A voice-over attempts to explain the religion of voodoo to the uninitiated, after which we witness a ritual presided over by a leering midget in sunglasses and a top-hat who sacrifices a real chicken (lopping off the poor bird's head with a machete) in order to raise a woman from the dead.
Cue groovy titles.
Written and co-directed by Jack Hill, the man behind several hugely entertaining exploitation classics from the '60s and '70s, Snake People certainly has the right ingredients to be a whole lot of schlocky fun: graveyard ceremonies (complete with plastic skeletons), a sexy priestess who gyrates with a snake, zombies, cannibal women, Boris Karloff, a bull-headed French cop who riles the locals, and a beautiful young woman destined to be sacrificed.
Unfortunately, Hill only handled Karloff's scenes in L.A., leaving the majority of the film to be directed in Mexico by Juan Ibáñez, who displays little of Hill's movie-making moxie. Ibáñez's direction is lethargic, turning potential exploitation gold into dull, repetitive and occasionally incomprehensible nonsense.
Poor old Karloff starred in four of these low budget Mexican/US co-productions during the twilight of his career, but was spared the pain of seeing the end results by popping his clogs before their release.
