Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Snake Dancer

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Snake Dancer

    Click image for larger version

Name:	cover.jpg
Views:	1
Size:	7.3 KB
ID:	383648
    Released by: Mondo Macabro
    Released on: 11/14/2006
    Director: Dirk DeVilliers
    Cast: Glenda Kemp, Peter Elliott, Wilson Dunster, Bruce Millar, Christine Basson
    Year: 1976
    Purchase From Amazon
    The Movie:

    When we first meet Glenda, she's a young girl whose mother cannot afford to look after her, so off she goes to live with a foster family just as her brother did. As Glenda grows older her interest in dance becomes more of an obsession and so she enrolls in ballet classes so that she can receive the proper training. Her childhood seems a happy one, thuogh her foster parents are none too happy with the girl when they come home one day and find her playing with a snake on the couch in the living room.

    A few years later and Glenda has just finished school. Her family is hoping that she'll use her degree to become a teacher, her fiance is as well, but one night when Glenda and some of her girlfriends head out into the big city for a girls night out, she finds herself getting a different idea. The girls sit down to enjoy their drinks and before you know it, Glenda is inside the cage go-go dancing like a woman possessed! She's so good at it that the owner of the bar offers her a paying job, which she wholeheartedly accepts much to the dismay of her fiance.

    Glenda decides to spice up her act a bit and so she hires her brother (who 'knows someone who knows someone') to steal a python from the local zoo for her. Before you know it, Glenda and her new pet are the star attraction at the club, that is until a wealthier club owner doubles her salary to lure her to his establishment. Her fiance gets fed up, he can't stand having his would be wife gyrating around on stage with a snake and he amounts it to nothing more than base pornography, but Glenda's gotta do what Glenda's gotta do and what Glenda's gotta do is dance… with a big snake… and without any clothes… and without giving a damn who it upsets (and brother, plenty of people get upset!).

    Kind of like a psychotronic version of Footloose, this film - supposedly based on a true story (you can read a newspaper article about it here)- basically features cute little Glenda Kemp playing herself, sort of like Evil Knieval did in Viva Knieval except with more shake and nicer curves. Her performance, in terms of her acting ability, is pretty awful but once the girl starts to wiggling, all bets are off. If there's one thing that Glenda can do well, it's boogie, even in the pre-snake scenes the girl has got some serious moves. Throw the stolen python into the mix and you've got oodles of phallic symbolism on top of some already sultry action and it all proves too hard to resist.

    Filled with completely bizarre dialogue ('Little girls shouldn't play with snakes!'), bad eighties music and even worse eighties fashion, Snake Dancer (or, as the on screen title says, Glenda) is so utterly odd that you can't help but enjoy it. The movie is also full of random, jarring edits and odd little flashbacks to Glenda's childhood that are completely unnecessary but entirely welcome in that, while they don't add nearly as much to the story as the filmmaker's probably thought they would, they definitely add a further layer of 'weird' to an already strange movie.

    Aside from the snake dancing and go-go numbers, the movie also piles on the melodrama by way of a few subplots - Glenda and her fiance have it out over her career, she and some of the other dancers have issues with an employer, and her foster parents don't really think much of her choice of profession - but through it all Glenda is true to herself and does what she wants to do. Set in the seventies, when South Africa was a fairly uptight place to live, she was breaking all manner of taboos with her act and as such was a bit of a trendsetter in that regard.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    The 1.33.1 fullframe transfer for Snake Dancer isn't going to win any awards but it gets the job done. Presented in its original aspect ratio the picture does exhibit some mild blurring during a few scenes and the colors are a little on the faded side but those used to how some of Mondo Macabro's more obscure releases have looked will know what to expect. It's far from perfect but it's definitely watchable and considering the age and relative obscurity of the movie, you've got to expect a certain amount of print damage and fuzziness.

    Likewise, the audio, while problem free, isn't going to blow your mind. The English language dialogue is clean and clear and the score and effects don't bury anything. There's mild hiss here and there that isn't hard to notice but thankfully it doesn't overpower the performers.
    Amazingly enough, Mondo Macabro has managed to score up an interview with Dirk DeVilliers, the director of Snake Dancer! Also included is an extensive interview with Trevor Steele Taylor, a noted South African film critic who gives a pretty interesting history of the South African film industry from the early days up to the present.

    Rounding out the supplements are some production notes from Pete Tombs that give some very welcome background information on the picture and on Glenda Kemp herself, as well as the always enjoyable Mondo Macabro promo reel (updated to include a few of their newer releases). Animated menus and chapter stops for the feature are also included.

    The Final Word:

    A truly unusual South African cinematic oddity gets a fine release with some excellent supplements from the always enigmatic Mondo Macabro.
      Posting comments is disabled.

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    • Hot Spur (Severin Films) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Severin Films
      Released on: April 30th, 2024.
      Director: Lee Frost
      Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
      Year: 1969
      Purchase From Amazon

      Hot Spur – Movie Review:

      Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but
      ...
      03-22-2024, 11:53 AM
    • Death Squad (Mondo Macabro) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Mondo Macabro
      Released on: April 9th, 2024.
      Director: Max Pecas
      Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
      Year: 1985
      Purchase From Amazon

      Death Squad – Movie Review:

      Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual
      ...
      03-22-2024, 11:46 AM
    • Roommates (Quality X) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Quality X
      Released on: February 28th, 2024.
      Director: Chuck Vincent
      Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
      Year: 1982
      Purchase From Amazon

      Roommates – Movie Review:

      Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:10 PM
    • Night Of The Blood Monster (Blue Underground) UHD/Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Blue Underground
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Jess Franco
      Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
      Year: 1970
      Purchase From Amazon

      Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:

      Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:07 PM
    • Phase IV (Vinegar Syndrome) UHD/Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Saul Bass
      Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
      Year: 1974
      Purchase From Amazon

      Phase IV – Movie Review:

      Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:02 PM
    • The Bounty Hunter Trilogy (Radiance Films) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Radiance Films
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
      Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
      Year: 1969-1972
      Purchase From Amazon

      The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:

      Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this
      ...
      03-13-2024, 11:30 AM
    Working...
    X