Sometime in the early to mid 90s, there was a badly worn VHS copy of The Serpent and the Rainbow in a sun-faded box at my neighborhood video store. I clearly remember it was on the row closest to the front window, at the absolute bottom of the shelf. I passed it countless times, thinking: “How good can a horror movie be if it has ‘Rainbow’ in the title? Probably some Carebears shit for weenies.” When at last I read the back copy, I wondered how I had lived so long (which was like twelve years at the time) without knowing that Wes Craven had directed a zombie movie with Bill Pullman. Surely it must have been forgotten for good reason, right?
As it turned out, A) it’s not a zombie movie in the Romero sense and B) I’m not sure why the film seems overshadowed even today. Of the thirty or so movies Craven directed, I would rank it in his top three, trailing only Nightmare on Elm Street and perhaps The People Under the Stairs, depending on my mood. (Yes, I really do love The People Under the Stairs. No, I don’t know why.) It’s a remarkably mature horror film for the era, reminding me of Jacob’s Ladder, Angel Heart, and The Ninth Gate. I can’t resist a horror movie with the structure of a detective novel.
Boston anthropologist Dennis Alan (Pullman) is hired by a pharmaceutical company to investigate the credibility of Haitian practices, particularly those that Vodou priests may use to turn the dead into their slaves. The simplified technobabble in the first act is probably the least believable dialogue in the entire film, but long story short: the corporate lackeys have surmised that, through centuries of trial and error, bokors have created a concoction that makes living persons appear dead for some hours before rising from the grave healthy. With dollar signs bouncing in their eyes, they decide that researching such an elixir would revolutionize modern medicine, specifically anesthesiology.
When Dennis arrives in Haiti, the country is fractured as the people there are on the precipice of revolution. As it turns out, the head of the secret police is a bokor by the name of Captain Peytraud (Zakes Mokae). Dennis finds himself in the care of Marielle (Cathy Tyson), a doctor who doesn’t let her cultural convictions conflict with her medical knowledge, and the street-wise Lucien (Paul Winfield) who will help Dennis navigate the country’s dangers. Meanwhile, Captain Peytraud doesn’t want a white foreigner poking around his territory and conjures all manner of terrifying visions to scare Dennis away before graduating to more physical tortures.
This is the first time I’ve seen The Serpent and the Rainbow in a high definition format. The pan-and-scan nature of VHS really didn’t do the film justice, cheapening its sweeping shots of presumably real rituals performed by real locals (there’s a lot of production value in those scenes). It’s not the first time a horror movie has dealt with a non-Romero variety of zombies, but it is perhaps the first time one has done it in a culturally respectful way. Haiti isn’t scary because it’s a foreign country, it’s scary because of the political backdrop and the corruption. Likewise, Dennis is not the white savior with a sophisticated Harvard education, but the guy who needs saving more than anyone else.
Whereas most horror movies lose steam as their ethereal terrors become literal ones, Craven conjures a wonderful finale that employs imagery and gore fitting of his Freddy Krueger films. Yeah, there’s some goofy stuff in there, too (near the end, Peytraud jump-scares the hero in a manner that immediately reminded me of Craven’s Shocker), but overall it’s a good time with an excellent cast of character actors. This is very much a multiple-viewing kind of film.
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