THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW
The second Wes Craven film on the list (it easily could have been New Nightmare, but most people I know like that), and possibly the director’s most accomplished film. It’s his most mature, dealing with issues of colonialism, fascism, and religion in a pretty intelligent manner. It’s his most technically impressive, taking a cue from his Nightmare on Elm Street dream sequences, then beating them in mood and atmosphere by at least half. It’s also his scariest, containing one of mainstream filmdom’s best torture sequences(it blows Casino Royale out of the water), performed by one of Craven’s best villains (and yes, this is the Craven that created Freddy Krueger).
I think most people are at least rudimentarily familiar with this film, but for those of you who aren’t: Dennis Alan (played by Bill Pullman) is a Harvard medical scientist who goes to Haiti in search of tetrodotoxin, the substance used for making zombies in voodoo rituals (supposedly, it could make a good anesthetic). When there, he finds that the zombification ritual is actually being used to silence political dissidents, so that they can be servants for the corrupt political regime.
This movie has everything that makes for a good horror movie. It has a lot of atmosphere (the Dominican Republic locations are used very well), a lot of freakish scenes (the snake coming out of the dead bride’s mouth is one of many highlights), and a fantastic villain. And honestly, that’s why I’m picking this movie as the number one. This guy is scary (this guy being Zakes Mokae as Police Chief Dargent Peytraud). Camp Crystal Lake and Elm Street are all well and good, but I’d like to see how Jason and Freddy hold up in a Third World police torture chamber. After Pullman is strapped down to a chair(naked, I might add), demanding to know Peytraud wants, he simply says “I want to hear you scream.” Right after lighting a cigar with a blowtorch. That, my friends, is one bad dude.
That is also the end of the list. I think I was fair (though I might have found a place for Stir of Echoes and The Cell if I remembered in time). I recognize that this list is pretty skewed towards the recent past, but the unfortunate fact is that if movies have made it this far into the DVD age, it’s probably pretty hard to consider them under-rated.
And since I know you’re all dying to tell me: what’d I forget?
