poe-48833 THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW boasted one of the greatest trailers I've ever seen; the movie, unfortunately, didn't live up to its promise. Bill Pullman in the lead was a big part of what went wrong: his delivery throughout is as dull and monotonous and as lifeless as... a zombie... There ARE a couple of good scenes: the scene where the missing man, Christophe, turns up (...) in a graveyard and the scene where Pullman is buried alive. The Big Finale drags on for far too long and it doesn't help that Craven employs the same type of stunts he used in SWAMP THING (which were not unlike the stunts we saw every single week on THE INCREDIBLE HULK teleshow). For all that, I still think this is the late Wes Craven's best effort.

Uriah43 "Dennis Alan" (Bill Pullman) is an anthropologist who is sent to Haiti to acquire a mysterious drug rumored to cause people to enter into an unconscious state similar to death. However, given the turbulent state of affairs within Haiti it is no easy task for Dennis to get his hands on this drug as violence and corruption are extremely problematic. Another difficulty lies in the fact that he also has to delve deep into the dangerous realm of voodoo in the process. Assisting him in his search for this drug is a pretty Haitian doctor named "Marielle Duchamp" (Cathy Tyson) and a couple of voodoo practitioners by the names of "Lucien Celine" (Paul Winfield) and "Louis Mozart" (Brent Jennings). Unfortunately, another devotee of the black arts, who also happens to be a high-ranking member of the secret police, named "Dargent Peytraud" (Zakes Mokae) jealously guards any and all voodoo secrets with a violent passion. And he doesn't want Dennis poking around. Now, rather than reveal any more of the story and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this turned out to be a rather creepy horror movie which kept my attention from start to finish. I especially liked the way it captured the Haitian people and culture. In any case, I think that those who enjoy movies relating to voodoo and zombies will certainly appreciate this particular film. Above average.

MartinHafer "The Serpent and the Rainbow" is a film that works best if you don't think through the plot but instead just take the movie as it comes. This is because if you think about it, the plot doesn't make a lot of sense---especially the amazingly silly finale. On the positive side, the film has a wonderful sense of creepiness--all brought to you by the guy responsible for the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series, Wes Craven.The film is set in Haiti during the latter part of the Baby Doc Duvalier era. For some completely insane reason, a doctor (Bill Pullman) has been sent to the country by a pharmaceutical company to learn the secret of zombification so that they could possibly use the zombie formula for positive/curative purposes. This really makes no sense at all. What also doesn't make sense is how horrible and dangerous it is there--with all sorts of voodoo, zombies and terror. The ending is amazingly stupid--where some of this terror is really scary and creepy and some of it is hampered by the 1988-style prosthetics which look very fake by today's standards. Still, the creepy factor is an A+ for the film overall. It's not the sort of film I'd usually watch, but for a change of pace, it was pretty good.

ashleybrownmedia Years ago I heard a brief plot summary of this film and thought it sounded a little boring. However, when I finally came to see it earlier this year - I was very surprised. I've not actually read the book, so I won't go into that - although it is on my 'to-read' list.What I liked most about this is the way it plays out as a supernatural adventure, a lot of horror films nowadays are more worried about creatively killing off characters and using snapcuts. But this film builds up a dream-like feeling of dread and sustains it the whole way through, with some truly memorable and disturbing scenes. Although I must say that the battle at the end is a tad over the top, but I'm not cynical enough to let that change my positive review too much.Bill Pullman's lead character is a kind of geekier Indiana Jones, and as much as I say 'geekier' he is still able to scrap with the best of them - he has no hesitation when it comes to smashing someone over the head with a bottle certainly.In short this is a well-worked adventure story with subtle, creeping horror themes running throughout it - put down that slasher film and watch this.