Killer B's on DVD: The Killer Snakes

The Shaw Brothers was a legendary Hong Kong film studio known for its many forays into exploitation cinema. Given the large number of kung fu movies the studio put out, I was surprised to find The Killer Snakes (or She sha shou as it is known in Cantonese) has no martial arts action to speak of, though Bruce Lee's face can be seen on the front page of a newspaper at one point. In fact, this is essentially a Hong Kong set knock off 1971's Willard, with the titular killer snakes subbing for man-eating rodents.

Zhihong, a lifelong lover of snakes, was traumatized as a child when he witnessed his mother having rough sado-masochistic sex. As a young man he lives by himself in a dilapidated dwelling in an urban area of Hong Kong. His is a lonely existence, and the only friends he has are Xiujuan, a young woman who sells toys in a local street market, and the models in the variouis S & M photo spreads taped to his ceiling. Things begin looking up for Zhihong when he gets a new job delivering for a restaurant and Xiujuan agrees to go to a movie with him (a Shaw Brothers production, of course), but things quickly begin to go wrong. Zhihong is robbed while making a delivery and loses his job because his delivery tray is destroyed in the process. Zhihong stands him up for their movie date, though unbeknownst to him it is because she has rushed to the side of her dying father.
The only people Zhihong can rely on are snakes, it seems. A cobra whose gall bladder has been harvested for medicinal purposes by a neighborhood snake salesman crawls into Zhihong's shack looking for help. Our hero has a rapport with snakes, the nature and origin of which is never really explored, but like Willard and his rats, Zhihong and the snakes seem to have an understanding. He nurses the cobra back to health, and tells his new friend "you crawl so fast, I think I'll call you Xiaobiao," a reference that probably means something in Hong Kong but was lost on me. Soon many of Xiaobiao's friends come to Zhihong for help, providing him with several slithery tools of vengeance.

The disclaimer that "no animals were harmed in the making of this film," is absent from the credits and with good reason. While such things are regulated by law here in the States, that was apparently not the case in Hong Kong in the early 1970s, and some of this movie's most gruesome moments feature real snakes being killed and/or mutilated. Also, the manner in which Zhihong takes revenge on a prostitute who belittled him is so shocking that I really can't describe it here. Suffice it to say this is vintage grindhouse era sleaze and is definitely not for everyone. That said, The Killer Snakes is no masterpiece, but it's engaging enough for exploitation fans and an entertaining little time waster.

Image Entertainment presents the film in a pristine widescreen print. The disk can be viewed in Chinese with English subtitles or dubbed into English. In addition to the obvious shortcomings of synching English dialogue with actors speaking Chinese, the quality of the English audio track varies widely, making the Chinese audio with English subtitles option the obvious choice. The disk also contains dozens of trailers for Hong Kong action and exploitation films from the 70s and 80s. Unfortunately, most of these are obviously new trailers made for the films' DVD releases and I missed the over the top salesmanship and scratchy prints that I usually associate with trailers from this period