Customer Reviews

The Killer Snakes/Shaw Bros (Special Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First things first....this is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL transfer of this wild, sexy, creepy crawly film! The print has none of the wear marks that the old Something Weird Video print had, and runs 8 minutes LONGER than that cut! There is something for everyone in this film...provided you have no fear of snakes. On the off side, it would have been nice to have a few more extras apart from the 20 or so minutes of Shaw Brothers trailers and the 30+ minutes of trailers from Image Entertainment's Asian Cinema collecton. I would have liked to see a short video piece about Kuei Chih-Hung, the film's director and Shaw's top horror director. Interviews with Kam Kwok-Leung (aka Kurt Lang) and Li Lin-Lin (Maggie Lee) would have been entertaining as well as giving some idea of how it was to create this film whose original title, SHE SHA SHOU, translated as SNAKE KILLER. But aside from that, this is well worth the money....it is over the top on action, sex, violence and general all-around creepiness.
One last note: The rating at the top of this page by Amazon lists the rating of the film as "R". The box carries the legend "not rated", but the initial release of the film in the US in 1975 by Howard Mahler Distribution (who also released Dario Argento's classic DEEP RED) was rated "X" for the VERY STRONG sexuality...as the scene about 40 minutes into the film will show.

Considering its time of release, it's undoubtedly a classic cult movie. For those who could not stand awesome and disgusting scenes, it's better to avoid viewing it. As the Chinese edition of this movie is not available in Hong Kong, I have no choice but to order a U.S. edition. The director of the movie Kuei Chi Hung is a versatile artist who died in the U.S.A. in the early eighties, a real loss to Hong Kong movie industry.

Killer Snakes is Chinese exploitation flick from the seventies that is exactly what the title implies it is- a movie about killer snakes. This is my first film by the Shaw Bros and won't be my last. This is an ultra-sleazy flick about an outcast who devolops a special bond wit his reptile freinds, and commands them to commit his bloody revenge on all his enemy's. The great thing is that they use REAL snakes in this film!!!!! The amount of snakes and what they get them to do is brilliant in it's own right. There are pleny of scenes of horrible rape, torture, perversion, murder....you know, everything that makes a movie good. I took off half a star for poor lighting and lack of extreme gore, but other than that no complaints. I highly recommend this movie to fans of cinematic sleaze.