Wes Craven Tribute: Serpents, Rainbows & Zombies

But then rule of three, which really a thing. It's all about our observation of events happening. But in this case we did get a big number three. Yeah. Unfortunately, Wes Craven passed away on I believe it was Sunday night, probably Sunday afternoon his time. But I was unaware of this, as probably most of the public was. But he was battling with Can's sorry had um brain cancer? Yeah, brain cancer um yeah, which yeah, I don't think that had

been a public knowledge yet. But yeah, well it's really unfortunate, um because you know, as as many of you out there, no, Robert, Joe and I are are big horror fans. We grew up watching Les Craven movies. I'd say that they were probably more than a little responsible for my weird idea

of how high school was going to go. Yeah, yeah that, Like even if you didn't see any of the Craving films, and I have to admit for a long time I didn't see them, but even then, you'd go into the video stores and there's Freddy Krueger on the wall, like, you know, a thousand feet high. Like the cultural residence of his work was just unavoidable. In the the eighties and nineties, everybody knows who Freddie Krueger is, even if they've never seen any of the Nightmare in Elm Street movies.

I would I would have to think, right, they at least know that he's that guy from those slasher movies. Yeah, he's an American cultural ion, arguably an international cultural icon. Yeah, I agree. In fact, when I lived in Singapore as a kid, that was when I saw The Nightmare in Elm Street three D addition and it was very big over there. Oh, I thought you're gonna because I know there are various like there's an Indian, Oh is there there's like an iteration film. Yeah. No, we used to

buy bootleg versions over there. Uh, and that was I had the three D one. So I'm looking through his filmography. I kept seeing films that, oh I never saw that, but it was everywhere, and I feel like I feel like I've seen it. Other times it would be a film, you know, like Swamp Thing, where I enjoyed it as a kid, but later on I realized there was more

to the comics. So I don't know that I really love any particularly So I don't know that I actually am in love with any particular West Cravean film, but my world wouldn't be the same without. Yeah, I felt the same way exactly that he definitely put a stamp on the horror genre. But at the same time, I don't know that I except for the movie we're gonna talk about today, which I have a personal fascination with, I don't know necessarily that any of his movies were

classics for me. You know, My Maory in Elm Street is a interesting story, uh, and and clearly grabbed the attention of the world when it came out, and however many sequels there were, But I don't know that I would put it in like my top ten horror movies of all time, you know, Um, and I generally anger the world by saying that I actually liked the remake more than I like the remake too. Yeah. I saw that in the theater and I thought it was pretty well done. Um and uh. I laughed out loud at

the kid wearing the Joy Division shirt. That was the only part in the movie where I think, I, like, I broke character from watching a horror movie. There's just like, you know, this teenager. When was that movie like two thousand thirteen or something like that. It was relatively recent, and this kid was wearing a Joy Division shirt to signify how Gothy and and and Darky was. Well, you know, I don't know, I thought it bought it, Yeah, but I would buy it if it was set in the

seventies or eighties and he was wearing a Joy Division. Yeah. I don't know. I don't really know how much how into Joy Division that could be me as well? Right that with all these biopics about Ian Curtis and stuff, maybe they're a lot more popular than I think they're. You know, it turned out though that Craven, you know, there's a lot more to him than just the horror films. Yeah,

he's a fascinating guy. Yeah. He earned a master's in philosophy and writing from John Hopkins, uh and after a brief stints in academia, he returned to the movie industry. He started out as a sound editor. I think he worked under pseudonym on an adult picture more than one, that was what I was reading. Yeah, apparently he did a lot of work in a pornography. I think mostly as like a sound editor, maybe doing some directing work.

But I believe that there's a documentary about the infamous Deep Throat movie and he had some involvement with that, though he won't reveal what it was, but probably on the technical side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, but yeah, fascinating guy. He I mean, he worked his way up the ladder in academia, taught for a while, uh, and then just dropped everything because he had an opportunity for to do film. And you know, you see why after you look at the bulk of work for his career. I mean he

really put his all into it. Yeah, twenty nine films that he directed. That's not getting into stuff that he produced. But yeah, I mean he was a successful filmmaker. And that's I mean, it's especially commercially like even the film we're gonna talk about today, despite some of the problems had, you know, it worked with the critics and it brought in a profit. Yeah, certainly. And he Um, you know, especially when you think about like I think it was like sort of the seventies was when he was doing

that work with adult films. And then his first real like horror film was Last Tough on the Left, I believe, And that is a movie, first of all, that is a movie that is I think would probably be in most people's top five top fifty horror movies of all time it least in terms of the gruesome impact that it had on the industry and so kind of an infamous video nasty huh. And he just came right out of the gate with that and then was so successful.

