Search - The Flying Serpent on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Questionable for Children Movie Release: 1946 DVD Release: 07/13/1999 Format: DVD - Black and White SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 0 hrs 58 mins Studio: Image Entertainment Members Wishing: 0 Genres: Mystery, Horror, Natural Horror

This threadbare PRC production plays like an Aztec variant on the studio's earlier Devil Bat, with PRC favorite George Zucco assaying the Bela Lugosi role. Zucco plays mad archaeologist Andrew Forbes, who stumbles upon the nest of a monstrous winged serpent -- the apparent source for the myth of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl -- while on a dig in Mexico. After the creature seeks out and kills his wife to recover one of its missing feathers, Forbes learns that he can eliminate his enemies (and protect a cache of plundered Aztec treasure) by planting one such plume on their person and letting Quetzalcoatl do the rest. Like most PRC quickies, this one is painfully cheap but quaintly entertaining; credited director Sherman Scott is actually prolific B-movie journeyman Sam Newfield. The Quetzalcoatl myth would be more cleverly mined by horror auteur Larry Cohen 35 years later in his low-budget monster-fest Q. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

George Zucco - Prof. Andrew Forbes
Ralph Lewis - Richard Thorpe
Hope Kramer - Mary Forbes
Eddie Acuff - Jerry Jones
Wheaton Chambers - Lewis Havener

This is one of those B-horror films that made television interesting for baby boomer kids growing up. The Flying Serpent, produced at Poverty Row studio PRC, is a lively little chiller about a mad archeologist who discovers the living incarnation of the Aztec bird-god Quetzalcoatl, and uses it to guard the ancient treasure of Montezuma, which he has also unearthed. The movie was quickly shot, which shows in the haste with which the scenes were obviously played -- even down to the climactic chase in which George Zucco's movements were grotesquely undercranked, so that projected at normal speed they hastened his pace. The movie also relies on several uses of the same shot of Zucco, a mad gleam in his eye, driving his car toward the secret cave that hides the monster and the treasure; at only 58 minutes, the film can just about get away with maneuvers like that.
The film-to-video transfer is only fair, but in the case of this movie, that's about all that one can hope for. The movie never looked very good even on television during the early 1960s, and one can imagine that, in the course of being moved from owner to owner, it hasn't been well preserved since. This source reveals numerous scratches on the film and missing frames, as well as minor to moderate rips at certain points and very dirty splices, and nothing here is ever as sharp as it would look under ideal conditions -- the whole movie has a softness that the best transfers avoid by using first-generation sources which, in this case, may not exist. None of it is a problem, except in the very dark opening sequences in the cavern, where one wishes for more contrast in order to see the title creature in its barred cage; as it is, it's nothing but a very vague, dark shape. Once the serpent takes flight (where it resembles the eagle in flight on the pre-Indian Head penny), however, the details are all there, and the fully lit scenes are just fine; besides, George Zucco is such a commanding presence, even when he has no dialogue, that one can look past the transfer flaws when he's on the screen; additionally, the rest of the plot -- about a mystery writer brought in on the multiple murder case as a stunt by a radio station -- is so charmingly 1930s/1940s, that it's great fun, and the short running time ensures that the movie hardly lingers long enough to bore anybody. The menu pops up automatically on start-up and, as a small bonus feature, viewers can access a filmography on Zucco. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide