Saturday, December 24, 2011

My Take: The Serpent and the Rainbow

       Again I am kicking back on a friends couch . We have watched several movies today . None worth writing about . So I decided to change the pace and watch "The serpent and the Rainbow" . My right hand is killing me ,I think that there is a cold front coming through . So in we settle to watch.
      The Serpent and the Rainbow was released in 1988. It was based on a book of the same name by ethnologist Wade Davis.  The film ,like the book relate Davis's experiences in Hatti investigating Clairvius Narcisse a man who was poisoned then released from his grave. He was purportedly given a herbal brew which made him into a zombie.
       It turns out that this poison was real after all . Tetrodotoxin to be exact . It is blown into the victims face causing a deathlike pallor. There is a whole cult of these people who eat glass and are not cut .Jam rods through thier bodies and feel no pain and do not bleed ,chew coals from a fire and are not burned . Says alot for mind over matter. At one point during this party the bad guy decides to bang his spoon on a glass and for some reason it makes the demon possessed people very angry and they become violent. I do not understand voodoo at all.  Anyway this is getting more into a report on the whole zombie phenomena , real zombies that is, as opposed to the brain eating Romero  brand. The movie has voodoo ,suspense , a fainting goat . A dude gets his balls nailed to a chair. Same guy gets buried alive ,turned into a zombie and with the help of a spirit guide in the form of a jaguar ,defeats his enemies and escapes with his life. In reality the drug has been a boon to the medical field . While an excellent film I wouldn't want to see this again for another 10 years or so.  

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