Killer Snakes (1975)

This isn’t at all what I expected when I sat down to watch a Shaw Brothers flick.  Instead of the normal Kung Fu epic I ended up with a very sleazy and strange movie with a twisted guy that only his snakes could like.  Well there is a girl, but I’ll get to that later.  From the beginning of the movie we see that Keto has had a hard life.  His mother was into some kinky stuff, which she didn’t hide well from him.  So by the time he is a grown up he has some very strange ideas and “performance” issues.  Keto’s only joy in life is pining away for Maggie.  But when she stands him up for their date (for a good reason) he kind of looses it.  It also doesn’t help that some local bullies steal his money and cost him his job.  When the snakes from the shop next to his shack escape and befriend Keto things start to get weird. 

Maybe weird isn’t the right word for it.  I’m thinking twisted works much better.  The story starts off pretty straight forward and looks like Keto is going to get his revenge with his snake friends helping him.  But instead of an angry, but sympathetic character, Keto goes way crazy.  There is one particular scene where he gets his hands on a local prostitute that has been humiliating him and gets rather nasty with her.  It seems that Keto can only enjoy himself by causing some pain and boy does he!  Later on even with a willing participant it still doesn’t end well for the girl.  I have to say that I never expected this level of sleaze and violence (not Kung Fu related anyway) from a Shaw Brothers movie.  It really does deliver the goods here.

But the movie does have some issues as well.  First up I’m thinking that maybe the filmmakers weren’t really sure what to do with the movie.  After establishing the characters the movie wastes little time getting to the killings and torture.  The problem is that those scenes linger until they get uncomfortable and eventually sort of boring.  This robs the movie of much of the shock value.  It just goes on and on.  Hell even though the movie is called Killer Snakes out of nowhere Keto has a couple of Killer Lizards that they never really explain.  Additionally the movie isn’t just dark in tone and subject, but is also just really dark.  There are long sections of the movie that are so damn dark that I couldn’t tell what I was watching.  Now to be fair this might just be my copy, but that is all I have to judge the movie on. 

In spite of these flaws I would still say that Killer Snakes is something that fans of the exploitation and drive-in scene should really check out.  It is very twisted and entertaining at times.  Plus it does boast one “Did they just do that?” moment that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon (though it is hinted at and nothing is shown on screen…).  To be honest if the lighting and editing was just a bit better this movie could have been legendary.  As it is I still recommend everyone watch it at least once. 

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2010 John Shatzer