Click on a picture to enlarge it

Snakes in Movies
Group Pages

All Movie Snakes
Must Die!

All Movie Snakes
Want to Kill You!

Dancing With Snakes

Giant Monster Snakes

Pet Snakes

Shooting Snakes

Snake Bites

Snake Charmers

Snake Face

Snake Fights

Snake People

Snake Pits

SnakeSexploitation

Snakes & Skulls

Snakes Run Amok

Snakes Used
as Weapons

Snakes Used
for Comedy

Snakes Used for
Food or Medicine

Snakes Used
Realistically

Throwing and
Whipping Snakes

Kinds of Snakes

Rattlesnakes

Cobras

Black Mambas

Boas, Pythons,
and Anacondas

Unusual Species

Settings

Snake in the House!

Snakes in Beds

Snakes in Jungles
and Swamps

Snakes In Trees

Genres & Locations

Snakes In
Westerns

Snakes in
Asian Movies

Herps in
Australian Movies

Herps in
James Bond Movies

Herps in
Silent Movies

Herps in
Spielberg Movies

Snakes in Movies

Snakes Used for Food, Medicine, Magic, and More in Movies

This is an alphabetical list of movies in which snakes are used for food, medicine or magic, taken from the main Snakes in Movies List.
Snakes are skinned, cooked and eaten, or their venom is extracted to be used in medicine or as a drug,
or they are used in rituals and ceremonies, but for this list they are not just used as weapons to kill someone.

You can see more pictures and read a description of the snake scenes by following the title link.

Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching a film.

Shortcut to Movie Title

The Air I Breathe (2007)

A scientist milking a venomous snake, oops, gets bitten by the snake.

Alien from the Deep [Alien Degli Abissi] (1989)

A snake hunter collects venomous snakes on a tropical island to sell their venom to pharmaceutical companies. He also uses the venom to make poison darts to use in his blow gun.

Alligator (1980)

A police detective seeks help from a herpetologist about a giant alligator eating people in the sewer. We first see the herpetologist in her lab milking a rattlesnake, then putting it back in its cage. (Milked venom is typically used to make anti-venin used to treat snake bites.)

Bad Girls (1994)

Saloon girls on the lam are startled by a rattlesnake, so one of them shoots it and they eat it for dinner.

The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968)

Fu Manchu makes an army of beautiful female assassins by forcing them to be bitten by venomous snakes. The snake venom gives the women the power to kill a man by kissing him.

Calamity of Snakes (1982)

A snake vendor in a market in Taiwan shows a crowd how to skin snakes alive and drain their blood to drink. We also see construction workers eat snake meat in a cafe.

The Canyon (2009)

A wilderness guide is bitten by two rattlesnakes. Before he dies, leaving his clients to survive in the Grand Canyon alone without food or water, chased by hungry wolves, he tells them to cook one of the rattlesnakes for dinner.

Capricorn One (1977)

A hungry astronaut, lost in the desert and chased by helicopters, hides in a cave where he finds a rattlesnake, kills it, and eats it.

Chato's Land (1972)

Chato kills a rattlesnake with a knife, skins it, cuts off the rattle, and wraps the rattle up in the skin, putting the ball in his pocket. When it dries, it becomes a musical rattle which he gives to his son.

Creeping Death (Kill the Poker Player) (1972)

A zoologist in the old west collects venomous snakes to use their venom for medicine.

Da 5 Bloods (2020) - Four Vietnam war veterans return to Vietnam where they see a snake sold for food in an outdoor market. The saleswoman cuts its head off then brings the snake's body to their boat to convince them to buy it.

Dark Tide (1994)

We see lots of sea snakes in this movie that are collected from the ocean and taken home to extract their venom which will be sold for medical research.

Despicable Me 2 (2013)

A villain named El Macho is so macho that he squirts venom from a rattlesnake into his drink at a bar.

Drunken Master II (The Legend of Drunken Master) (1994) A young woman sells snakes in an outdoor food market in China.

Eaten Alive! (1980)

Cannibals eat live snakes.

End of Days (1999)

Devil-worshippers feed the blood of a rattlesnake to a newborn baby girl to claim her as a bride for Satan when she grows up to be Robin Tunney.

Eva Nera (1976)

Eva and her girlfriend go to an outdoor snake restaurant and watch a man skin a live snake and cook it for their lunch.

Excalibur (1981)

A Necromancer uses snakes along with other animals to make her evil potions.

Exodus: Gods & Kings (2014)

The Pharaoh Ramses has a pit full of pet snakes. He milks the venom from his cobras to use to give him immunity to snakebite.

Flypaper (1997)

A guy cooks snake meat on his outdoor grill and milks their venom to make antivenom..

