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39 comments in total

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9 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
"1,000 dollars to the person who can prove that the snake-man is not real!", 5 January 2005

Author: Scott LeBrun from Winnipeg, Canada

Dr. Stoner (Strother Martin), a prominent herpetologist, seems like a very nice, benevolent old gentleman, but he's really just your old-fashioned mad scientist.

He hires a student named David (Dirk Benedict) supposedly for the purpose of research assistance, but David has in fact been selected to be the test subject for a revolutionary serum.

99-minute horror film that is actually rather serene until the effects of the serum on David go into overdrive. Once this starts, the film gets harrowing and one could get very sympathetic to David's plight.

There are no real scares in "SSSSSSS" (you don't say it, you hiss it) but it has a certain something. I know I appreciated its subtlety, even though some may find it simply boring. The highlight has to be the makeup effects by John Chambers (the man behind the special makeup design of the "Planet of the Apes" series) and Nick Marcellino, and the final transformation scene.

Performances are good, especially Strother Martin, who really does deserve more than just to be known as the "what we've got here is failure to communicate" guy from "Cool Hand Luke". He does a great job of masking Stoner's insanity behind a veil of friendliness.

However, I can see why some viewers may feel cheated by the ending.

Not VERY good but a better-than-usual horror film for me.

6/10

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the greatest horror films for a group of kids on a Saturday night, 20 June 2001
Author: richard.fuller1

We saw it back then in the seventies and were promptly scared to death by it. Set up like a mystery, you don't know what is in the back of the truck at the beginning and the gawking at the carnival freaks was pretty chilling too. Reb Brown's fate and his treatment of the pet snake were both something that made us sit up and take notice. And then there was the nosy neighbor/professor person and his destiny. The snake-handling looked very professional. Then I saw it years later. The daughter's shrieking and weeping could set your teeth on edge, the concealed nude swim scene is pretty amusing now with cartoon leaves, Benedict is completely naive and if you have no idea what to expect, you may even be rooting for him. Strother Martin was very believable as the mad doctor up to his confrontation with "Royalty". My brother said the hysterical daughter went on to pose for Playboy.

Hated her very seventies hairdo.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
The film with the funnest name to say--, 5 August 2006

Author: CannibalSadist666 from Hell

This is an entertaining 70s cheeze-fest about a snake researcher who hires a college student as his assistant. His plan is to successfully turn the boy into a King Cobra, an experiment in which he failed at with his last assistant who he ended up selling to a freak show. Obviously, the best part about SSSSSSS is the use of the real poisonous snakes. The scene in which the man tosses a Black Mamba into the shower with a guy is damn funny as well as his duel with the King Cobra. This movie also has one of the most ridiculous names that you can't say without feeling like an idiot. Worth a look if you're into deadly animals.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Sssssss, 24 April 2007

Author: Scarecrow-88 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Doc Stoner(Strother Martin, who most know as the warden in COOL HAND Luke who utters the famous line, "What we got here is a failure to communicate.")who has grown quite mad over the years, injects an innocent, kind-hearted college student, David(Dirk Benedict;Face of A-TEAM fame)with an inoculation that is slowly turning him into a King Cobra. A missing student named Tim, we later find, was a tragic victim of Stoner's experiments in "tampering" with evolution so that civilization would continue after mankind was long past(..he's paranoid with the fact that mankind, as we know it, is certainly on the verge of collapse and extinction which fuels his obsessions with his work). What Stoner doesn't expect is that his daughter/assistant Kristina(Heather Menzies of PIRANHA fame)and David fall in love. Stoner, however, has grown diabolical and will kill one male behind the death of his pet snake and another quack doctor/professor, behind the school's granting him the annual grant that keeps his career going, who understands what he's up to regarding David, becoming lunch to his pet boa.

Disturbing slow burning horror film works because we sympathize with David's eventual plight. He has no clue, at first, what the doctor is injecting him with. Also still, we witness David and Kristina's growing love for one another. But, the true terror is seeing poor David's agony and transformation as his insides and bone structure begin to shift. The make-up effects work well enough even if they are a bit hokey by today's standards. This film works more off the viewer's sympathies for the victim and what horrific lengths Stoner goes to see his work accomplished.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Clever Title, but it hurt Box Office, 16 June 2004
Author: g_man07302 from Hoboken, NJ

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Originally this was titled SSSSNAKE, but someone in Universal's publicity department thought SSSSSSS was clever. So the name was changed, and the movie did poorly in the theaters. In 1976, NBC acquired the rights to this film, and it became a sort of cult movie, growing stronger as VHS in 1997 and DVD in 2004 added fuel to the fire.

This is basically your standard mad-doctor film. Strother Martin plays Dr Stoner, who believes man is doomed as a species. He wants to speed up man's evolution, and since the King Cobra is the deadliest creature on the planet, he wants man to evolve into the King. So he finds a college student to act as his assistant, and injects him with cobra venom (the student thinks the serum is an inoculation against snake bites).

