31 Horror Movies in 31 Days: Sssssss

Sssssss (1973)
Directed by Bernard Kowalski
Starring Strother Martin, Dirk Benedict, and Heather Mengies


      There are very few movies I have ever seen that made me immediately regret watching.  The title alone should have stopped me, but I thought it could fun and campy.  I was so wrong.  Sssssss fails to deliver anything except disappointment. 

      The story revolves around snake specialist Dr. Carl Stoner (no joke) and his enigmatic experiments with snakes.  After paying a carny to take away his previous assistant in an animal crate, the good doctor goes searching for more grant money and a new assistant at the local university.  There, Stoner picks up David to fill the position and the two return to Stoner’s country home/laboratory.  Stoner and his daughter, Kristina, show David around and spend a great deal of time discussing snakes.  But not everything is right with the Stoner family business.  What happened to the last assistant?  Why does the doctor keep rambling about the biblical roles of snake and man?  What is up with that snake boy at the local carnival?  And why does David feel progressively worse after Dr. Stoner’s mysterious snake serum injections?  Soon enough, David will regret finding these answers. 

      This film is a mistake in nearly every way imaginable.  It looks like the budget went into procuring the snakes, because everything else is lacking.  The sets and locations have the appearance of back lot buildings and reused stages.  The makeup effects are on par with most Halloween costume kits.  Several snake/man hybrids are shown to have the occasional grouping of drawn on scales and body makeup that can only be described as “Faded Christmas Tree Green”.  And during a transformation sequence, a snake man gets progressively more rubbery looking until he is finely replaced with an actual snake.  The most imaginative part of the movie should have come when David has snake venom hallucinations.  Here is the chance to show some real creativity with interpreting the thought process on poison, but instead it is a stock footage montage.  There are sunsets, various human body parts, a Cobra, and many changing colors that form something resembling a cologne advertisement. 

      The actors had to work with some exceptionally terrible dialogue, so no one comes out of this looking like a better performer.  Dirk Benedict tries to play David as naive, but his lines present the character more as borderline mentally deficient.  Heather Mengies is given little more to say than screaming David’s name repeatedly.  Only Strother Martin seems to have the most fun chewing scenery with his role of Dr. Stoner.  He plays Stoner like the lamest Bond villain that never was, savoring his rambling monologues and righteous snake love.  However, the most convincing acting comes from the snakes themselves.  They look ready to bite faces in every shot.  Black Mambas slither with fear for their own lives, Pythons size everyone up for potential meal value, and one particular snake makes for quite a convincing drunk.  The production prided itself on using real poisonous snakes, which makes their performances wonderfully authentic.

      Questionable aesthetic choices plague this production.  There are parts of the film that would include nudity if not for an odd addition.  There are images of twigs and of a lamp shade in place to conveniently cover up bare actors.  It takes little effort to notice that these images move with the camera frame, meaning they were added in post production.  A producer or studio executive saw this movie and probably thought the only way they could make their money back was to remove all the naughty parts and secure a PG rating.  Also, the only genuine fright in all of Sssssss comes from the fact that the snakes are very real and shown to still have fangs.  Snake milking scenes hold true terror once you realize that their venom is not a prop.  The most effective scare of the whole movie comes when a King Cobra is clearly attacking the camera getting its close up.  Try not to feel fear when you realize that some poor cameraman could have died making Sssssss. 

      Snakes make for terrifying film villains.  Mankind’s misuse of science makes for scary scenarios.  But, when Sssssss combines the two, they turn into an unmitigated disaster of a film.  

1 out of 10

31 Horror Movies in 31 Days: Monkey Shines

Monkey Shines (1988)
Directed by George Romero
Starring Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil, and Joyce Van Patten


I hope the logline for this movie was, “Monkey see, Monkey kill”.  It perfectly captures the story of a man in need and his murderous fuzzy friend.  A cross between Fatal Attraction and Misery with a monkey, Monkey Shines takes the concept of a killer helper monkey seriously.  And for the most part, it succeeds.

The hero of the film, Allan, is introduced as a happy and active young man.  During a morning run, our protagonist is hit by a truck.  The accident makes him a quadriplegic and Allan cannot cope with his new condition.  What follows is the continuous downward spiral of Allan’s life.  Allan’s girlfriend is having an affair with his surgeon.  His mother intends to stay and take care of him.  He needs help to perform the simplest of daily activities.  It looks like Allan will never live the life he wanted for himself.

Jeff, a scientist conducting experiments on capuchin monkeys, is Allan’s old friend and roommate.  In his lab at the university they both attend, Jeff creates a brain boosting serum made from human memory cells.  Harassed by the Dean to show some progress in his project, Jeff injects one monkey with an unsafe amount of the smart serum.  He wants to help Allan while continuing his dangerous drug testing, so Jeff decides his subject monkey shall be trained as a helper.

Allan is gifted with Jeff’s brainy monkey, Ella.  With the help of a monkey trainer, Melanie, they teach Ella to assist Allan with everyday tasks.  Allan and Ella become very attached to each other, with their relationship forming the main focus of the story.  Their connection is so strong that Ella begins to know what Allan is thinking.  As Jeff continues the injections, Ella’s mental bond with Allan grows stronger.  She begins to influence him, letting his animalistic side come out.  Allan’s anger becomes Ella’s anger, as she starts to carry out revenge killings for Allan.  When he realizes what Ella is capable of, Allan is already too late to stop her rampage against the people in his life.

The film overall is very well done.  Tension builds as everyday routines are punctuated with disturbing developments in the relationship.  At first Ella dotes on Allan, then she starts fighting his battles, then there is an interspecies kiss, and finally a break up that does not go well.  Romero constructs their relationship to feed into a final confrontation worthy of Hitchcock, but in this case Norman Bates is adorable and furry.  There is a feeling of real danger because the protagonist is physically incapable of escaping this situation.  Even though she’s only a monkey, Ella is in a position to destroy Allan’s life.

While the movie did a lot right, it could not maintain its tone forever.  There is a love scene between Allan and Melanie that delves briefly into camp.  The two decide to get busy in the barn Melanie uses to house her trained monkeys.  It is fairly standard except for the addition of loud monkey screams in the background.  These screams continue to get loader as the scene goes on.  Go ahead and make your own joke about them going at it like animals, someone being quite the animal, etc.  The final scare really does not fit with the rest of the movie.  Two hours of creating a psychological menace and ruthless murder out of a monkey, and the last fright is ripped straight from a well known horror film of a higher caliber.  In case you were wondering, the movie rhymes with shmalien.  While it creates a shocking image, the scene is very out of place with the tense thriller that came before it.  Also, the film just drags after the accident.  Allan adjusting to his new life makes for a pretty slow start.  If twenty minutes got cut from the beginning, it could make for a tighter story.

Monkey Shines made an adorable capuchin into a terrifying, unrelenting avatar for a broken man’s fury.  But it also dropped the ball from time to time and forgot what message it wanted to send.  It is good, but it does not do enough to be great.

7 out of 10