From Mexico with Love (2009)

A man uses his van to collect rattlesnakes and uses that business as a cover for his business of smuggling undocumented farmworkers and drugs. We see rattlesnake skins hanging inside his van, so he is probably selling rattlesnake skins. He might also sell the meat for food.

The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)

A Kalahari bushman kills a cobra for food and for its skin to make a pouch.

Golden Needles (1974)

We see snakes in a Hong Kong food market.

Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

Live snakes, frogs, and dried fingers are tossed into a witch's potion.

Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom (1984)

A python full of eels is cooked for dinner.

The In-Laws (2003)

The special in a Chicago Vietnamese restaurant is a giant cooked snake on a bed of fruits and vegetables with an orange in its mouth.

J.O.E. and the Colonel [Humanoid Defender] (1985)

A genetically-engineered super soldier keeps a cobra to use as a source of extra power.

Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016)

Two men eat at a snake restaurant. One gets bitten by his lunch.

The Killer Snakes (She sha shou) (1975)

A man working in a restaurant in China cuts open snakes and drains their bile into a cup for the customers to drink.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

Arthur's magician, The Mage, conjures up a venomous snake to bite him on the neck so its venom will bring him visions and protect him.

King Serpent Island (She wang dao) (2021)

A black market snake-hunting gangster eats snake eggs, and a biologist milks snake venom.

Lonesome Dove (1989)

Rattlesnakes are dinner for cowboys and for pigs.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

Mad Max grabs a venomous snake that's guarding a gyro helicopter but the snake's owner makes him put it down. Later the snake's owner rescues it from a dog trying to eat it and tells the dog that he's going to eat it, describing how he'll prepare it and its nutritional value.

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

Diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu makes a mind-control serum of sacred herbs and reptiles, including a Burmese Python.

Mondo Cane (1962)

A shockumentary with a segment about snakes that are sold and cooked for food in Singapore.

Mutant Python (2021)

A secluded mountain village in China is terrorized by a giant python, so they plan to sacrifice a girl to appease it. The girl's brother catches snakes for them to eat.

The Naked Prey (1965)

A hungry man pursued by African tribesmen finds a snake, hacks it up, and eats it raw.

Night of the Cobra Woman (1972)

A man extracts the venom of a cobra to use in laboratory research.

Ophelia (2018)

Ophelia learns that Claudius killed Hamlet's father with snake venom he got from a witch.
Ophelia uses the witch's snake venom to fake her death.

Resurrection (1980)

A woman pets a captive two-headed snake at a gas station, then develops miraculous healing powers. Much later in life she takes over the gas station and heals a boy with the same snake after it died and was preserved in a jar.

River's End (2005)

A rattlesnake is decapitated and brought back to become lunch.

Romancing the Stone (1984)

A man and woman take shelter in a crashed drug-smuggling airplane in the Colombian jungle. He sees a venomous snake crawling next to her head, so he kills it with a machete. Then he eats the snake.

Silent Tongue (1993)

We see rattlesnakes in the background and a Native American woman roasts one on a stick and eats it.

Slave of the Cannibal God (The Mountain of the Cannibal God) (1978)

A group of cannibals in Borneo eat live snakes for dinner.

The Snake Woman (1961)

A herpetologist injects his pregnant wife with medicine he makes out of snake venom to cure her "sick mind." She dies in childbirth, and her daughter Atheris is born an unblinking, cold-blooded snake woman who runs away to live in the wild where she changes between a woman and a venomous cobra, terrorizing an English village.

Snakes (Snake/Serpent of Death) 2018

An expedition to an uninhabited island to search for a plant with miraculous healing powers encounters giant monster snakes. When a woman is scared of a small snake on a tree, a soldier kills it and eats part of it raw, then encourages everybody else to try some.

Soldier Blue (1970)

A woman who lived with Indians cooks some snake meat and feeds it to a wounded soldier.

The Squeaker (Der Zinker) (1963)

A murderer called "The Snake" milks a Black Mamba to use its venom to kill people.

Stop Loss (2008)

A soldier on leave picks up a rifle and shoots a rattlesnake to save his buddy. Then, like true Texans, they barbecue it and eat it.

The Terror Within (1989)

One of the last surviving humans on earth catches a rattlesnake in the desert and slices it open for food.

Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)

A cowboy decapitates a rattlesnake. A nun shakes its rattles to scare off soldiers.Then they eat it.

The Virgin Spring (1960)

A shaman in the woods gives a woman a dried snake as a cure for her anguish. This is a Bergman movie, so she's going to need a lot more than that....

The Woman Eater (Womaneater) (1958)

An Amazon witchdoctor dances with snakes in a ceremony to sacrifice a woman to a woman-eating tree.

Xtro (1982)

A young boy has a pet snake named Harry who laid four eggs. The boy's father, who is actually a bloodthirsty alien, sneaks into his room, picks up the eggs, then crushes them and eats them.

Go Back to the Top