The Snake Woman, 1961.
Directed by Sidney J. Furie.
Starring John McCarthy, Susan Travers, Arnold Marlé, Geoffrey Denton, John Cazabon, Frances Bennett, Elsie Wagstaff, Dorothy Frere.
SYNOPSIS:
While investigating unusual snakebite deaths in a rural village, a Victorian Scotland Yarder charms a cold-bloodied beauty.
Released as part of Hammer’s Hammer Presents… line of British horror movies, The Snake Woman is a very odd one indeed. The movie begins in Bellingham, Northumbria with pregnant Martha Adderson (Dorothy Frere) being injected with snake venom by her herpetologist husband Dr. Horace Adderson (John Cazabon), because he believes that is the only way to keep her mental illness at bay.
When Martha dies giving birth, the village midwife and alleged witch (of course) Aggie Harker (Elsie Wagstaff) declares the baby to be the daughter of Satan as it is cold to the touch and does not blink, and so the villagers take this as a rallying cry to burn Adderson’s lab and house down. However, before they arrived with their flaming torches Adderson managed to get the baby away with the help of Dr. Murton (Arnold Marlé), who delivered the baby and is about to leave for Africa.
19 years later, Murton returns to discover the locals of Bellingham believe their village to be under the curse of a snake woman who is biting and killing people, as bodies containing cobra venom nave been discovered. A few phone calls later and Scotland Yard detective Charles Prentice (John McCarthy) is on the case, travelling up to Bellingham and coming across the beautiful Atheris (Susan Travers), who is cold to the touch, does not blink and is very attracted to the tune that Charles plays on his snake charmer’s flute…
Coming in at a lean 68 minutes, The Snake Woman feels like something that Universal would have put out in the 1930s as a B-picture to one of their bigger franchises, and that isn’t really a criticism as far as mood and visuals go as the movie does have the air of an old-fashioned creature feature about it. The trouble is that along with the short running time and economical pacing comes allowances for certain behaviours – such as the flame-carrying locals and their over-willingness to be ignorant of a situation, as well as Adderson’s exclamations that his work is more important than the life of a child – and plot conveniences that are just too dumb to take seriously.
Which is a shame as there are some ideas buried in here that, given more time and a bigger budget, could have been worth exploring, such as the idea of the curse and the midwife whom everyone believes to be a witch (and clearly is), but it is only 68 minutes and over half of that is taken up with the baby’s birth and the escape of Dr. Murton, which makes the introduction of Charles as the ‘hero’ of the piece at nearly 40 minutes in feel a bit like an afterthought, as does the mental illness that we never learn about and what Adderson was researching in the first place.
There is a decent story in there somewhere, but The Snake Woman never really gels into anything other than a silly B-movie with far too many dodgy regional accents, snakes being pulled around with fishing wire and a script that feels like a first draft rushed through because the movie needed to be made. The Blu-ray disc comes with an audio commentary by filmmaker Heidi Honeycutt and film critic Sarah Morgan, which helps to add context, but without it The Snake Woman feels like filler material rather than a serious movie.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Chris Ward