He just rolled into making one successful movie after another. You know. Um, Last House on the Left, that is a movie that really is upsetting to watch. Um, I as a horror fan, UM, sort of forced myself to watch both that and the movie. I spit on your grave that they're both two films that I know. I know what's up in him, and I just not my It is not for me either, but I felt like I should understand why it wasn't for me. And they are really really difficult to watch. But um, I'm I

have not seen it. But the remake of Last House on the Left came out a couple of years ago, and I'm kind of curious about that because it had this very strange cast for the plot of the movie, people who you wouldn't expect to do that kind of thing, Like, um, the kid from Breaking Bad was was in Um, what's

his name, Aaron Something. I can't remember his name now, but um, and uh, Garrett Dilla Hunt, you know that guy, he's in it as well, and Ricky lind Home And I was just like, wow, this is the strangest group of people to put together to remake this utterly like trashy horror film, you know. Um, so I'm curious about it. Another one that I've always really thought it was kind of funny is Deadly Blessing. Have you ever seen that one? I don't think I've seen this thing. I read about it.

It's another one of his early ones. It's I can't remember if they're Quakers or Amish or if it's just like a fictional version of of that kind of religious community. But there it's a horror film set within that kind of community, probably early eighties, um, and it's just utterly bizarre and kind of silly in some spaces. I think that's something you could say about almost all of West Craven's films, is that they have a sort of sense of self awareness that is making fun of themselves. Of course,

he also directed What Music of the Heart? I haven't seen that? Yeah, yeah, that and that one that one actually had an Academy Award nomination? Is that right? Wow? Meryl Street I believe was nominated for it. And that was a serious film about you know, about music and school and kids and all. Um. I don't think he ever got to make one about bird conservation, but that was of course one of his big passions in life too. It's interesting, yeah, define that actually conservation lines up with

a lot of horror guys. Did you know that the writer Robert Aikman was a big conservationist in England. Yeah, he's an interesting character. So. But but related to this, uh, In order to get into kind of the space for talking about the science behind Serpent and the Rainbow today, I really I've never seen Wes Craven's People Into the Stairs, So I watched it last night, and man, I wish I had seen that at a younger age. It. Um, it's kind of like the perfect like intro to horror

for a kid. It's very much just like a dark fairy tale. Yeah, there's you know, there's more going on and meets the eye. Your parents are not who they seen, you know, and there's a there's a gump living in the basement, you know that your standard stuff. There's all kinds of crazy stuff in it, but it's basically a kid's film with like occasional over the top violence thrown

into it. Uh structure. Yeah, yeah, essentially I loved it. Um. But yeah, I hope that you know, um, I guess with his passing that he gets a little bit more attention for some of the movies like that that he was really invested in. You know, that was one of the ones that he wrote and directed and kind of shepherded all the way along. That's the one that I seem to recall that the mother and father and that

are are supposedly patterned on Ronald and Nancy Reagan. So there's like is there some at least mild political um statement to view. I could see that. I could see that for sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic out there. If you haven't seen it, I recommended, uh, you know, even if you're not into you know, really gory horror movies. It's not particularly gruesome in that way. It's especially by today's standards. I'd say it was. It's about as scary as a modern day Doctor Who episode. Um, but it

is grim for sure. But um, today we're going to talk about this movie that he came out with the n And when I saw the trailer for this on actually like the commercial for it when I was a little kid, the commercial alone scared the pants off of me. I was so terrified of this movie. And it's called The Serpent and the Rainbow, and it's based on an academic book by a guy named Wade Davis. And so we thought, with West Craven passing away, we wanted to

do some kind of tribute to him. But also the science behind Wade Davis's uh anthropological look at Haitian society and Voodo culture UH is just fascinating and there's interesting stuff going on with the biological and chemical science in there. But there's also some really interesting stuff going on with the battles in academia over this work as well. Yeah, I mean, just right off the bat, it's it may

strike some people with weird. It certainly did me when I first read about it, that you have an academic publication and it's adapted into a horror movie and the title is the same, because I mean, that's uh and that's telling and we'll get into that. So should we do like a breakdown of what this movie is about first? Yeah? Yeah, okay, let me see if I can, if I can summarize this and you help me out along. It's been fifteen years since I've seen it taught on TNT Monster Vision

with Joe Bob Britty. Oh yeah, well I saw it more recently than that. I rewatched it when I was on Netflix last year. But so, The Serpent in the Rainbow is a very loose fictional adaptation of Wade Davis's trip to Haiti to investigate what's known as zombie powder. Basically, the idea here was that um so that the idea was that a medical company supposedly approached Wade Davis about using said zombie powder as like almost like a anesthetic

I guess when performing surgeries. Yeah, and and uh, we have the details on that that we'll we'll we'll get into later, but yeah, it has potential medical application, and the film itself kind of goes way beyond that in that the character who's supposed to be based on Wade Davis, I don't think they even call him that in the movie.

