Sssssss – 1973
Director
Bernard L. Kowalski

Writers
Hal Dresner (screenplay)
Daniel C. Striepeke (story)

Cast
Strother Martin
Dirk Benedict
Heather Menzies-Urich

Review by Wayne Malin

“Don’t say it–hiss it!”

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.