I have a fetish for women's armpits. Gonna just throw that one out there. Besides being a fervent big boob guy (natural, please), I've always enjoyed women's underarms. Don't ask me why, but it goes back as far as I can remember. When a lady shows off her pits in a movie or TV show, it has always stuck in my memory. Two films especially stood out with such. Right in the middle of a sex scene, usually early on, in the first Phantasm as well as Serpent and the Rainbow, the female protagonist in the throes of ecstacy, or sometimes just doffing her upper garment, shows off her armpits. I remember that in my one previous viewing, the female protagonist, a doctor played by Cathy Tyson, lifts her arms to the heavens in ecstacy. Ah, yes, sexy. Saw her lovelies, too. Now, for some reason I remember it being in the middle of a voodoo ritual. Twas not the case. Just lovemaking, the first instance of such between her character and the ethnobotanist/anthropologist Dennis Alan, played by Bill Pullman.
Yes, she had sexy armpits. And boobs.
But despite the scene not being one of voodoo ritual, voodoo ritual is what you get in this film by horror master Wes Craven. Based on a book by the same name published three years earlier, this film shows Pullman's character being drawn to Haiti on consignment by a corporation to obtain a sample of the legendary zombie powder of voodoo legend, on the idea it can revolutionize anesthetic procedures, save lives, and make said corporation a truckload of cash. Even before Alan comes to Haiti, he finds himself pursued by a sense of approaching evil, supernatural menace, though he also apparently finds his spirit animal/guardian, a jaguar.
But off to Haiti he goes, finding a land in turmoil, buried in mysticism, and where the normal laws of science and civilization seem to have a tenuous at best grasp on reality.
I have to admit, watching Craven's ouvre of late, I'm not the biggest fan. His dialogue seems ham fisted, his characters are flat and obvious and the threats are too obvious, they don't play with your mind nearly as much. This is not the case with Serpent.
From the start, there is the question of mind vs. reality, and the intriguing idea that the two aren't nearly as far apart as we like to believe in Western culture. Also, the political instability angle in Haiti was important, though background in the narrative. Alan wasn't just up against "powers and principalities", he was up against a very real flesh and blood threat. And, unlike on the spiritual plane, where Dargent Peytraud, Captain of the Haitian secret police was simply an evil and powerful sunovabitch, in the "real world", he was a hard man doing a tough job in a nation on the verge of coming apart.
Makes the evil a little harder to dissect.
Subtlety not often seen in a horror film, much less a Wes Craven flick. This was a darn good horror film and possibly Craven's best.
No comments:
Post a Comment