I think he has like a totally different name. He gets enmeshed in both the Haitian Revolution and this kind of like very stereotypical, a kind of culturally insensitive depiction of voodoo UM in which people are being buried alive and then brought back from the dead as these sort of mindless slaves. Yeah. I mean, especially in the time period um voodoo is an in Haitian culture in general is just right for for exploitation. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

like I think of James Bond, was it The Living Daylight? Yeah, I think it was either that or a Thunderball, But yeah, yeah, exactly, this is the air. Yeah. The depictions of voodoo culture that we grew up with were very insensitive com to kind of kind of what I don't think a movie like that could get made today. Um, but I do still just because of the time I grew up in I sort of had this personal affinity for it because it scared me so badly. Um it really. I mean again,

I was just came out in eight, so I was eleven. Uh. Probably wasn't the target audience for this, but you know, uh, it really got its hooks into me, you know, And I've always held it up as one of those movies over the years that can just even now, it's kind of silly when you rewatch it. The stuff isn't actually all that scary, but there's something about it that still

resonates with And it was a major studio relief. So even if you didn't see it in the theater and you weren't the target audience, you definitely saw the advertisements and you were a TV watching household, and if you went to the video store it was a thousand. It was prominent. Yeah. So okay, let's you know, we've talked a lot about West Craven. I know our audience is probably more interested in the science of this, so let's

dive into that. So first of all, we're stepping away from the movie here and we're talking more about Davis's work. He did a cultural ethnography of the sort of beliefs around Haitian culture and this zombie folk lore. And we're talking about zombie without any here zo m b I that's how it's spelled in that culture. Um, let's let's dive into that and then we can get into the research and kind of what he came up with. This is early eighties. I want to say. Two, here's an

interesting fact um long long before Davis looked into this um. Actually, Zora Hurston, American folklorist, anthropologist and author of Their Eyes Were Watching God in nineteen thirty eight, after doing some work in Haiti and in Jamaica. She was one of the first who suggest that there could be a material basis for zombies, for the zombie phenomenon. And so what's kind of interesting about that is that's before the zombie horror phenomenon really caught hold of America's interest in the

When did white zombie come out? I am not not really clear on the time, but the Night of the Living Dead was the latest sixties early seventies. That's the one that really yeah, put it in hyper drive. Yeah, So this is she's kind of taking a look at the reality of this beyond myth before it's really grabbed the cultural interest. Davis, on the other hand, he comes

in well after it's entrenched in our culture. In fact, I mean I would I would say that it's arguable, like it's not like Davis exposed this culture and he was the first one to do it, and people told him what was going on and sent him down there. He was funded by people. But um, basically the idea is that Haitian zombies aren't what we think of as zombies today. Right, So if you're thinking Walking Dead, the

TV show out there, that's not what this is. Uh. The way that it's considered in this culture is that they are quote the living dead, which is a little different. I know it sounds the same at first, but they're undead slaves and there's a certain kind of vood on priest that I believe it's pronounced boker um that can perform this ritual and it it's seen as a sort of sociological punishment. Actually, um, so in that religion that there's this concept at least this is how Davis presents it,

that human bodies contain two types of angels. Is what he calls them. One is the Big Good Angel and the other is the Little Good Angel. The little Good Angel is essentially the essence of our individuality, right, it's your I guess soul uh and Davis actually in his text referred to it as quote the governing thought, memory, and sentiments of a person. However, if anything were to happen to that before you physically die, you might become

a zombie. And that supposedly this ritual is the the voodoo priest taking the little Good Angel out of you and enslaving you as such. Yeah, it seems to definitely play into just humans trying to figure out what's going on with cognition, what's going on with identity in cases where say, you know, there's been an injury and an individual is clearly not in their own head, like what happened to the person that you were physically you know,

what's the link between the mind and brain? Like? Essentially, this is the voodon h take on the mind body problem. Absolutely. In fact, the idea is that when you die, the big Good Angel is the one that goes to heaven.

The little Good Angel actually like sticks around for a couple of days, roughly three days, and as such, some relatives will sit by the grave side of their loved ones for that many days because they feel like they're still there and they you know, need to be with them that part of their personality, the individual part of them.