SPOILER ALERT ***** SPOILER ALERT **** SPOLIER ALERT ****

For those of you you have seen the film, you know that the film ends on a freeze frame of Heather Menzies screaming as the David/Snake is killed by the mongoose. I've always thought this was a weak ending! If this movie is ever remade (as everything is these days), I hope the producers would consider this ending:

Heather grabs the policeman's gun and shoots the mongoose. She saves David/Snake. Now that her father's dead, she runs the show on Sundays. She begins the show by saying: "The King Cobra is the deadliest creature on the planet. But I have a very special Cobra here" David slithers out. Heather pets David/Snake on the head. The crowd gasps in surprise. "He is a very special friend of mine".

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Great title, mediocre movie., 2 February 2004

Author: Aaron1375 from Alabama

This movie is a bit of a throwback to 50's science fiction horror. It involves the mad scientist performing crazy experiments. It is rather interesting, but it needed more. Not much happens except the scientist turns his poor assistant into a snake creature. As the movie goes along he slowly changes. I think the scientist's daughter falls in love with the assistant and tries to find out what her dad is up to. I am guessing this movie is really short cause from what I remember; there really wasn't much else to it. Not too many scares and such. The ending is kind of funny though as you find out what a mongoose is best suited for. Somewhat interesting flick that just needed more depth to it. Maybe a killing or two more, anything to spice it up. The movie does have a good title though, very original.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
sssssuperb!, 3 January 2002
Author: ben from Snake Hole, Iowa

After hearing all the hunkydooster about this movie, I wanted to go see it for myself. I came upon "SSSSSSS" at the local video store and rented it. And boy, was I surprised! Fantastic acting and a surprise ending made this the movie to see of 1973! I love snakes and this was just nactupular! I HIGHLY reccomend this movie to all King Cobra lovers and Ickybodies.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Snake-Face!, 15 September 2008

Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls

Like most people of my generation, I only know Dirk Benedict as the Faceman in the cool 80's series "The A-Team", where he used his womanizing skills and good looks (hence the alias) to seduce a new gal in every episode. It's quite interesting to see a much younger Benedict star here as an insecure and heavily bullied student who ends up being the involuntary guinea pig of a cuckoo old scientist with an obsession to turn people into snakes. Why? Because Dr. Stoner – splendid performance by Strother Martin – strongly believes that snakes are the only creatures capable of surviving the inevitable upcoming ecological holocaust, so basically he's doing mankind a favor by transforming us all into snakes! Dr. Stoner lures David to his secluded mansion where he injects gallons of serum into his veins. He tricks David into believing the injections will make him immune to all types of snake bites, but in reality he gradually mutates David into a King Cobra. Problems arise when the crazy doctor's unwary daughter Kristina falls in love with David and when the nearby police force comes to question him about his previous assistant who went missing. "Sssssss" – in fact you have to watch it if only for the unique title alone – is definitely a worthwhile and recommended gem for horror fans, although it's far from great. The plot is indescribably moronic, but simultaneously it's also an admirable throwback to the good old "Mad Scientist" horror movies from the 1940's and 1950's. The mad-scientist plot is actually the best part of the film, since you really witness Dr. Stoner transform from a patient and amiable elderly doctor into an obsessive and fanatic maniac who'll stop at nothing – not even murder – to complete his mission. Too bad the script also features too many dull moments and elements that are completely inappropriate for this type of story, like biblical references and extended hallucination sequences. The ending is also a bit of a letdown as it feels rushed, abrupt and boosts totally gratuitous footage of animal cruelty. The make-up effects are mostly superb – that circus snake man is genuinely creepy – and the cheesy'n'cheap 70's atmosphere is simply irresistible. Sssssssee thissssss film!

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Snakes, the next evolution in humankind, FASCINATING, 29 July 2006

Author: engage2 from N/A

No snakes were harmed during the filming of this movie. The concept was interesting. A brilliant doctor has the formula to help mankind survive the event of the holocaust and other cataclysmic proportions. Think of this, a snake with the intelligence of a human. So the girlfriend of the human test subject, David, witnesses her boyfriend's demise in the freakish predicament of a snake, his precious life ends at the paws of mortality itself, the otherwise innocuous ferret, who, in this case, does not stop to think that the snake he is killing for his next meal might and could just be a human, which the very same species he depends on for his survival.

How could the so-called medical geniuses not have seen it all along, turning humans into snakes to endure the next holocaust? What are my hard earned tax dollars going toward if not funding for the study of human-snake transformation! Idiots!

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
"Don't say it--hiss it!", 28 June 2006

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

Pretty silly horror movie about Dr. Carl Stoner (Strother Martin) who has perfected a drug that turns men into King Cobra snakes. (Yeah--I know it's ridiculous). WHY he wants to do this is never fully explained. He wants to use it on young David Blaine (Dirk Benedict)...but his daughter (Heather Menzies) is falling in love with him.

OK--the story is more than a little silly but this is fairly watchable. They used real snakes in the film (as a statement at the beginning tells us) and just watching them is pretty interesting. The story itself moves pretty quickly and (science aside) is pretty involving. The acting helps--Martin is actually not bad as the doctor; Benedict (so young and handsome) is also pretty good as Blaine and Menzies overdoes it a little (particularly in an argument with Martin) but she's not bad. There's also some fairly impressive (for the time) makeup and special effects. It's OK.

Trivia: Flashes of nudity (mostly from Menzies) are inexplicably "covered up" in the prints now in circulation. Strange--it was OK for a PG in 1973.

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