The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

 

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

 

This film, which veers wildly back-and-forth between compelling and stupid, insightful and exploitive, is the work of Director Wes Craven whose career started with a Grind-House Exploitation version of an Art-House hit: “Last House on the Left” (1972) was based on Ingmar Bergman’s’ “Virgin Spring” (1960), and then spent his entire career veering wildly back-and-forth between compelling and stupid, insightful and exploitive. There’s a lot to unpack in this film, so I hope you will tolerate a long introduction before I get to the film itself.

 

I was raised Religious and as I became aware that there is a difference between more Mainstream, Conventional, Religious Faiths and Occultism, I had to ponder, “And what is the difference really?” The best I could come up with is that in Mainstream Religion you may Petition God with prayer, but you can’t assume you can compel the Spirits through Sacrifice and Ritual, in other words, our more conventional God maybe or may not be Indifferent, but at least he doesn’t behave like an easily-bribed City Health Inspector. And yes, I get it, that bright line is more fluid than we Conventionals want to admit, for example, in my own Catholic Faith there was a lot of controversy a few centuries ago concerning the Selling of Indulgences.

 

Another apparent difference is that Occultism, which is generally Polytheistic, seems more open to Dualism, that the Light and the Dark are equally powerful and doctrinally legitimate forces in the Cosmos. That could translate into you worshiping one of the nicer Deities, but your next-door neighbor embraced a nasty one, so though he’s clearly an asshole in your eyes, he is not a Heretic. And yes, I get that much of Catholic and more general Christian doctrine encourages the Heresy of Dualism more than it wants to admit, because our Satan is granted power, but how can that be if Satan is created by God, so doomed to be the Servant of the Omniscient Almighty?

 

Problems with my perceptions so stated, I doubt few would deny Voodoo is an Occultist faith and Catholicism isn’t. Voodoo is also Syncretic, meaning that it adapted the Polytheistic Faiths of sub-Saharan Africa to the context of the new Faith that Black Slaves encountered in the New World, so in Voodoo more conventional Catholic Saints became stand-ins for older Gods.  

 

Notable about almost all popular media concerning Voodoo is the disinterest in addressing it as a Community of Faith, we in the West seem to understand Voodoo in terms of its most explicit (and corrupt) Occultism, ignoring that children are raised within it and its membership is as co-operative as any other group out there that have both shared loyalties and challenges. Whether you know it or not, everything you know about Voodoo probably comes from a highly entertaining, wildly sensationalistic, rarely accurate, but definitely Racist, investigation of it by World-Traveler and admitted Cannibal, William Seabrook, in his classic alleged non-fiction, “The Magic Island” (1929) which introduced the Western World to Haitian Voodoo and the concept of Zombies.

 

Great novelist Zora Neale Hurston, who many forget was trained as an Anthropologist, found Seabrook’s sensationalism offensive, and wrote two books about Voodoo in the 1930s that are credited as being insightful and compassionate, but even she recognized the power of the Zombie in Voodoo Culture. She also reported that she had encountered Zombies for real, and hypothesized about how such things could actually be. Hurston is credited as the first to connect Zombification with the neuro-toxin Tetrodotoxin, which has a large handful of therapeutic uses but for about seventy-years following Hurston’s research was better known in popular culture through Pulp Espionage novels where it was used to fake death as a Plot Device.

 

Zombies are a particularly perverse expression of the Voodoo faith, and those who allegedly create them are considered Villains, because Zombification is a form of Enslavement. Haiti has a notoriously unhappy history, but key to this people’s pride is that they stand as the first Republic in the history of the world founded with the concept that all persons were, by definition, Free (the nation was born of a Slave revolt that ultimately succeeded in 1804). Zombies are a perversion of that, so Dark Magic indeed.

 

Jump forward in time and we have the publication of the non-fiction book, “The Serpent and the Rainbow” by Anthropologist and Ethnobotanist Wade Davis (1895), in it he detailed his own research trying to establish if Zombies were real, what drugs were used, and if these drugs could improve survival rates for those put under anesthesia during surgery. Davis was focused on the case of Clairvius Narcisse, the best documented of all stories of Zombification, and an unusual one, as Narcisse retained the power of speech, so he might not have been quite as much under the thrall of the Bokor (the word for a Voodoo priest practicing Dark Magic) as other Victims. It should be pointed out that Narcisse died (or died again, so really dead) long before Davis visited Haiti.

 

Davis’ hypothesis was Tetrodotoxin was likely combined with other Neurotoxins to create the appearance of Death and Resurrection, while the power of social censure and a second set of drugs, probably including extracts from a plant called Datura, were utilized by the Bokor over his Victim and maintain the Enslavement.

