Wes Craven’s The Serpent And The Rainbow

• 29th Mar 2011

For years the VHS cover to Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow haunted me during my weekend visits to the local video rental shop. It remained – at least for all those years – as a forbidden fruit which I could never grasp due to my (then) small stature.

And for years that’s how it stayed, the frightening box art firmly haunting my adolescent nightmares. Then one fateful day I was offered the chance to borrow the aforementioned visually terrifying video. I hesitated at first, then moments later was clutching it in my sweaty palms. This is it I thought. I finally have the much coveted treasure. I popped the tape into the player and a few minutes later… the VHS stopped playing. My jaw hit the ground. It it wasn’t until some years later that I finally had the chance to view it again. And I found it to be an underrated notch on Craven’s extensive filmmaking belt.

Based loosely on Wade Davis’ non-fiction book of the same name (Davis is an ethnobotanist – someone who studies the relationship between people and plants), this adaptation focuses on anthropologist Dennis Alan (played by Bill Pullman) as he ventures to Haiti to investigate the mysterious resurrection of a dead local. Once he arrives, he finds that the voodoo religion in Haiti has its fair share of magical and not-so-magical tricks.

The Serpent and the Rainbow is certainly a departure from previous Craven efforts as it’s a much more mainstream affair, with (for the time) impressive visual effects and a grander scale, far from Craven’s low budget mini-masterpieces. This is horror for adults and it feels like a more mature and controlled effort on Craven’s part. He’s thankfully ditched the camp and kitsch undertones that plagued many of his previous films (yes Swamp Thing and Deadly Friend, I’m pointing at you).

Providing an altogether different take on the zombie myth, Craven creates a mind-melting array of nightmarish visions which truly make your skin crawl. What are some of the delights on offer? I hear you cry. Well, there are some horrifying little treats. It seems Craven learnt one or two interesting visual tricks while making A Nightmare on Elm Street (ones which haunted my pubescent dreams for several months). Craven uses skilful trickery, alongside David Nichols’ scrumptiously macabre production design, to shock the viewer. There’s Dennis’ horrific delusions, such as being stalked by a skeletal and rotting woman in a wedding dress (who crops up several times during the course of the film) which is followed by nightmarish images sequences of him in a coffin which quickly fills with blood, to name only two. They are among the most surreal and strange images that Craven has produced. One of the most chilling sequences – and one which you can also see in the trailer – is when they try to bury Dennis alive. It still makes my skin crawl even now, accompanied by gravel-voiced Pullman shouting ‘Don’t let them bury me… I’m not dead’. It conjures up uneasy feelings of dread and reminds us of our own fear of mortality. In fact, the theme of live burial is constantly present within the film.

Unfortunately whatever mystery or tension is built up during the course of the film is quickly barged out of the way by a plethora of over-the-top special effects. All of this makes the viewer forget the impressive camera trickery that was employed so effectively within the drug-induced dream sequences. And the less said about the obligatory sex scene (it’s mega cheesy and very 80s), the better.

The Serpent and the Rainbow is an enjoyable – if flawed – spine-tingling adult horror film. The aforementioned hellish hallucinations are the highlights, injecting the pedestrian dialogue scenes with some much needed energy. It even has the late, great Michael Gough in a small role which is always a welcome addition to any horror film. It’s a shame this produced mediocre box office takings because it’s definitely Craven’s most technically accomplished feature. All in all, an underrated gem and one which deserves rediscovering by aficionados of zombie films or horror in general.

Dominic O’Brien