The Serpent and the Rainbow

Just before the spider starts crawling on Dr.

Dennis Alan's face, you can see the crew member in the left background who placed it there.

At Captain Peytraud's first meeting with Dr.

Alan, Peytraud wears his full Haitan Tonton Macoute uniform including a row of several award ribbons.

All of these ribbons are in fact United States armed forces decorations - clearly visible are the Vietnam Service Medal, Korean Service Medal, Air Force Overseas Ribbon, and the Army Good Conduct Medal.

The necklace Lucien puts on Dennis' neck before he got poisoned changes the positions between shots.

However, in a lower position from back view, higher position from front view.

The movie mistakes the Cane Toad (an amphibian, bufo marinus) with the Sea Toad ("crapeau de mer") which is indeed a puffer fish.

At about the 1:05 mark a computer screen shows the word "specimen" misspelled as "speciman".

The Serpent And The Rainbow is a very impressive film for the most part and is hardly noticeable as a Wes Craven film...that is, until the final 20 minutes or so.

Wes Craven really is kind of a hit or miss director. He made The Serpent and the Rainbow in 1988 at an interesting time of his career after having some success with Nightmare on Elm Street but after the disaster of Deadly Friend.

Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield and Brent Jennings star in Wes Craven's 1988 horror film based on the book. Pullman plays anthropologist, Dennis Alan who is sent to Haiti to find a formula that is able to resurrect the dead.

"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.

This is Craven's finest piece of work, explores the voodoo, black magic almost like a religion, set pieces are great and the music score is haunting! Craven takes a mature step into the world of magic/spirits, with its narrative story telling approach it grips the audience.

Well, it's well done and looks great, but it is not that funny and it's not scary, so what is it?

The story flowed well with the suspense, the antagonist of this film kept it all together with his sinister creepy vibe, this Horror movie is a must have for collectors.

Wes Craven's "The Serpent and the Rainbow" is one of the more original and ambitious horror movies to come out of the '80s. Not only does it seek to reconnect cinematic zombies with their voodoo roots, ala classics like "White Zombie", but it also uses the creation of zombies as a political allegory.

This has always been my favourite Wes Craven but it is not without its problems. The wonderful Haiti/Dominican Republic settings are even more exotic and colourful on the Blu-ray and a real sense of menace is skilfully engineered but there is something rather lacklustre about Cathy Tyson's performance.