 

Davis’s work has been criticized other Scientists and the samples he provided for study in the USA failed to provide any helpful compounds. Never-the-less, the book was a best-seller and he earned admiration in Haiti for his thoughtful examination of the Faith; even his critics acknowledged he provided the most logical (if unproven) explanation of Zombification.

 

Hollywood wanted Davis’ book, and it was a given the film version would be inevitably a fiction (the screenplay was ultimately penned by Richard Maxwell and Adam Rodman). Davis agreed, but only if Peter Weir directed and Mel Gibson starred; Davis was clearly worried his work would be turned into an Exploitation film and was impressed with Weir and Gibson’s film “The Mosquito Coast” (1986), which shared some of the book’s themes.

 

Davis got neither of the things he wanted, but his fear of an Exploitation film was not realized, or at least not mostly.

 

OK, now go to Google and type in “best movies about Voodoo.” Only horror films come up, and generally very exploitive ones. This is remarkable because as you’d think the Voodoo community would produce some of their own media. Well, they have, but that stuff is too obscure for the Google algorithm. Also, why are there no thoughtful documentaries? Well, again, they do exist, but are too obscure for Google. Now dig deeper, find a website that is created by an actual Voodoo practitioner that talks about movies. Guess what? More Horror movies, but not only Horror movies, there are a couple family dramas thrown in.

 

I’m pretty sure that “Serpent and the Rainbow,” as problematic as it is, represents one of the only times in Hollywood history that Voodoo has been the center of the film and the results were not explicitly Racist and/or asinine. I, myself, can think of only two, the Horror film “I Walked with a Zombie” (1943) and Family Drama “Eve’s Bayou” (1997).

 

I have no idea how hard Wes Craven lobbied for this film, but it must’ve been epic. Trapped in the Horror Ghetto and clearly wanting legitimacy (this was obvious even in his vile Exploitation film “Last House on the Left”) he committed to this project an eye, a sensitivity, and an intelligence that was only limitedly delivered in his prior work. This is most obvious in the first scenes of this film serving as a double-introduction. In one, there’s a complex and dynamic crowd scene, people trying to engage in solemn ritual but are interrupted by thugs who had their own rituals. This film is, at its best, about how living under a Political Oppression defines all aspects of your life and, at its worst, an overly simplistic cliché about Light vs Dark Magic. These opening scenes set up both.

 

This film is a fiction, piggy-backing a non-fiction, but one must acknowledge that the film-makers played by the rules. It uses the phrase “inspired by” instead of “based on” and changed the names of the players, because the players in the film never actually existed. Wade Davis becomes Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) and Clairvius Narcisse becomes Christophe Durand (Conrad Roberts) who in the film isn’t dead, or at least not really dead. Dennis arrives in Haiti in 1986, so long after Davis did, and in fact after Davis published his book; the year chosen for the fictional version had a huge impact on how the story unfolds.

  

Pullman’s casting in the lead proves equal parts problematic and perfect. A fine actor, but only known for comedy at the time, and he shows restraint in his performance that surprised many. This is vital to the film because had there been more chest-thumping indulgence in the “White Savior” trope things would’ve gotten very embarrassing very quickly. The film’s emotional focus needed to be on the Haitians, not the Tourist. On the other hand, perhaps Pullman went too far, maybe he took his Indiana-Jones-type character and made him bland.

 

The rest of the cast is marvelous (note: the films lead black Characters are not played by Haitians, but actors born in USA, England and South Africa).

 

Marielle Duchamp (Cathy Tyson) runs a local clinic and is Dennis’ contact with the Voodoo world. She has one foot in Science and one foot in the Occult, and though the film avoids long expository dumps, her dialogue explains the blurry line between the equally worshipped Christianity and Occultism, “Haiti is 85% Catholic and 110% Voodoo.” There’s also something compelling in the ease in which this seemingly rational Character slips into trancelike state, or as another Character observers, “She was born to be possessed.” These are her sexist scenes, and though not treated as Dark Magic they lay the groundwork for where the Evil Bokor draws his power from.

 

Marielle connects Dennis with Lucien Celine (Paul Winfield) a charismatic and influential Houngan (a Light Magic Voodoo priest), maybe a Mafia Don, and maybe a few more things too. Interestingly, it is the Doctor, Marielle, who introduces Dennis to the Religion, but the Priest, Lucien, introduces Dennis to the Politics. Lucien gives Dennis a lot of good advice about how not to get into trouble in this Tyranny, advice which Dennis blithely ignores.

 

Marielle also helps Dennis find Christophe, the only Zombie we meet during the film, who has partially freed himself from the trawl of the bokor, but is Social Pariah none-the-less, and hiding in graveyards at night. The part is small, but key to the story, and Actor Roberts is haunting in the role.

 

Though there is only one zombie, there are two (or maybe one-and-a-half) Bokors. The first is Louis Mozart (Brent Jennings). Definitely a conman, but potentially someone as real power and secret knowledge, he engages in an entertaining cat-and-mouse with Dennis over gaining possession of some Zombie powder. He’s the film’s most entertaining character, and charismatic Actor Jennings doesn’t treat him as comic relief, but plays to Louis’ complex aspirations instead.

 

The other Bokor is undeniably the real deal, and very bad news, Dargent Peytraud (Zakes Mokae). In addition to being a powerful Practitioner of Dark Magic, he is also a commander in the Tonton Macoute, the much feared and despised Secret Police of Hati’s Duavlier regimes (the group was real, and took their name from a Bogey-Man of Haitian folk-lore). Actor Mokae creates a terrifying Villain, his serpent-like faux-friendliness exudes not only menace, but total confidence. He has a real flair for sarcasm, like when he describes the Haitians as, ''Happy, happy, happy, island people.''

 

I’ve always liked Mokae’s work. He is sinister looking, but has mostly avoided Villain roles. This probably gave him, in the long run, a more respectable career, but it’s also a shame, because he’s effortlessly scary, like a Boris Karloff or Vincent Price, and in most Genre cinema, aren’t the Villains the most fun?

 

 

In the film version, though Tetrodotoxin and other nasty, traditional ingredients, are central to the plot, the extracts of the Datura plant never come up, because this film is solidly a Supernatural Thriller, and though the Death and Resurrection is given a scientific rational, there’s a plenty of other Magic going on. Dargent steals Souls and keeps them in jars. He’s pretty smug about it, and tortures those he’s imprisoned by Magic with the same gleeful Sadism as he does those he’s imprisoned with handcuffs.

 

I don’t know enough about Voodoo to fully judge the film’s accuracy, but for most of its running time, it is utterly convincing. Voodoo is first and foremost treated as a Religion and a way of life, the Dark Magic is something that Character Dennis has to dig to find, and as he does, the visual texture enthralls. Wrote Critic Roger Ebert, “There's never the sense of sets, of costumes, of hired extras, but more of a feeling of a camera moving past real people in real places.” Craven’s best films have an exquisite sense-of-place, but most (both good and bad) were set in bland suburbs or heavily set-bound. He was always more fun when the are set in less-familiar locals, like the desert in “The Hills Have Eyes” (1977). This movie tops all of Craven’s other efforts in this respect, so Cinematographer John Lindley deserves special credit here.

 

The film unfolds during the last months of Baby Doc Duavlier’s rule and climaxes the night he fled into exile. It’s interested in the consequences of oppression; it never addresses the Ideology of the Oppressor nor introduces any of the Opposition activists or fighters (though strongly hinted that Character Lucien is a Revolutionary). For sure, this helped keep the plot focused, but it also over-simplified. Haiti shares the same island as the Dominican Republic, and there’s a couple points in the film that if Character Dennis had simply remembered that, he could’ve continued his Investigations in a much safer manner.

 

There’s an irony in this, because the film was made 1987, the year after Duavlier’s fall, and most outsiders viewed it as a joyous, optimistic, time in the generally troubled nation. Actually, no. The film crew, working in Haiti, had to retreat to the Dominican Republic (just like Dennis should’ve) when the real-world unrest became too threatening.

 

Craven’s greatest film success up-to-this point was “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984) which, even as “The Serpent and …”  was made, “A Nightmare on …” was fast becoming among the most successful franchises in Horror-film history. As the film progresses, Craven again displays his “A Nightmare on …” skills, deliberately playing on our fears of not knowing what is real and what’s a dream, and jarring us with Surrealistic imagery. This is obviously his comfort zone, but unfortunately is ultimately the downfall of the film.

 

The tag line of the movie poster was, ''Don't bury me . . . I'm not dead!'' That is a line of dialogue from the film from a sequence of scenes where Character Dennis finds himself seemingly hopelessly trapped by Dargent, setting up the climax. It is also the last really good sequence of scenes in the film.

 

After Dennis escapes, he confronts Dargent who unleashes all the forces of Dark Magic on our Hero and, well, it’s stupid. This impressive and original film becomes a cheap-knock-off of “A Nightmare on …” and seemingly one made by a lesser Director. Reportedly, the ending was a nightmare to write, and at least six-versions were considered, but this bad one was the one we got.

 

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNRnOcW5yqs