Thursday, October 12, 2017

Sssssss-tupid

The sight of this VHS tape at a recent garage sale brought back memories of one of my childhood Kindertraumas




The premise of the story is pretty lame.  A scientist decides the human race can only survive if it's transformed into a human-snake hybrid. So he begins experimenting on his lab assistants, selling Snakeman 1.0 to a local carnival when it fails to complete transformation. Dirk Benedict, of Battlestar Galactica and A-Team fame, stars as the mad doctor's second hapless (and clueless) victim.

As bad as the storyline is, the effects and makeup...well...make up for its shortcomings. I remember watching "Sssssss" with my brother on a Saturday afternoon and being freaked out by this scene in particular:

Photo courtesy of basementrejects

The sight of the snake-man rolling around helplessly whimpering like a baby left a scarring impression.

Here's the trailer to give you an idea of how bad it is.


Their tag line was "Don't say it, hiss it!" With all those S's, I think a better one would have been "Say it, don't spray it!" It's hard to believe the executive producers of this went on to produce "Jaws" just 2 years later.

The full movie is on Youtube, but it has some added glare to the picture, I guess to trick the Youtube algorithms for detecting copyrighted material.

6 comments:

  1. ohhh, i remember this movie. does every teen go through a b-movie horror phase? i don't remember it being particularly scary or anything, but i also didn't recall dirk benedict being in it, haha. luckily for him he got cast in BSG!

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  2. Funny, I always associate this one with early Sci-Fi Channel. They had a promo for it when they were airing it that just stuck in my head. I should go to YouTube and see if it is there.

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  3. @FrankO: I don't recall being scared by it, mainly freaked out by that man-snake.
    @Joe: It is on Youtube, but it's altered to bypass Youtube copyright security. Pretty unwatchable because of it.

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  4. This movie was groovy! You had to love the 70's with all those wild animal flicks.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, it seems animals were running amok in the '70's. Snakes, Frogs, Worms, Bees, you name it.

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  5. There's another film from that same year that I hope was double-billed at some theatre with this.

    Imagine seeing this on a marquee: Sssssss / Hit!

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