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Snakes in Movies   Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is a sequel to The Abominable Dr. Phibes (which also has a snake scene) which was released a year earlier in 1971. Vincent Price repeats his roll as Dr. Phibes. In the original movie, Phibes was apparently left to die, but we learn here that he and his wife were in suspended animation for three years until the planets aligned to revive him. He gets out of his crypt, wearing his full mask and make-up. (His face was burned off in a car accident, leaving his head looking like a skull. There's even a funny scene where he spies on people by simply hiding his head among some skulls.) He goes immediately to play his organ. He doesn't even have to pee first. Then he calls for his young and beautiful female assistant Vulnavia (Valli Kemp) and she materializes out of thin air. She apparently died in the first movie, too. She's a mystery. She never speaks, she poses like a model wearing ridiculously extravagant clothing and silly hats that she changes several times each day, she's Phibes' music and dance partner, his chauffeur, and his assistant in all sorts of grisly murders. Phibes' plan is to go to a Pharaoh's tomb in Egypt where the "river of life" flows to resurrect his wife and the give them both eternal life. But he discovers that his map to the tomb is gone, and learns that it is in the possession of Darrus Biederbeck (Robert Quarry.) Biederbeck has been taking an "elixir of life" that has kept him alive and looking young for a hundred years, but it's almost gone so he seeks the same river of life that the map leads to. After Biederbeck leaves his home guarded by his manservant Cheng (Milton Reid) who is playing pool or some such game, Vulnavia sneaks a large basket full of snakes into the house. Cheng hears a buzzing sound, similar to a rattlesnake's rattle, then sees a snake under the pool table. He crushes the snake's head with a pool cue. Then he hears more buzzing and sees another snake, which he also kills with the pool cue. He picks the snake up and puts it on the table, and we can see that there is a small mechanical device attached to it that is making the buzzing sounds. When he picks up the snake's body to get a better look, a snake bites him on the arm. It's not obvious which snake bit him, but I think it's a third snake. We see two bloody fang marks on his arm, which means the snake is venomous. Cheng grabs his knife, cuts the wound, then sucks out the venom. (This cowboy snakebite treatment called "cut and suck" is not recommended.) Then he goes to his telephone, probably to call an ambulance, but the phone has been rigged and, as we hear the police describe it later, his skull is pierced with a golden snake that shoots out of the phone into one ear and out the other. You have to admire Phibes' attention to detail, using a golden snake weapon. As ridiculous as it is to use snakes with noisemakers on them to kill someone, this is still one of the most plausible examples of using snakes to kill someone I've seen in a movie. Leaving snakes near someone is ridiculous since there is no guarantee that the snakes will bite the intended victim or that their bit will kill, but these snakes were probably not meant to kill Cheng. They were used to get him to use the telephone that was rigged to kill him. Phibes steals the map as Vulnavia removes the evidence and the snake basket which must have worked because we never hear the police mention that Cheng was also a victim of snakebite. The snakes we see are live Boa Constrictors, but we also see the carcass of a dead boa constrictor with a little mechanical sound-making machine inside it. We see the same sort of device taped onto the body of another snake. I'm still confused about these snakes. Were they supposed to be mechanical snakes? Phibes is apparently good at making mechanical devices - he has a mechanical band that he and Vulnavia dance to, so maybe he made mechanical snakes, too. Or did the snakes just have a sound-making device stuck onto them to scare Cheng? If so, why scare him? Why not let the snakes sneak up on him? Whatever they are supposed to be, one of them is alive enough to bite Cheng. The snake scene starts only thirteen minutes into the movie but we do see some nice snake art later as part of the Pharaoh's coffin in Egypt, and there is a nice sequence with a killing machine that is made of sharp spikes made to look like snake tongues. Biederbeck's fiancé is unconscious, tied up lying down on a floating platform, as the snake device slowly descends onto her. Biederbeck struggles to stop the machine from killing her, but at the last minute the water she is floating on drops in level, and she is saved. But Biederbeck doesn't catch the ferry on the river of life so he quickly ages and we last see him looking like his real very old self. You can watch the snake scene, which begins at about 13 minutes, or the whole movie at The SilverScream.com.