SSSSSSS (aka SSSSNAKE)

Publicity poster for Sssssss (© Bernard L. Kowalski/Daniel C. Striepeke/Universal Pictures - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Down through the years, I've seen more than a fair few monsters movies, that's for sure. There were some strange monster movies, there were some very strange monster movies, there were some extremely strange monster movies – and there was Sssssss, which I finally watched on 25 July 2020, after reading and hearing so much about it for almost 50 years.

Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski and produced by Daniel C. Striepeke, Sssssss was originally released in 1973 (under the title Ssssnake in the UK), which meant that I was far too young to see it at the cinema, but its truly bizarre, fantastical storyline was so sensational back then that it commandeered plenty of column inches in the film review pages of newspapers and magazines, which I read with a delicious mixture of fascination and horror. I never recall it ever being shown on Britain's mainstream TV channels, but with the eventual advent of ex-rental and sell-thru videos, followed by DVDs, I've spasmodically sought out Sssssss, yet always to no avail – until mid-July 2020, that is, when I discovered that the full movie was actually available to watch for free on YouTube.

So I duly sat down and clicked Play, ready to be thrilled and chilled – but instead I was merely depressed and disappointed, finding that, presumably in order to avoid it being deleted from YT on copyright grounds, its uploader had modified it by superimposing a filter that produced the highly unwelcome effect of trying to view the movie through lace curtains in shadow. After about 10 minutes, my strained eyes gave up the unequal struggle.

So I then turned to ebay, where to my surprise I discovered a cheap s/h combo set listed in Very Good condition – by combo set, I mean a case containing two discs, one of which is the movie in DVD format and the other is the same movie but in Blu-Ray format (not so long ago I bought a combo set of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., speaking of strange movies…!). Anyway, I used the Buy It Now option to purchase the set straight away, which duly arrived in absolutely mint condition on 25 July, and later that same day I played the DVD.

Before I go any further, however, let me say in all seriousness that if you are an ophiophobe, you definitely do NOT want to watch Sssssss, truly! (Indeed, you may not even want to continue reading this review.)

A king cobra (© Dr Anand Titus & Geeta N Pereira/Michael Allen Smith/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

Its story begins with 'eccentric' (i.e. loony as a jay bird) herpetologist Dr Carl Stoner (played by Strother Martin) selling a large mysterious creature concealed inside a sealed wooden crate to a local carnival/freakshow owner in the dead of night. The unseen creature whimpers piteously, and Stoner refers to it as one of his failures. The scene then moves to a local college when Stoner is seeking a grant to finance certain unspecified herpetological research but seemingly involving snakes and venom. He is also seeking a male student to assist him in his researches, based in his own laboratory-containing house, because his previous student assistant, Tim, had supposedly departed to attend to a sick relative and never came back.

Up steps David (a youthful Dirk Benedict, the only famous name in this movie), who discovers that dealing with some very dangerous, venomous serpents (including black mambas and a huge, imperious king cobra that Stoner treats with unmitigated reverence, as well as sizeable pythons) has its compensations. This is because by working at Stoner's home where the snakes are kept, he also gets to spend time with, and becomes very close to, Stoner's beautiful daughter Kristina (Heather Menzies), who shares her father's passion for these reptiles.

So far, so (relatively) normal, but then it all goes very abnormal, or at least an unsuspecting David does, thanks to the series of mysterious injections that Stoner insists upon giving to him, claiming that they are necessary to render him immune to cobra venom. At first, they simply make David very tired and prone to strange hallucinations while asleep, but as the days pass he notices subtle changes to his face, and his skin begins to exhibit an alarming tendency to peel off, but with a new, fully-formed layer underneath. His body temperature also feels much cooler than normal. Stoner, however, assures him that these are merely harmless, temporary side-effects to the injections.

One evening, David and Kristina visit the carnival, where David goes inside a special exhibition tent to view a freak creature dubbed the Snake Man. David expects to see an obvious fake, but instead he is startled to find an extraordinary partially-limbless entity covered in pallid scales but with a somewhat humanoid head and face, and bright blue eyes. Back at the house, Stoner is surreptitiously tape-recording his own descriptions of the effects that the injections are having upon David, ending by stating that the changes will soon accelerate and become cataclysmic – which indeed they do. This induces Stoner to take some very drastic steps to ensure that news of what he is doing does not leak out, not only to the outside world but also to Kristina, who has no notion of her father's crazy scheme and what he is doing to David. The movie's scriptwriters cleverly bestowed the Kristina character with very poor vision when not wearing her glasses, in order to make more credible her ignorance of the deadly proceedings unfolding before her.

SPOILER ALERT: I don't want to reveal too much as to how this surreal plot plays out in its climactic and highly dramatic denouement, featuring what is quite possibly the most unexpected end scene that I've ever encountered in a movie, but here are two major hints – read no further if you don't want to know what they are.

A South American tayra, inexplicably standing in for a mongoose in Sssssss (© Bob Johnson/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

Finally beginning to suspect that her father may not be telling her everything concerning his researches (ain't that the truth!!), on a hunch Kristina visits the carnival one evening after closing time, and sneaks into the tent containing the Snake Man, which she views in absolute horror before fleeing in blind panic. If I say that Stoner's previous, gone-missing assistant Tim had bright blue eyes, you can work out the rest, I'm sure…

Ditto if I say that Stoner fervently believes that if humanity is to survive into the future, it must evolve, transform, and he considers that of all creatures the king cobra would be ideally able to live very successfully in a future world where humanity could not. So if I were David, I wouldn't purchase any new jeans, shoes, long-sleeved shirts, or gloves any time soon!

All in all, Sssssss boasts a totally preposterous plot, but in a sense it is so extravagantly 'out there' that it actually makes for interesting viewing. And as this movie reveals in an announcement at its beginning, the king cobras and pythons used in it are indeed real and very much alive, not fakes or the products of photographic trickery, so some highly-skilled snake handling can be viewed throughout . Taxonomic verisimilitude concerning the obligatory mongoose – there is usually at least one such creature in any snake-themed movie – conversely, is another matter entirely.

This is because Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's supposed representative in this movie actually appears to be a large black-furred, grey-headed species of South American mustelid known as a tayra (why didn't they simply use a genuine mongoose, as seen in various other movies?). Like I say, however, the king cobras are real, and one scene in which Stoner goes inside a large enclosure into which a king cobra is then released for him to catch and milk its venom while a public crowd watches from a safe distance is quite breathtaking, seeing this biggest of all venomous snake species (up to 19 ft long) rear vertically upwards until its huge head sways at the level of Stoner's chest.

Reiterating what I stated earlier, Sssssss is not a movie for anyone with a fear of snakes, but it is definitely a memorable curio for monster movie aficionados. And here is its decidedly melodramatic official trailer – you have been warned!

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The Snake Man carnival exhibit, as seen in Sssssss (© Bernard L. Kowalski/Daniel C. Striepeke/Universal Pictures - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)