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Lizards in Movies |
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Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (1973) |
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Spoiler Alert !
Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
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This is a very bad movie about witchcraft with all the usual stuff - seances, crystal balls, and voodoo dolls. Despite the title, there is no orgy, not much blood, and we don't see much of the "she-devils," though they do dance around a few times without much clothing before they sacrifice men by stabbing them with spears. But there is a scene with one of my favorite lizards, one that is rarely seen on screen, so I had to watch it.
Mara (Lila Zaborin), the head witch, is hired by an Indian man named Rodannus to kill a UN ambassador. She kills the ambassador, but Rodannus decides to kill her because she's so powerful. He sends his henchman Barth with a gun and he shoots Mara and two of her flunkies. But Mara comes back to life as a black cat and then returns to human form. This is when the lizard shows up.
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Mara makes a voodoo doll which she puts in a large glass jar containing an alligator lizard and a lot of large ants. She says some witch stuff, shakes it all up, and then we see Barth acting like he's got ants in his pants, scratching and screaming, until he finally can't stand it and jumps out window to his death. Then she does the same to Rodannus, but without the lizard.
The lizard is a live Southern Alligator Lizard, probably a San Diego Alligator Lizard, the kind found in southern California where the film was made. It's such a common lizard, but it's rarely used in movies. That could be because they're not very common in the pet trade and maybe they're difficult to work with. In fact, the live lizard we see at the beginning of the scene appears to have died by the time we see the witch turning its jar up and down.
You can read a description of the movie and watch it over at The SilverScream
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