1 DECEMBER 1973, Page 23

Cinema

Snakes, no ladders

Christopher Hudson

There is a splendid exuberance about many American horror films which makes up for the dimwittedness with which they are put together. For instance Ssssnake (` X ' ABC Fulham and Edgware Rd) is pretty amateurish in construction and has a script straight out of a fifties B feature, but it is undeniably watchable. Mostly because of the snakes and other reptiles (including an albino turtle, a genuinely ghastly sight) owned by Dr Stoner, a herpetologist who has recently lost his assistant in mysterious circumstances.

In his place he employs a freshfaced young college boy called David who naturally falls in love with the herpetologist's daughter Kristina. At the same time Stoner is pumping him full of cobra serum, ostensibly to render him immune from snakebite, and what with all his talk of creating a race of supermen, and police officers prowling around, and David's face .taking on a decidedly greenish tinge, it doesn't take us long to work out the dastardly plan. But before the scales fall from Kristina's eyes, there's time for a bit of excitement with a black mamba biting a football player on the ankle and a very large python wrapping itself uncomfortably around Dr Stoner's herpetological , rival.

Scientifically it's a little offbeat. Cobras are given the highest venom rating, mambas kill in ten seconds flat, and the loud reptilian hissing makes the laboratory sound like a steam locomotive shed. But it isn't the kind of film in which details matter: the crazed scientist is done com petently enough by Strother Martin, and the snakes are fascinating and chilling enough, a gift to any director who doesn't have much other talent to rely upon. At least it is preferable to Three in a Cellar ('X') a laboured campus -revolution comedy, of

the same vintage (1970) and mediocrity as Three in an Attic lwhich those with a memory for trivia may recall. The two films

even share the same black actress, Judy Pace, though here she is not maneater but victim — the victim of a student poet who determines to nobble the college President by 'getting off with his wife, his daughter and his mistress. So shallowly topical is the humour that now, three years on, it already seems stale and faintly embarrassing; the only good thing in it is Dory Previn's title song Don't Make Waves' which sums it up neatly and with ninety minutes to spare.

Next week I shall be writing about the London Film Festival, of which Mark Le Fanu gives an appraisal below. With some of its -Nziost promising films, like Belle and Distant Thunder, yet to be shown to the press, the festival' has so far fallen below the very high standard it is normally able. to maintain through its policy of showing a selection of the best films from foreign festivals. There is an enterprising section devoted to the first films of new directors, and this has contributed one of the most impressive festival films I have so far seen, Payday, directed by a Canadian newcomer, Daryl Duke. Meanwhile the Chelsea and Swiss Cottage Odeons are showing another festival entry, The Double-Headed Eagle, an interesting though not outstanding newsreel compilation film about Germany 1918-1933, during the rise of Nazism.

Mark Le Fanu writes: The critic must weigh his words carefully but I am afraid my own feeling is that as a whole the Festival looks disappointing. There are a predictable number of dull and worthy movies which might just get their showing at the Academy (example: the Pole Krzystoff Zanussi's much acclaimed Illumination: very literal, plodding, humourless — in any event without any of that grace which might justify its title) and more than a fair share of slightly dreary-looking downbeat documentaries. These latter mainly from America, which brings home how much one unconsciously relies on the consistently professional Hollywood product which tends not to get a showing at these festivals. It's a pity for the sake of proportion that Robert Aldrich's Emperor of the North can't be shown, or Huston's new thriller The Mackintosh Man or Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; and the list could be much fuller.

In contrast to the realism there's' a strong element of high camp and fantasy which ranges from the artistically banal Daddy (GB, Peter Whitehead) through an indulgent narcissistic sexiness in Some Call It Loving (US, James Harris) to Carmelo Bene's already celebrated Un Amleto di Meno (' One Hamlet Less ') and a version of the life of Ludwig II of Bavaria not to be confused with Visconti's which might even merit the adjective notorious (Ludwig — Requiem for a Virgin King). Walerian Borowcyck's Immoral Tales marks a return to cartoon and graphics after his successful features, Goto, Island of Love and the recently shown Blanche. We are 'warned,' rather pleasantly, to expect something very erotic: on past form we can also expect something bizarre.

Otherwise, by nationalities, Japanese and German cinema, come out best, the latter including a new full-budget production from the extraordinary Werner Herzog, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (brutal historical epic set in sixteenthcentury Peru), along with a remake of Fritz Lang's M entitled the Tenderness of Wolves produced by Fassbinder and directed by a newcomer called Ulli Lommel, which has been very promisingly reviewed (warning: also violent). The Japanese contingent includes a " proustian " exploration of childhood from Toichoro Narushima called Time Within Memory which I haven't seen and Kon Ichikawa's new samurai drama The Wanderers which I have and can recommend.