The mad scientist storyline ruled sci-fi and horror cinema for decades, and is not quite dead yet (thank you Mary Shelley). It’s only been a matter of how insane your story’s scientist can get. Bernard L. Kowalski makes his a Herpetologist, one who studies amphibians and reptiles, for the most insane reason in Sssssss.
Meet Dr. Carl Stoner (Strother Martin), the snake researcher who takes a college student David (Dirk Benedict) to be his assistant in a secret project involving snakes. His daughter Kristina (Heather Menzies-Urich) is already assisting him and she falls for David. Dr. Stoner starts injecting David with certain snake antigens supposedly for immunization against snake venom. But in time his project’s real goal is revealed, and it’s anything but good.
For one, Kowalski seems to have come up with a title that can catch your eye and tickle your skin for some added skin-crawling effect. Befitting as it is to the movie’s theme and visuals, the plot is far from well-developed. The science in the story, the motive, and the painfully obvious lack of suspicion on behalf of the characters surrounding Dr. Stoner – all of these call for endless suspension of disbelief. Naturally, the movie feels like running really slow, even slower than the pet python of the Stoners.
Now there are scenes that do make your skin crawl’ after all, snakes are there all the time over the screen. Yet the movie’s visual effects are on the lower end of production quality and the reptilian fever doesn’t run too high up your body while viewing Dr. Stoner going to every extreme to turn his assistant into… well, into Sssssss-something. Guess what it could be?
Fun fact, from the IMDb page, the production used real snakes in nearly all scenes. Think of it when you watch the movie.
