Clevercell
Very disappointing...
Dotsthavesp
I wanted to but couldn't!
Jakoba
True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.
BA_Harrison
A voice-over attempts to explain the religion of voodoo to the uninitiated, after which we witness a ritual presided over by a leering midget in sunglasses and a top-hat who sacrifices a real chicken (lopping off the poor bird's head with a machete) in order to raise a woman from the dead.Cue groovy titles.Written and co-directed by Jack Hill, the man behind several hugely entertaining exploitation classics from the '60s and '70s, Snake People certainly has the right ingredients to be a whole lot of schlocky fun: graveyard ceremonies (complete with plastic skeletons), a sexy priestess who gyrates with a snake, zombies, cannibal women, Boris Karloff, a bull-headed French cop who riles the locals, and a beautiful young woman destined to be sacrificed.Unfortunately, Hill only handled Karloff's scenes in L.A., leaving the majority of the film to be directed in Mexico by Juan Ibáñez, who displays little of Hill's movie-making moxie. Ibáñez's direction is lethargic, turning potential exploitation gold into dull, repetitive and occasionally incomprehensible nonsense.Poor old Karloff starred in four of these low budget Mexican/US co-productions during the twilight of his career, but was spared the pain of seeing the end results by popping his clogs before their release.
zee
It is entirely worth watching for the performance of Santanón, a Mexican dwarf actor who is the voodoo priest. Capering about with a maniacal grin, in a top hat and bizarre costume, whipping the dancing girls, invoking Papa Labas (or one of those voodoo gods), his performance is riveting. I kept rewinding the film to watch him. I'm still not sure if it was a good performance, but it was a performance unlike any I've seen before and oddly convincing. The actor seemed to be having a great time with it, and were the whole movie his, it'd be one of my favorite cult films.Unfortunately, there's a bunch of other stuff wasting time in this film, a ridiculous police department plot, a temperance gal and her colonialist uncle (Karloff, forgettable), and too much that's non- voodoo ritual.
Mark Honhorst
Yes, I put poople on purpose. I will admit that I was finishing an "art" project for the first fifteen minutes or so, but even then, when I wasn't really paying attention, I could tell that this was going to be a terrible movie. First off, I'd like to say that I truly feel sorry for Boris and Bela. During their later years, not only did they do awful films, they did films that are considered the worst of all time. That's okay, though. Karloff is barely even in this shipwreck. The dubbing was terrible. I don't even think that was Karloff's real voice. Most everything else was deplorable as well, including a painfully slow pace. I will say this about the film. The odd dream sequence brings the old "Making out with oneself" gag to an entirely different level. Other than that and a few exotic dance scenes,it really has nothing going for it. I haven't been through such cinematic agony since my attempt to watch an uncut version of "Manos the Hands of Fate".
Witchfinder General 666
"La Muerte Viviente" aka. "Isle Of The Living Dead" aka. "Snake People" of 1971, is an extremely trashy and unintentionally hilarious movie, and one of the last movies of the great horror icon Boris Karloff. I have utmost respect for director Jack Hill for movies like his great blaxploitation classic "Coffy" starring Pam Grier. "Snake People", directed by Hill and Juan Ibanez, however, is one of these movies that are so bad they're actually pretty good. I'm a big fan of trashy B-horror flicks, but the only two reasons why I enjoyed "Snake People" were Boris Karloff, who plays a rather small role in this, and the movie's unintentional fun value.The tropical island "Korbai" is reigned by a bizarre voodoo cult. The cult's unholy priests, amongst them a creepy midget and a scary snake dancer, sacrifice beautiful local girls to their occult deity "Damballah". The girls, who volunteer as sacrifices in order to achieve eternal life, are then resurrected from the dead as mindless zombies. Determined to put an end, to these rituals, that are ignored by the local police, Captain Pierre Labesch comes to the island. He asks the islands richest landowner, Carl Van Molder (Boris Karloff) for help. In the meanwhile, Van Molder's niece, who came to the island to fight alcoholism, befriends a local police lieutenant.As a horror movie, "Snake People " fails entirely. As an unintentional comedy, however, it is hilarious. The dialogue is extremely poor (and therefore extremely hilarious) and apart from Karloff, the acting is really bad too. The locations are amateurish, the plot has huge holes and many logical errors. While Captain Labesch, for example, is obviously French, and came to the island sent by 'the government', other law enforcement officers of this government have English names. I laughed a lot when I saw this movie the first time, and I will definitely watch it again. Don't expect any suspense, but watch this as the unintentional comedy it is and entertainment will be guaranteed. 3/10
