S if for Sssssss

There are two kinds of creatures I loathe: Spiders and snakes. That may be based largely on irrational fear, but not entirely: The area of the USA where I grew up had a potentially lethal venomous spider (plus another that could be) and two species of potentially deadly snakes, along with many species of both that scientists call “harmless” (because they’re not frightened of them).

So, given my wariness, it might seem strange that I’d even consider watching movies with either as the main, um, creature, but I also used to love horror movies and, well, such movies came with the territory. For most such movies, it would be a huge compliment to call them “B Grade”, because they’re usually more laughable than scary. Sometimes, they’re a bit more, too, and the 1973 movie Sssssss is one such.

Let’s me be clear: Sssssss is an incredibly bad movie, but there were some redeeming features. The plotline, which I’ve adapted from the movies’ IMDB listing, is this:

David Blake (Dirk Benedict), a college student, is looking for a job. He is hired by Dr. Carl Stoner (Strother Martin) as a lab assistant for his research and experiments on snakes. David also begins to fall for Stoner's young daughter, Kristina (Heather Menzies). However, the good doctor has secretly brewed up a serum that can transform any man into a King Cobra snake—and he plans to use it on David.

If you said it sounds stupid, well, as we say in New Zealand, “you’re not wrong, mate.” However, the performances are actually pretty solid, even considering it’s a 1970s horror flick, and the make-up effects as David is transformed into a snake were pretty advanced for the time, way before CGI effects were possible.

On the other hand, the cobras used were real (apart from one scene), as was a python. At the time I saw it (when it was new), I preferred to believe they weren’t.

The movie was too silly to have any effect on my fear of snakes (in fact, I seem to remember 14-year-old me referring to the movie as “Ssssssshit”); the plot was just too stupid to be believable. I laughed at the much more recent Anaconda for similar reasons (for starters, nothing that big could move that fast).

All of which goes to show that it’s possible to watch a movie and suspend disbelief even about things that may terrify us in real life. I suppose the unintentional comedy value of movies like Sssssss help that.

And as for spiders and snakes in real life, well, I now live in a country with no snakes and only one species of potentially lethal spider, the Katipo, but one that hardly anyone’s actually seen one, let alone been killed.

They still scare me, though; Sssssss didn’t.

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