And that definitely I can see where that would play into mourning for the dead, because you're you're struck by this dichotomy of that's the person that I loved and the person I still love but they're not there, but they still but I still feel this connection to this

body exactly right. Uh. And so what's really important about Davis's research is that it's a combination of looking at the biology that's going on here with this what we're gonna talk about as zombie powder, as well as the cultural resonance that's here and how that plays into the society. So the first thing that's important to understand that he states is that becoming a zombie is a loss of

individuality that is worse than death. So this is a punishment that they they use for breaking the largest taboos of their community. Right, It's a It's also seen as a form of social control. So maybe you're a criminal, or maybe a rapist or something like that something that is affecting the community, right, and so the Voodoo priests subsequently enslaves you as such to take that problem away

from the community. Yeah, a lot of the stuff that you you know, seeing a lot of Caribbean cultures and uh and and and also in the vood and religion is that, of course you have a mix of of of African belief systems mingled with some Christian beliefs systems and uh. Ian davis is follow up book, Passage of Darkness,

The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie. He argues that, Yeah, getting into what you just just said that it it ties into a long history of secret societies, uh that stretched back to the earliest days of slavery, societies that carried with them more of an emphasis on African beliefs that carried with them. Uh some of this uh you know,

this folkloric pharmaceutical knowledge. Uh. And this was especially the case with escaped slaves such as the Maroons who lived deep in the mountains sort of had their own outsider culture that they established. And that it's here especially that you would see zombie powder used as a means of punishing individuals who who broke with tradition, broke the broke their their laws, and and of course all punishment, all capital punishment, is essentially symbolic. But the symbolity of this

is very potent um. It's been an escaped slave culture. In the same way that you would here it argued in American culture that capital punishment is a deterrence. You could argue the same thing here, right that you the last thing that you would want to do is have your individual reality taken away from you and be under the thrall of somebody else. So subsequently that would keep you from doing bad things. So there's two things I

want to note here before we go on. The first is that I think that Davis is a really fascinating individual because of this sort of cross disciplinary approach that

he took to this study. Now I know that that's part of what tweaked certain scholars the wrong way in the eighties and made them upset with him, and we'll talk about that as well, uh, But but I think that it's an interesting approach and I'm glad that he did it to at least sort of set a standard for other people to do the same thing down the road.

But maybe a little more carefully with their methodology. The second thing is that we have to say that all that stuff that we just mentioned about voodoo culture, it has been heavily criticized. At least Davis's interpretation of it has been as just being a complete misrepresentation, and that it's something that as a person who just kind of came in and visited the culture for a number of years and then went and wrote this book, that he

didn't necessarily understand all the complexities of it. Yeah, I mean he was he was a young buck jumping out into the world and uh, and a lot of the criticisms I was looking at they often referred to him as in Indiana Jones, and not not in a favorable lights, saying that like, here's a here's this young rock star with a crazy hat. He's going out and he thinks he's doing important academic work, but he's not. He's just, you know, he's just he's a little reckless, is the idea.

And based on what I was reading about his second book that I mentioned, the pathogeist darkness, yeah he uh, he apparently calmed down a lot by that point or refined himself, became more in keeping with the expectations of of his academic critics. Yeah, this is a good opportunity to sort of get into a little bit more about what happened with Davis in the following years. He's a fascinating individual. National Geographic has given him the title Explorer

of the Millennium. That's a pretty awesome title. Uh So, as as you would expect from the title, he's still exploring, going all around the world. He's an ethnobotanist and an anthropologist. He's gone everywhere, Polynesia, Tibet. He just does tons of similar studies to this one that he started off with

in Haiti. And in fact, my understanding is that he's been working on some kind of four part documentary for the last couple of years, and uh that showcases various cultures from around the world and sort of how, um, how human nature evolves in these different ways. Yeah. Ultimately, even though the Indiana Jones thing was used as a as a as a dig at him um early on, like really, who else has call and he's the Explorer

the Millennium? Well and and and that's the other thing too, when I think about the Indiana Jones application, right, like like remember those scenes in the Indiana Jones movies where he would like go back to the college and he would be in his stuffy suit and like about to teach class or whatever, and all the students were fawning all over him. But like you get the sense that Davis doesn't really have that part. Davis doesn't like go back and like climb into a tweed suit and hold

office hours. Maybe he does so. Originally Davis was actually a Canadian firefighter, but then he moved on and went to Harvard University. And while he was at Harvard studying, he would apparently this is ac cording of the research, he just often visit Columbia, the nation Columbia at the school and study cocaine and hallucinogen. So you get an idea of where his interests lie right away. I think

