If you wish more horror films came with onomatopoetic titles, I’ve got the movie for you.
When Kevin Smith released his now -notorious horror comedy Tusk, many reviewers took issue with the ludicrous premise in which a mad scientist takes it upon himself to transform a man into a walrus. Apparently none of these critics had ever seen Bernard L. Kowalski’s 1973 horror film Sssssss—new to Blu-ray from Scream Factory—because if they had, they might have recognized that the premise of Smith’s movie had been covered nearly 30 years earlier, only with a snake instead of a walrus. It is, to put it bluntly, not a very good movie. But it is a weird one, and sometimes “weird” counts.
Dirk Benedict (“Face” from TV’s The A-Team) plays college student David, hired as an assistant to Dr. Carl Stoner (Strother Martin), who specializes in snakes and doubles as a mad scientist conducting experiments to crossbreed snakes with humans so they may survive the doomsday scenarios he has cooked up in his head. As David begins a romance with Stoner’s daughter, Kristina (Heather Menzies, 1978’s Piranha), over the doctor’s objections, he receives a series of injections from Stoner that begin the process of his own transformation. It gives new meaning to the expression “that guy’s a real snake.”
As “must-see” as a movie in which a guy slowly turns into a slithering reptile may sound on paper, Sssssss is, in practice, fairly ponderous. It takes a long time for anything to happen; despite the nightmarish visual of a couple of snake men sprinkled throughout the film (with makeup courtesy of the great John Chambers, the man responsible for the apes in the original Planet of the Apes), nothing really hits the fan until almost the final moments of the film. On the plus side, that allows a great deal of screen time to creating characters that are surprisingly developed and sympathetic, especially for a movie like this. When David begins to really feel the effects of the experiments conducted upon him, we feel for him. When Menzies is horrified and heartbroken, we feel for her. Even Strother Martin’s mad scientist generates some amount of empathy, seeing as he believes he’s doing the right thing to save humanity. It’s not completely his fault that he thinks the answer is “snakes.” The answer is never snakes.
Another thing the movie has going for it is the use of real snakes, which adds not only a great deal of gravitas to an otherwise silly film, but also makes certain scenes feel legitimately dangerous. Fake snakes would have yanked the audience right out of the picture, and that’s a fact that director Kowalski (who directed a ton of television shows and here has one of his few feature film credits) understands—in order for us to buy into this movie, we have to be able to buy into this movie. The snake work is truly impressive, whether it’s real cobras attacking cast members or an enormous python curling around a victim and crushing him to death. Anyone suffering from ophidiophobia will want to steer clear of Sssssss. The title alone says as much.
Scream Factory’s Blu-ray of Sssssss presents the movie in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio with a 1080p transfer that is bright and clean and more than likely the best the film has ever appeared on home video. Seeing as the movie undoubtedly has more than its share of behind-the-scenes stories—any film that features this many real snakes must be bursting with anecdotes—the lack of a commentary on Scream Factory’s disc is a disappointment. The only bonus features are a chatty, borderline manic interview with star Dirk Benedict (who holds a cigar the entire time, because of course he does) and another interview with co-star Heather Menzies, plus a gallery of production stills and a few radio and TV spots.
As killer snake movies go, Sssssss is better than Jaws of Satan, but not as good as Venom (also now available on Blu-ray, courtesy of Blue Underground). As humans-being-turned-into-animal movies go, it has an advantage over something like Tusk because it takes itself seriously, while at the same time being at a disadvantage because it takes itself seriously. Scream Factory’s Blu-ray is best for diehard fans or those who want to view it as a curiosity. In fact, that’s a good word to describe it. The movie is a curiosity.
Movie Score: 2.5/5, Disc Score: 3/5
Patrick lives in Chicago, where he has been writing about film since 2004. A member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Online Film Critics Society, Patrick's writing also appears on About.com, DVDVerdict.com and fthismovie.net, the site he runs and hosts a weekly podcast.
He has been an obsessive fan of horror and genre films his entire life, watching, re-watching and studying everything from the Universal Monsters of the '30s and '40s to the modern explosion of indie horror. Some of his favorites include Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931), Dawn of the Dead (1978), John Carpenter's The Thing and The Funhouse. He is a lover of Tobe Hooper and his favorite Halloween film is part 4. He knows how you feel about that. He has a great wife and two cool kids, who he hopes to raise as horror nerds.
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