The Serpent and the Rainbow

Since 1999, apparently.

But he did, just like a quick read-through, he did Johnny Mnemonic, True Lies, Terminator 2, Fright Night Part 2, The Serpent and the Rainbow,

Fright

Night, yeah, The Terminator, Just Before Dawn is a really great kind of under-scene slasher movie that he also did a score

and the Rainbow.

Did anybody ever see the Serpent and the Rainbow? So it's kind of the same thing.

That's one of those

movies you only need to see once.

Two films that we can talk about, which I guess are sort of siblings in the sense that they make no fucking sense coming in this filmography in some way.

One, which is The Serpent and the Rainbow, which is set in Haiti.

So it ticks our usual box of like tropical, slightly problematic explorations.

And then just as the 90s came around, he made what I think is one of his best films, very weird film called The People Under the Stairs.

Maybe we can start with The Serpent and the Rainbow.

I'm quite surprised by this film, in not the way that I expected.

Psychosis is like a zombie film, Wes Craven in Haiti.

The way that even works in the sense you're just like, being in awe of everything every sequence and that's on a meta level works as such as the structure of film which kind of feels like craving being like i just want to be have the like the game sequence i want to have the cannibals i want to have like the doverman that appears like every kind of 15 minutes and it has a little bit jump scare sequences with uh being rames and all of that more and more effective as it just becomes like this cumulative effect of like pure to me like the best haunted houses films just become that at some point like it's full creepy screwy do just like things like flowing from one like door to the other like even like the geography of the house no longer makes sense like you see like stairs that go nowhere you see like bathrooms that become like windows and it's like sensory overload to me is the quintessential expression of like what uh craven's like virtues are as a filmmaker like that full embodiment of the nightmare is to me like what really uh materializes his whole work and in this film to me it'd be like accidental or be like circumstantial was fully like let like let loose that that's what like to me like stands about this film it's it's almost like

But I like ones that could actually be true.

Like if you've ever seen The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Yeah.

That one

White Zombies.

Did you ever see The Serpent and the Rainbow? I did.

I saw it like as a kid though.

Yeah, I saw it when I was a teenager.

We're doing fucking solid.

I actually think...

I hate to say this because I'm not a big fan of remakes, but now would be a perfect time to remake a movie like The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Yeah.

yeah i haven't heard the rocky three screed i'm curious to hear about that yeah a movie i've seen one time i'm not that invested so i'm willing to be convinced but yeah you're right like the the voodoo story plots in this movie are very minimal like a because the plot in this movie is very minimal, but it just needed to be addressed, I think, because it's just one of those things that always kind of bugs me is just that depiction.

Yeah, like I said, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Wes Craven's movie from 1989, I think it's a very, very good movie.

I think it's a very effective, scary movie that's trying for a little bit more like anthropological or at least a little bit more cultural sensitivity, but they still end up in the same place.

They still end up in the same route that they always do, you know?

Yeah, I would say specifically the connection between Haitian voodoo and zombies because they are not like...

There are definitely people who practice... voodoo who can associate with the mythos of zombies, but the way in which those have been connected through history were just simply from a white man's perspective who visited Haiti, who saw what he believed to be zombies, And then there we have the introduction of the word zombie associated with Haiti into our American lexicon.

So like you were saying, the game of telephone, because even with The Serpent and the Rainbow, I'm pretty sure he read Magic, the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow book, read Magic Island and was then inspired to write The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Exactly right.

I mean, God knows Toby Hooper has had issues in this sense, had to deal with tampering, with studio intermissions and all sorts of problems.

Serpent and the Ending for The Serpent and the Rainbow, Hurst, that you mentioned at the beginning of the commentary.

But Craven, maybe due to his ambivalent feelings about the genre and about his role within the genre and his sort of status as a horror icon, always seems to be afraid of biting, of bringing those ideas to the extreme, of really giving them breathing room.

And you always get this feeling that his ideas are somehow squashed under the weight of possibly ambivalent feelings, guilt, or the need, or desire to not take it too far or to be as mainstream as possible.

But along with Ernest Borgnine, I think it's safe to say that she is probably the biggest name associated with this film, apart from the director.

Absolutely.

Well, just to clarify my position on The Serpent and the Rainbow, indeed, it did have tampering, but the whole concept, the premise of using voodoo as a sort of vehicle for horror can be interpreted as problematic to begin with, because it's It's a minority's religion and it's something that has never been portrayed for what it really is, which has very little to do with actually horrific iconography.

In regards to Sharon Stone, I mean, many people have forgotten how long she struggled.