this is like a late seventies uh. In nineteen seventy five, this was when the sort of quote unquote Serpent and the Rainbow storyline started to come together. He was funded by something that was called the Zombie Project, that's it's real title, via the Botanical Museum at Harvard and the Americans U, sorry, the American National Science Foundation, and there

were some others in there as well. Um, I think if I remember correctly correctly from reading some of the research, that he might have had some private interests in there as well. Um. Basically, the idea is, like what we said earlier, they wanted him to go and find out what was up with this zombie powder so that they could potentially use it to revolutionize surgery. So Davis goes down there, and let's see, so he first gets funded in seventy five and he publicly hypothesizes about zombies in

eighty three. So he's down there for roughly eight years, back and forth kind of doing research understanding the culture. Uh, and it's an eighty three that he publishes something and says, you know what, the zombie thing. It's a real thing. It's not just a myth, and it can be explained both by science and cultural analysis. And this is Davis's idea of how it works. This is how he broke it down essentially. So it starts it's off with what we just talked about, the cultural belief in zombies as

part of the culture. Right, you have to be in that culture and truly believe, you have to have faith that that will work. And that's how society has run. Yeah, this ties into a lot of what we've mentioned before about the paranormal experience. Um, anyone can have these sort of these strange hallucination experiences or or some sort of altered state of perception. But then how does how do you make sense of it? And then that's where you

have to turn to your whatever cultural scripts are available. So, like the individual who sees lights in the woods, depending on where you are in time, where you are in the world, you might interpret Thosese fairies as aliens, as ghosts, as um or as just people with flashlights looking for you in the woods. Right, it's whatever narrative is available to you to understand it. That's what culture is, essentially, it's how we understand the world. Yeah, so let's put

put yourself in that situation. Then you're a part of that culture and you have complete faith that voodoo priests have the ability to make zombies or make you the living dead. All right, then here comes the biological factor. So Davis hypothesized that victims were given two types of powder. The first he called the before powder, and this was what rendered the victims helpless and paralyzed them. So they

seemed lifeless. Okay, So the idea here is that like they're given this powder and it seems like they just died, like their their body slows to a crawl, and their their neighbors all think and family think of this person just passed away. Right. Davis collected eight samples of this particular powder, and he claims that they all contained the following ingredients human remains, tree frogs, worms, toads, and the last and this is a really important one for fish.

I feel like the rest of the stuff is more or less garnish. It's really the puffer fish, I think, um. And the reason why is because puffer fish contains something that's called tetro dotoxin. Uh. If you've ever had Japanese foo goo fish, have you ever had that before? I have not, but I've watched the Simpsons though they do it on there. Yeah, I've seen video of people, you know, like doing it as kind of a dare thing before.

But it's apparently cuisine that's prepared. Uh. This fish also has tetra to toxin and when you eat it, it provides a warm, euphoric sensation, but sometimes it can result in mild paralysis. And I think sometimes it's even worse, right, Yeah, I mean it's it's a neurotoxin, and researchers have looked to it as a potential pain management drug to aid

in chemotherapy. According to a two thousand thirteen study from John Thuer Cancer Center, by blocking the sodium channels, tetro dotoxin limits the conduction of pain signals to the central nervous system, offering relief from pain related to damage caused by chemotherapy. And and so, yeah, it's it's making you feel less. It making me feel like you're you're fading

out of this world, names your senses. And so I think Davis's hypothesis was that given enough of this stuff, but in the appropriate doses, that you would appear to be dead but not actually die. Yeah, Like it's it's pretty deadly in the pupper fish because it's it's used as a deterrent against predators. In that study that I was just citing, they said it's just a fraction of the dosage that you would get from eating a popper fish.

So just to show you how powerful just a just a small amount of it would be potentially enough to dull the pain. And so this is an interesting little side note from one of the readings I did about Davis, but apparently one of his colleagues was the one who pointed this out to him and said, have you ever read the end of the James Bond novel Doctor No? And Davis was like, no, I haven't, and he said, oh, well, you know, uh spoilers for Dr No, which is what

like fifty sixty years old. But m James Bond gets stabbed with a blade that's coated in tetra to toxin and it seems like he dies, but in fact, the tetra to toxin just makes it seems like makes it seem like he, uh, he's dead, when he's actually just paralyzed.

