Sssssss

PG

1973

1 hr. 39 min.

Sci-Fi

Horror

List

30%

10 Reviews

Tomatometer

26%

1,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

Short on cash, undergrad David Blake (Dirk Benedict) takes a job working as a lab assistant for snake expert Dr. Carl Stoner (Strother Martin). When Stoner begins giving David a series of antibiotics as a safeguard against snakebites, he at first thinks nothing of it. But gradually David begins to notices curious changes in his body, and his new girlfriend, Dr. Stoner's daughter, Kristina (Heather Menzies), notices them too. Could Dr. Stoner really be trying to turn his assistant into a snake?

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Peter G

An odd item indeed. I watched it on TV when I learned that Strother Martin was in it + the LEAD role & then I was curious. This film has become somewhat of a cult item, I gather, but any interest in its shock value then had no impact on me. I just felt bad for Martin who deserved a better lead role than this. Watching it now with it's dated special effects might prove amusing for some but what I find most unfortunate is that Martin died when he was only around 60. Still I remember him most favorably in COOL HAND LUKE & THE WILD BUNCH but not for his unfortunate mad scientist here.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

02/22/24

Full Review

Steve D

Pure cheese but fun cheese.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

08/05/23

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Dean W

A passable movie with laughable plot holes and lines and PG skin shows but with impressive makeup effects and the movie moves along at a good enough pace. If you like these movies you wont be disappointed, not for the average movie goer. And yes the snakes are real!

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

04/14/23

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Audience Member

............... David!

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/11/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Oh man, this movie. I can't even believe some of the things that happen in it, to be perfectly honest with you. It's another PG-rated 1973 movie — hello, The Baby — that is absolutely berserk. Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski and written by Hal Dresner (Zorro the Gay Blade) and Daniel C. Striepeke (who also produced this film and did the creative makeup design*; he also did makeup work on everything from Planet of the Apes and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to Myra Breckinridge, Jaws the Revenge and Can't Stop the Music before doing make-up for several Tom Hanks-starring movies), Sssssss tells the story of Dr. Carl Stoner (Strother Martin), a man who we first meet as he sells a mysterious creature to a carnival. Beyond being a herpetologist, Dr. Carl has gone completely and utterly crazy, believing that man is about to undergo an ecological apocalypse and would be better served if we all became amphibians. He brings on David Blake (Dirk Benedict) as his assistant, slowly injecting him with medications that he claims will make him immune to snake bites. Obviously, Blake is a moron because such a vaccination does not exist**. He is not so dumb that he doesn't instantly start pining for Dr. Carl's daughter Kristina (Heather Menzies, who was Louisa in The Sound of Music and would appear nude in Playboy the very same year this was made in a pictorial all so creatively titled "Tender Trapp"). And before you know it, David is having wild Keir Dullea dreams of reptiles when he isn't turning green. The doctor keeps feeding people to snakes and sending snakes to kill people in showers and one wonders, how has he gotten away with all of these shenanigans in such a small town for so long? Also, the end of this movie is completely off the rails — and the movie is never normal, not for a second, so for it to get weirder is an accomplishment — when David transforms into a king cobra and battles a mongoose before the cops come in blasting with shotguns. I kind of adore this movie because at once it's a movie that has an incredibly scholarly take on snakes and how they actually operate while also being a movie with numerous sideshow scenes and two people — the other is Tim McGraw the Snake Man who is played by Noble Craig, a Vietnam vet who lost lose both of his legs, his right arm and most of the sight in his right eye and used that handicap to become a living special effect in movies like this, Poltergeist II, the remake of The Blob, Bride of the Re-Animator, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and Big Trouble In Little China — are transformed into snake men. In case you think that this movie was safe to make, the venomous king cobras in it were not defanged. Instead, they were kept at their full potency and milked of their venom every day. This movie has some great alternate titles, like O Homem-Cobra (The Snake Man) in Brazil, SSSSKobra and Ssssnake in Finland — and Sssssnake Kobra in Germany — as well as Ssssilbido de Muerte (Whisper of Death) in Mexico and Hissssss and SSSSnake in the U.S. Honestly, drop what you're doing and watch this movie right now. *The actual effects are by John Chambers, who created Spock's ears, and Nick Marcellino. **I take that back. My research has show that there is a rattlesnake vaccine, so there you go.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Ssssssscience! Sssssssnakes! Ssssssstrothers Martin! Sssssssheer ssssssseventies ssssssstupidity! Ssssssstill, it'sssssss ssssssso ssssssslow, you'll sssssssurely sssssssnore inssssssstead of hisssssss.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

01/30/23

Full Review

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Bernard L. Kowalski

Director

Strother Martin

Dr. Carl Stoner

Dirk Benedict

David Blake

Heather Menzies-Urich

Kristina Stoner

Richard B. Shull

Dr. Ken Daniels

Tim O'Connor

Kogen

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Jas Keimig

The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

Your patience is more than rewarded in the final third of the film...

Feb 1, 2022

Full Review

Dennis Schwartz

Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

An absurd but enjoyable venomous mad scientist B horror pic.

Rated: B-

Jul 30, 2017

Full Review

Matt Brunson

Creative Loafing

Strother Martin offers an interesting variation on the usual mad scientist: He's a genuinely sweet, considerate and kind man, with his heinous blind spots due to an unhealthy dedication to science rather than any inherent evil.

Rated: 3/4

May 7, 2016

Full Review

Austin Kennedy

Sin Magazine

I've seen worse films, but maybe if it was just balls-to-the-wall awful, I would've been hootin' and hollarin', instead of yawnin' and snorin'. It's just plain forgettable.

Rated: 1.5/4

May 12, 2012

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Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

Rated: 2/5

Nov 4, 2005

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Jake Euker

F5 (Wichita, KS)

Rated: 1/5

Nov 13, 2004

Full Review

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Synopsis

Short on cash, undergrad David Blake (Dirk Benedict) takes a job working as a lab assistant for snake expert Dr. Carl Stoner (Strother Martin). When Stoner begins giving David a series of antibiotics as a safeguard against snakebites, he at first thinks nothing of it. But gradually David begins to notices curious changes in his body, and his new girlfriend, Dr. Stoner's daughter, Kristina (Heather Menzies), notices them too. Could Dr. Stoner really be trying to turn his assistant into a snake?

Director: Bernard L. Kowalski
Executive Producer: David Brown, Richard D. Zanuck
Screenwriter: Hal Dresner
Production Co: Universal Pictures
Rating: PG
Genre: Sci-Fi, Horror
Original Language: English
Release Date (DVD): Sep 13, 2009
Sound Mix: Stereo