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Sssssss
Sssssss
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Bernard L. Kowalski
Written by	Hal Dresner; Daniel C. Striepeke
Produced by	Daniel C. Striepeke
Starring	Strother Martin; Dirk Benedict; Heather Menzies;
Cinematography	Gerald Perry Finnerman
Edited by	Robert Watts
Music by	Patrick Williams
Production; company	The Zanuck/Brown Company;
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	July 18, 1973;
Running time	99 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1 million
Box office	$1 million (US/Canada rentals)

Sssssss^[i] is a 1973 American body horror film directed by Bernard L. Kowalski and starring Strother Martin, Dirk Benedict, and Heather Menzies.^[4] Its plot follows a college student who becomes a laboratory assistant to a herpetologist who is covertly developing a serum that can transform human beings into snakes.

The make-up effects were created by John Chambers and Nick Marcellino. It received a nomination for the Best Science Fiction Film award of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films in 1975.

Plot

Dr. Carl Stoner, a herpetologist, sells a mysterious creature in a crate to a carnival owner. He later hires college student David Blake as an assistant, claiming that his previous assistant had left town to attend to a sick relative. Unbeknownst to David or anyone else, Stoner is a delusional man.

Stoner begins David on a course of injections, purportedly as a safeguard against being bitten by a snake in his lab. David's skin slowly starts to change and even peel like a snakeskin. He begins to have strange nightmares and goes into a coma when having dinner with Stoner, not waking up until a few days later. He also begins to lose weight, but Stoner tells him those are side effects from the venom. David begins a romance with Stoner's daughter Kristina, although her father objects and insists that she not have any sexual relations with him.

When David wakes up the next morning, he looks in the mirror and screams in horror. Later, a distraught David is in the lab, where Stoner gives him another injection. Meanwhile, Stoner's suspicious colleague, Dr. Daniels, arrives to inspect the property. Stoner attempts to hide David in a corner, but David gets enough strength to walk to a window, allowing Daniels to see that his face has become green and scaly. Before Daniels can react, Stoner knocks him out and feeds him to a python, and David collapses.

Kristina visits a carnival freak show and is horrified when she sees a bizarre "snake-man", whom she recognizes as Stoner's previous assistant. Distraught, she races back home to save David, who is currently mutating into a king cobra, brought about by Stoner's injections. Stoner is bitten by a real king cobra from his lab and dies, just as David's transformation is complete. Kristina arrives home and finds her father's body with the real cobra next to him. Growing suspicious, the police arrive and shoot the cobra before heading to the lab where a mongoose is attacking David's neck, attempting to kill him. The police do not have a clear shot, and as Kristina screams David's name, the movie ends abruptly, leaving their fates uncertain.

Cast

Strother Martin as Dr. Carl Stoner
Dirk Benedict as David Blake
Heather Menzies as Kristina Stoner
Richard B. Shull as Dr. Ken Daniels
Tim O'Connor as Kogen
Jack Ging as Sheriff Dale Hardison
Kathleen King as Kitty Stewart
Reb Brown as Steve Randall
Ted Grossman as Deputy Morgan Bock
Charles Seel as Old Man (Oh Il-nam)
Ray Ballard as Waggish Tourist
Noble Craig as Tim McGraw, the Snake Man

Production

The film's executive producers were Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who went on to produce Jaws.

Filming

Principal photography of Sssssss took place between November 13, 1972 through early December 1972.^[1] The venomous snakes in the film were not defanged during production. Five king cobras were imported from Thailand for this feature, ranging from 10 to 15 ft in length. They were recently caught in good health from the wild with full venom potency. The "Snake Park" milking scenes were real and meant to mimic what Bill Haast did at his Miami Serpentarium in Florida daily. About one ounce of venom was collected during each take with no harm to the snakes. A different cobra was used for each take. The filming of this part of the movie took most of a day, as the cobras spent most of their time trying to escape the fenced enclosure rather than rising up in the traditional cobra attack mode.^{[citation needed]}

Release

Sssssss was released theatrically in Los Angeles on July 18, 1973.^[1]

Home media

Sssssss remained unreleased on home video in the United States until 1997, when it was issued by MCA Universal.^[5] It also received VHS releases in Japan^[6] and Spain^[7] by CIC Video, under the titles Ssssnake and Sssilbido de Muerte, respectively.