The main thing I remember from reading that book is that Bond fights the giant squid at the end, which I always level anytime anyone anyone charges that a Bond film gets a little too silly to say, hey, and there in the original Doctor notebook he fights a giant. We certainly should do some science of James Bond down the road, maybe when what is it Specter? Maybe when Spector rolls out? Okay, so that's the before powder and Davis's theory here the after powder. He never collected any

of it. He doesn't know what's in it, but he from his cultural studies, believes that it's out there and his belief is that it contains deta. Now, Detera also is commonly known as the zombies cucumber, and apparently this is something that was used in West Africa UH to induce stupors, violent hallucinations, and sometimes death. And the idea is that slaves brought it over from Africa to Haiti and that deterro was now grown there and he saw it as being something that was you know, also used

to sort of continue this appearance of death. Yeah, Deterra has been used for centuries in various cultures as both a poison and hallucinogen UH and deteria intoxication typically produces delirium. So we're looking at a complete inability to differentiate reality from fantasy. And that's that's frank delirium as UH as as contrasted to just typical hallucination, UM can cause hyperthermia,

it can cause excessive heart rate, bizarre possibly violent behavior. UM. It can also result in a painful photophobia that can last several days and pronounced amnesia is also another commonly sided effects, so you can easily see how all of these uh could play into the experience of being the

walking enslave dead right exactly. So you've got the cultural uh sort of base to this recipe, and then you add in the tetra to toxin which paralyzes you, and then you throw in the de toura aspect, which could potentially be a strong enough hallucinogen to to really confuse you. Um have you ever played the follow up video games before that? I think you can get to toura in that as like an ingredient that you use to make like, um, like a some kind of healing recipe or something like that.

But if I remember correctly, it also kind of makes you have hallucinations. I remember getting into the weeds a bit on the whole recipes for things. Yeah, it's incredibly complicated, but they've somebody over there has done their research. Uh So. Yeah. People criticize Davis's research though, they say this is faulty, and here's why. First of all, the Sky was probably talking to some unreliable subjects while he was over there, people who were taking advantage of of his lack of

knowledge and probably spinning stories. For him or just looking for media attention. Yeah, I mean he's also exploring something that is essentially magic and fantasy that's tied up in mythology and folklore, and so there's a lot of gray

area there between reality and fantasy. Yeah, exactly. And there was a really kind of almost means spirited accusation that his data was falsified about the tetra to toxin and that he had purposefully uh exaggerated the levels of tetra to toxin that were found in the powders that he brought back from Haiti, and in some cases might might

have even lied. And there's you know, he obviously rejects those claims, and uh, you know, it's never been proven or anything, but there's been studies since on on this particular phenomenon, these powders and whether or not they have you know, particular effects that could help in medicine. So I don't know necessarily that I buy that he made up the tetra to talks and stuff. Yeah, that seems that maybe going a bit far, especially considering you know,

where his career has gone since then. Like this doesn't strike me as a as a guy who would have intentionally done that. Yeah. So, like I said, there's been other studies. They're pretty interesting. They break down all of the various components that are in the powders and what they could do um. But one of the studies that I read took a very measured look at these components

also discounted the whole zombification aspect. They said, this is either a combination of um mistaken identity in which like, somebody actually dies and then they think they see like their cousin but it's not them or something like that, or just plain mental illness and that they just there. Their cultural understanding of mental illnesses is different than ours

and they don't realize how it's affecting the person. But so far, we don't have that really conclusive study where someone rounds up a bunch of people who believe in zombies and then just poisons the hell out of them. What happened. One of the things that I'm curious about is I have to admit that, you know, I don't

have a deep understanding of Haitian culture. So I'm curious if now, almost forty years later, if a lot of these cultural touchstones still hold residents indeed, and like to what extent has the balance between the traditional folkloric beliefs and Catholicism shifted. Um, yeah, it would be interesting to see a modern revisitation of this topic. Yeah, I think

it would be interesting as well. I suspect, given the stigma around it, that most graduate students are going to be advised to avoid it by their by their you know, faculty mentors. But um, you know, who knows, maybe Davis will influence somebody else to go do a similar study. Right now, He's put that zombie thing behind him. He's

mainly known as an ecological campaigner. He's sponsored by National and Geographic, so you actually tend to see like articles or kind of essays and stuff like that by him in in that GEO. He's gone a number of Ted talks, so he's out there. He travels around. Uh and like I said earlier, he's working on this multipart documentary about the diversity of cultures and human belief in the world,

which I think could be amazing. I actually wonder because the thing I read about said this in I'm wondering if it's since been finished and I just missed it. So if it's out there and you've seen it, let us know, because I'd love to see it. So all right, so we've laid out sort of the Wade Davis scientific explanation for the Serpent in the Rainbow how to make a zombie. Here's your formula, right, uh, and we're we're doing this in honor of West Craven. I love that movie.

