off and Narcisse regained his memory. In Serpent, Durand’s coffin is lowered into the ground, and we see a tear slide down his cheek. We know the corpse is alive.

Fast forward to 1985 and we follow Dennis Alan (Bill Pulman) as he collects a hallucinogen from a shaman in the Amazon. But to collect the medicine, he must first take it. Here we have our first of many encounters with Alan’s spirit animal - a tiger - and Police Chief Dargent Peytraud (Zakes Mokae). We have no reason to, but we fear Peytraund before we know who he is. Alan returns to Boston with his Amazonian chemicals and is asked to search for a drug that is said to create zombies in Haiti. Big Pharma wants to use this drug as an anesthetic. Little does the film know that the puffer fish drug, Tetrodotoxin had been a well-known poison since 1774 and is already used as an anesthetic. It doesn’t matter, we’re off to Haiti to find a voodoo zombie drug.

Wes Craven could have easily fell under the spell of western civilization’s interpretation of voodoo and practices. Instead, he hired consultants to ensure his misrepresentation was minimal. That’s the director that Craven was though, he always studied the stories within his films. He would like psychological or philosophical concepts to each element. Possibly to the detriment of some of his narratives. Alan wanders through Haiti with the help of Dr. Marielle Duchamp (Cathy Tyson). A relationship borne of screenplay convention will eventually affect both of them. They locate Christophe Durand, the living zombie. These leads Alan to fall under the radar of the Police Chief who needs him to return to America.

If Alan heeded the warnings of the police chief, there’d be no film. And there would not be a second threat later where the chief drives a large nail into Dennis Alan’s scrotum. Or a scene where he buries Alan alive with a tarantula as company. We have met our villain. While it takes a while for the film to really get going, Peytraud as enemy is worth the wait. Between threats and the poisoning of Alan, we get a fun montage of creating the zombie dust, a sexual tryst, and multiple horrific hallucinations / dreams.

Serpent And The Rainbow is not Craven’s best work, but there are elements that make it worthwhile. The authentic look at Haiti during political revolution is nearly as interesting as the idea as turning people into zombie slaves. Bill Pullman almost rises above his ability to be just Bill Pullman in a film, almost.