Snake Dancer

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
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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.