He passed away this week and so this is sort of in memorium to him. So let's talk about how this movie was made. Yeah, it's a god, it's a it's it's a fascinating story. It's hard to find like any real just definitive sources on it because when you get into the you know, the troubled history of various films, unless you have like a clear cut documentary case, such as with Apocalypse Now, there's just a lot of you know, almost its own folklore regarding what happened and what went

wrong and what eventually went right. And it is worth mentioning that ultimately, like this film worked because it was budgeted at ten million, those seems to have come in around US about a seven million in the end. You never hear that anymore right now. I'm not sure if that was because of budget cuts or Craven just being really you know on his game, I suspect budget cuts. Uh, and it was, but even then it was set to be as big as film to date. So this was

this was a big deal for Crave. And this is after Nightmare in Elm Street. Yeah. So my two key sources here, there's a book Tutle West Crave in the Art of Horror by John Kenneth and the other sources Joe Bob Briggs, who shared a lot of who introduced you to the movie in Yeah, and actually he shared a lot of this. Uh the well, just like the mythology of the making of this film on a Monster Vision on TNT back in the U. This is the

late nineties, I believe. And he has all the scripts for those available on his website, which will link to on the landing page for this episode. But he, uh, he laid it out like this. So you have this guy David Ladd, and he acquires the rights to David's book. He shows it to West and West Craven loves it.

Not only does he side decide that he wants to take the gig, he also wants to actually travel to Haiti and make it even though, according to Briggs, no American movie had been filmed within the borders of Haiti yet, if my understanding is correct, at that time, Haiti was

in the middle of a civil war, I believe. So yeah, okay, so I mean it was it was not a play when when when Craven said this, a lot of people were like, I don't know, if you really want to shoot in Haiti, why don't you shoot in the Dominican public, And he said, no, we're going through them. I'm in love with the material. I want to make it authentic and I care about it. Let's go to Haiti and

do it. All right, I'd like to pause right there, just I love this movie, but I don't know that authentic is how I would describe its depiction of Haiti. There's some pretty over the top cartoonish depictions of the culture over there. But okay, And so they go to Haiti and U and it's it's apparently just a kind of a troubled suit shoot from the get go, because the crew is constantly either sick from food poisoning and various problems with food and water, or they're just they're

dealing with just extreme heat. So the environmental concerns are are pretty rough. It's it's environmentally a pretty rough shoot. And then they're kind of sandwich between the Haitian military and the locals for most of it, and they're trying to to use the locals. There's a scene there, I believe it's the opening scene with a big funeral procession. They used two thousand extras Haitian extras. That scene is terrifying. That's the scene that sticks with me the most at

anything in that movie. We'll see then the authenticity paid off, but they also, of course had to pay off the extras and um. According to Briggs, one of the problems here is that it's you're not dealing with one agent for all two thousand of these individuals. There are various representatives. So this guy here, he represents fifty of the extras, this guy represents a hundred, and all of these different representatives keep trying to renegotiate the terms, especially as the

shoot continues and they realize, hey, these guys are gonna leave. Um, let's see if we can, you know, make the most out of this, because it's the paying gig, but it's also it's it's gonna go away. Sure, and I would imagine that bartering is probably a natural part of that culture too, Yeah, I would imagine so. So they so each time they bring these up, the representatives bring this up and occasionally threatened strikes um, the producers raise their their pay a little bit to keep them hat p um.

And then meanwhile the army is saying the Haitian army is saying, hey, we can sit in troops. But Craven and Company really don't like that idea because it's already kind of a hostile situation. The last thing you need is you know, potential blood bath. So yeah, for all the like you know, uh mothers in the eighties and nineties who are against West Craven and being a horrible influence on their children, I think that was probably a wise decision on his way. He wasn't, as I guess, um,

interested in capturing you know, violence for violence's sake. Yeah, And so they turned on the army. They continue to deal with these various leaders that are hit him up for for more cash, and then one day the leaders come to the product production office and they say they want more money that night or they're going to riot.

And so this apparently escalates into like a scene where David Lady acquired the rights and his servings producer on this He's standing on top of a car talking to everyone, to the two thousand of these individuals with a bullhorn, and they all have rocks ready maybe to pummeling with, and he's urging them. Not Voriety promised them that the money will will be there, and that's part of the problem too. They don't have the money. They're having to ship the money in from Miami so that they can

pay off everybody. Um. And meanwhile they're saying they're realizing, all right, we've been here a month. This is not working. Let's get out. So they're trying to get everybody out of the country to head to the Dominican Republic to finish the remaining three months of of shooting. UM. So, do you think that this was just a money issue or do you think that the Haitian extras that were involved in this film had any sense of the kind of exploitation their culture is receiving at the hands of