The film made its DVD debut on September 7, 2004, via Universal, who would re-release the film three additional times in 2009, 2011 and 2014. The 2011 release was part of a four-film "Cult Horror Collection", with The Funhouse, Phantasm II and The Serpent and the Rainbow A DVD was also released in Japan on 7 April 2010.^[8]

Sssssss received its first Blu-ray release on April 26, 2016, through Scream Factory, which included new interviews with stars Dirk Benedict and Heather Menzies as bonus features.^[9] It also received a Blu-ray release in Australia on 1 February 2017, via Shock Entertainment.^[10]

Reception

Box office

Sssssss earned $1 million in rentals at the United States box office.^[3]

Critical response

Howard Thompson of The New York Times called the film "a ss-surprise. Were it not for the lurid, starkly flapping windup, this would be recommended in toto as a gripping, quietly imaginative hair-curler. It is the only movie fiction I have ever seen that sustains a scholarly, informative attitude toward the world of snakes. This aspect is fascinating and chilling, as a gentle old venom researcher, Strother Martin, putters around with cobras and pythons in a country lab."^[11] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4, writing, "Even after 40 years of improved film technology, the climactic scene in Sssssss fails to match the drama of that moment when Frankenstein's monster sits up on the table."^[12] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "highly amusing and genuinely creepy," and praised the "spectacular makeup."^[13] Keith Alain of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that an "attractive streak of humour suggests in the early stages that Ssssnake may turn into a macabre little thriller on the lines of The Fly," and lamented that "parody is eventually jettisoned in favour of portentous horror ... The rather disparate and ludicrous plot is not made any smoother by Bernard L. Kowalski's direction, which manages to be lumberingly predictable even in its borrowings (the Freaks-ish sideshow sequences, for example)."^[14] Leonard Maltin gave the film three out of a possible four stars, praising the film's "exceptional" make-up effects.^[15]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 36% based on 11 reviews with an average rating of 4.1/10.^[16]

Accolades

Year	Award / Film Festival	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
1974	3rd Paris International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Film	Best Special Effects	John Chambers, Nick Marcellino	Won^[17]

Notes

^ The film was released as Ssssnake in the United Kingdom and as Mysterious! The Vampire Human Snake in Japan.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c "Sssssss – History". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Archived from the original on 24 August 2023. (Note: Toggle between "History", "Details", and "Credits" tabs for full scope of source.)
^ Weaver 2006, p. 228.
^ ^a ^b "Big Rental Films of 1973". Variety: 60. 9 January 1974.
^ Thompson, Howard (2 August 1973). "The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973) 'Sssssss' and 'Werewolf' Blend Horror". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 11 November 2024.
^ "Sssssss | VHSCollector.com". vhscollector.com.
^ "SSSSSSS – Japanese original Vintage VHS MEGA RARE". eBay.
^ "Sssssss: SILBIDO DE MUERTE (1973) DESCATALOGADA. (Productor de Tiburón)". todocoleccion.net.
^ "【DVD】怪奇！吸血人間スネーク2010/04/07発売". Allcinema.org. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
^ Coffel, Chris (29 February 2016). "Sink Your Fangs Into Scream Factory's 'Sssssss' Blu-ray". Bloody Disgusting. Archived from the original on 11 November 2024.
^ "Sssssss Blu-ray (Australia)". Blu-ray.com. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
^ Thompson, Howard (2 August 1973). "' Sssssss' and 'Werewolf' Blend Horror". The New York Times: 31.
^ Siskel, Gene (9 August 1973). "How bad 'Sssssss' it?". Chicago Tribune. p. 5.
^ Thomas, Kevin (20 July 1973). "'Sssssss,' 'Boy' Fill Chill Bill". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 15.
^ Alain, Keith (November 1973). "Ssssnake". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 40 (478): 232.
^ Maltin et al. 2013, p. 1318.
^ "Sssssss (1973) – Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes.com. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
^ "Le festival international de Paris du film fantastique et de science-fiction". plansamericains.com. Mathilde Beau. 4 December 2018. Retrieved 1 September 2021.

Sources

Maltin, Leonard; Sader, Luke; Carson, Darwyn; Edelman, Rob (2013). Leonard Maltin's 2014 Movie Guide. New York City, New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-451-41810-4.
Weaver, Tom (2006). Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers: Writers, Producers, Directors, Actors, Moguls and Makeup. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-786-42858-8.