The Snake Woman

One hopes the writer of this one didn’t spend more than a weekend on the script as it’s mainly people sitting and telling us things we already know, then telling us again and again. And that’s a shame because The Snake Woman is filled with so much appealing daftness it’s a pity a better job wasn’t made of it.

Scripted by Orville H. Hampton of The Alligator People (1959) infamy, and over-talky in the dull Scotland Yard investigations, some unique eeriness is lent to the cheap trappings by the opening prelude where Atheris’ shed skin is discovered, and the moment a local ‘witch’ tells the detective to shoot three bullets into a voodoo doll to lift the scaly curse.

Plagued by a pace more sluggish than a serpent in December, The Snake Woman just coils up and lies there for most of its (blessedly brief) 68-minute running time. … Scenes of victims being stalked by a literal snake in the grass offer little suspense, particularly when the “special effects” consist of alternating footage of a live snake with that of a rubber one, with nary a transformation scene in sight.

This is a competent enough B programmer, entertaining in its own way and enjoyable enough to fit into the “cozy horror” subgenre, which seems to have formulated into today’s nostalgia-obsessed culture. Despite its shoestring budget and shoddy quality, The Snake Woman strikes the mood of the more unorthodox Hammer output, although in no way could it be mistaken for a Hammer flick by anyone except the extremely foolish.

An inept shocker from the team that was responsible for Doctor Blood’s Coffin (1961), this film rehearses the motifs that John Gilling later used in the wonderfully weird The Reptile (1966). … Amateurishly directed, the film fails in all departments.