The Killer Snakes (1974)

"The Killer Snakes" is a pretty damn demented HK gross-out feature about a young man who's a bit of a social outcast. He gets bullied and beaten up by everyone, he has perverted hallucinations reverting back to the S&M games he heard his mother play when he was a kid and he appears to have a special connection with snakes. He operates on them and then subsequently keeps them around his ramshackle flat as his sole friends. When thugs steal the money from his delivery boy job and his girlfriend doesn't show up during their first date (although he doesn't know it's because her father died that same night), he goes berserk and instructs his cobras to bite the ones who wronged him. This definitely isn't a movie for the squeamish and/or the easily offended! "The Killer Snakes" contains a whole lot of sleaze, animal cruelty, sexually disturbing imagery, violence against women, perversion, torture-porn and depravity. It's a really questionable fetish-film from the Shaw Bros' stable. As soon as I witnessed the infamous and downright sickening snake penetration sequence, it became all too clear to me that this movie is merely just out to present the biggest amount of exploitative imagery ever. If you like that sort of junk, be my guest. To me, it was just a waste of a potentially interesting animal-horror script. "Jennifer" and "Stanley" are two American movies from the same period, equally dealing with adolescent weirdos extracting their revenge through domesticated snakes. Those films are perhaps slightly less memorable, but at least they're tasteful.

The Killer Snakes is definitely a step above your typical mid-1970s animal horror film, combining the threat of venomous snakes with a grim tale of alienation in an urban environment. All the sexual frustration and sleaze that was implied in films like Willard and Stanley comes to the fore here.The film focuses on a young man suffering from psycho-sexual scars stemming from witnessing his mother engaging in sadomasochistic activity as a child. He is constantly tormented by street thugs and prostitutes. Unfortunately, the man also has the ability to communicate psychically with snakes, which he ultimately uses to punish those who have offended him, particularly women.Many viewers will find this film difficult to watch. It features extremely graphic, sexual violence against women, as well as actual scenes of snakes being mutilated. Nevertheless, if you like extreme horror, this is definitely a film for you.

Now this is what I like, a very very well made Shaw Brothers movie, that pulls all the stops out in this sub-genre of snake horror/thriller movies. This is by far the best deadly snake movie I have ever seen. The plot, "A young man who has been beaten, abused, humiliated and laughed at all his life finds that he has an unusual empathy with snakes. He can talk to them and they understand him, and eventually he finds that he can get them to do his bidding. He decides to use his newfound friends to take his revenge on everyone who ever did him wrong." The young man is not a hero at all, in fact, he's probably worse than the people he takes revenge on. Very well made horror movie, with some great nudity to say the least, and plenty of sex and violence. When there is no snake attacks going on, which are great, there is usually a naked girl or two, so there is no way you can go wrong with this one. Yes, this is extreme Asian cinema, and I love it. The whole movie is sleazy as hell, but done with a huge amount of quality film-making. I highly recommend this movie to fans of Asian cinema especially, and to all horror fans. It's a dandy to say the least.

This seventies Hong Kong import is about as unpleasant as it gets. An unsanitary, screwed up uber loser befriends some snakes to get back at everyone; for Everyone is mean, stupid and cruel in this film. Except his virginal girlfriend of course, and well, don't ask.I thought it was interesting that you are never really sure if this guy has trained the snakes, or if they just feel sorry for this miserable soul. At any rate, when he's not using live snakes to rape his tied up whores, he is not above zapping them with a Kamoto dragon. It's a fun filled frolic for the whole family! Some of the trained Cobras are impressive to watch. The letterboxed print from "Something Weird" is awful, blotched and stained all the way through. If you want to see this, however, you better go for it, I don't think Criterion will get to this one for awhile.