The Serpent And The Rainbow (1988)
This tale explores the mysteries of the traditional medicines developed within the Voodoo religion – specifically a potion that turns people into zombies – living, though apparently dead. It also incorporates the sense of distrust regarding ‘Big Pharma.’ It’s loosely based on the book of the same name by ethnobotanist Wade Davis, and features Wes Craven directing from a script written by Richard Maxwell and Adam Rodman.
In the film: The story begins with the unexplained death of Christophe (Conrad Roberts) in a French missionary clinic. As he takes his final breaths, a parade marches by the window with a burning coffin, as a man in black watches intently. During Christophe’s Catholic funeral, his distraught sister mourns while the man in black looks on. Inside the coffin, Christophe reawakens and begins to cry. Some years later, an ethnobotanist named Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) is on assignment in the Amazon Jungle, and is tasked with bringing rare medicines from a local shaman back to Boston. In doing so, he drinks a hallucinogen and has a vision of the man in black, as well as seeing his totem jaguar spirit.
In the U.S., a pharmaceutical company asks him to go to Haiti to investigate and retrieve a drug used in Voodoo – the effect of which is to turn people into ‘zombies.’ They wish to mass produce it for use as a new form of anaesthetic. Haiti, however, is in the midst of a revolution, and Dennis becomes entangled with a local witch doctor and the Tonton Macoute (a Hatian Paramilitary force). The climax of his dangerous situation sees him buried alive in a coffin, with a tarantula, before being rescued by Christophe – who lives in the cemetery because he still believes he’s dead.
In reality: Wade Davis wrote his book, The Serpent And The Rainbow, to chronicle his findings during his time investigating the use of ethnobotanical poisons in Haitian Voodoo – specifically with regard to the case of Clairvius Narcisse, a reported zombie.
Narcisse was a man whose death was documented and witnessed, but who returned to his family 18 years later, nonetheless. He claimed that he had been poisoned, “died” and was buried in 1962 – but that his body was subsequently recovered. He stated that a medicinal paste was administered to him that had the dual effect of causing hallucinations and compliance in behaviour. Narcisse was then made to work on a sugar plantation, while being regularly ‘dosed.’ After the plantation owner died, 2 years later, the dosing stopped, Narcisse regained his faculties and simply walked away. It was another 16 years before he returned to his family, though.
The account of Wade Davis, and his investigations of ethnobotanical poisons, remain widely questioned and criticized by mainstream science.
