Snake People is an hour and a half exercise in jump cuts, cannibalism, midget exploitation, excruciatingly sloppy editing, implied zombie fucking, and, if one views it prior to sundown, narcolepsy. But it is also much more, as it celebrates cultural diversity in the same sense that Dana Perino is a champion of critical thinking.
Jack Hill supposedly co-directed and co-wrote this mess with Juan Ibanez. Released after Boris Karloff's death, it reportedly has combined footage from at least two sources, but the result doesn't give me any inclination to give a shit. On the off chance you're not familiar with Jack Hill, avoid this one and start with Spider Baby or Coffy. You'll thank me later.
Consider the first sentence uttered by the narrator:
During many centuries in various parts of the world, various diabolical rites and ceremonies have been practiced in homage to various sinister gods, who are believed to have many supernatural powers.
Why "many" supernatural powers? Why not "various" supernatural powers? It seems that if you have various gods that have been honored by various rites in various parts of the world, those gods would have a reasonable cross section of the known set of supernatural powers. Given that, it would seem a given that we would be given the opportunity to repeat a given word as many times as possible within a given sentence.
That minor quibble aside, perhaps I'm missing the big picture. After all, if you told me you had a Boris Karloff movie, co-directed by Jack Hill, with a sadistic midget who wears Elton John glasses and cuts the heads off of chickens, cannibal women in nighties who eat people alive, and a dream sequence during which a woman simulates fellatio with a snake, I'd be oiling up the Whirly Pop and grabbing a Labatt Blue from the fridge. But this is really one of those cases where the expectation far outpaces the reality.
Still, there are a few sublime moments. Like when Boris Karloff tries to demonstrate telekinesis to a skeptical lieutenant, fails miserably, then prattles on about how when he gets it perfected it will eliminate every known problem of mankind, including hunger, disease, and Tim Allen movies. Or when the mortally wounded lieutenant goes kamikazee by tossing himself into a voodoo ritual fire with his belt full of explosives, causing an entire mountain to blow up. Or during the credits when Santanón's character is listed simply as "Midget."
But beyond that, it's mostly a lot of snake handling and voodoo dancing by an over the hill exotic dancer sandwiched around dialogue that's never interesting, but rarely stupid enough to be entertaining. Throw in the depressing fact that Boris Karloff is clearly on his last breath, and you've got plenty of reasons to avoid this.
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