this film. I have a feeling and it's just kind of an unbalanced situation. I mean that may have played into it. I get the I get the impression it was more of an unbalanced situation with with some some problems with representation on the part of the locals. Uh an intention obviously between the government and the Haitian people. Certainly, okay, so they get most everybody out, but three people had to stay in the production office essentially just barricaded in

there until every last villager was paid. And even weirder, and this is like super like I'll say that this is doubly alleged, but according to John Kenneth, Craven was nearly forced to drink pigs blood in a voodoo ceremony to appease the rioting extras. I don't know if I believe that. I could not find another source to even mention that, and Joe Bob didn't mention it on Monster Vision, so I have my doubts. But it sounds a bit

over the top. You'd think that would be a story that Wes Craven would tout as well, you know, something he would definitely want to include on the DVD extras. Also, it seems like they're their main concern was, Hey, we want to be paid for our work, not so much. I think the directors should drink pick yeah. Yeah, um, so they get out of hay Eve a head of

the Dominican Republic. And I also want to point out that also allegedly you had four individuals who who had problems with curses or potential um insanity, like one guy had to be sent back to the States. Apparently it was raving paranoid for a few days. These were American production members. Yeah, wow, okay, Yeah, And of course I don't know to what extent. That's just like you got food poisoning and you know, you're in a different care you're in a super stressful situation and you just kind

of snap. Yeah. And Craven has apparently claimed before that one of the local priests put a curse on him. But again I don't know to what extent that's just stuff. Yeah, that's how many horror movies have you heard that about? I'm sure what's about to come out there? Green Inferno from by Eli eli Roth. Yeah, that that's a movie that looks like it has a very similar but probably

modern treatment of of another culture. And I wouldn't be surprised if eli Roth tells p Pole that he was cursed by somebody, It would not be surprised that if he has not been cursed by by some sort of a voodoo priest in the past, even before he did this. Yeah,

I mean, thumbs up to that video. But but anyway, so various issues in Haiti, and then they finally get to the Dominican Republic, and when first of all, they arrived there and the archbishop shuts down the production for three days because he says it's he decided it was sacrilegious to make this kind of a movie on Easter weekend.

And then like a final blow, one of the Dominican production assistants filed a lawsuit against the producers, and under Dominican law at the time of the lawsuit was filed against the foreigner. They arrested the foreigner and they went to jail to the case went to trial. So the producers were put under essentially house arrest, and according to Joe Bob had to spread a little cash to actually get out of the situation. Now you see why people

want to film in Atlanta so badly. Yeah, so it's not just the tax breaks, there's no military tribunals are putting under house rest, I mean, and you know he didn't have to allectedly had a good crew, he didn't have to deal with like insane Marlon Brando or anything.

So you hear stories like this, or you watch The Heart of Darkness, the documentary about Apocalypse now, and it makes me wonder, like, why does anybody try and make a film because you're gonna have to go through this horrendous process and in all an attempt to make some sort of product that resembles your original intention. Yeah, it's right, exactly. It's always a matter of compromise. Yeah, that is fascinating. I have to just imagine that Craven was so passionate

about the material. Uh. I wonder too if Wade Davis was even part of the production, like if he was on set at all. I don't think he was. And I know that he distanced himself from the movie when it came out, you know, obviously because there's spoilers for Serpent the Rainbow. But I believe the movie ends with his care or summoning like a panther spirit or something like that to beat the voodoo shaman that he's fighting.

I don't even remember remember that. Oh yeah, there's some real silly stuff that goes on in there that is clearly has nothing to do with Davis's uh scientific and anthrop logic studies of Haiti. So there you have it. The Serpent in the Rainbow, Zombie Powder, a troubled production history, and uh you know, our tribute to Wes Craven. Yeah, So I would love to hear from you the listeners, let us know. You know, did West Craven have a particular impact on your viewing on your childhood maybe as

he did ours? Or is there something about the story behind the Serpent in the Rainbow that you know of that we missed. I know that there's a lot more out there regarding Davis's research and research that's been done since then on these particular powders. So I'm curious if anybody has new information for us that we could share in a future listener mail episode. Yeah, and should we do an episod it on the Hills? Have I? That sounds good. That's another one where I enjoyed the remake

um and wasn't too crazy about the original. I think he was involved in the remakes, he produced it, yeah, and I thought that it was pretty solid. So there you have it. Hey, As usually, you can always check us out at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where you'll find the landing page for this episode with all those links we mentioned, links to the some of the studies as well. You'll find videos. You'll find blog posts as well as links out to

our various social media accounts. Right you can get in touch with us on Twitter, Tumbler, and Facebook, and on all those channels we are blow the Mind. Or you can just write to us the old fashioned way at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com