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Snakes in Movies   Death Curse of Tartu (1966)   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 about archeologists who go to an area in the Florida Everglades that is cursed by a long-dead Native American medicine man named Tartu. Tartu vowed that if anyone disturbed his sacred burial grounds he would come back from the dead and turn into a wild beast to kill them. We see him turn into a shark, an alligator, and two killer snakes to enact his vengeance. The story and acting are nothing special, but there is some good animal photography with nice shots of snakes and alligators. When the first archeologist Sam Gunter (Frank Weed) comes to the burial grounds before the students arrive, we see Tartu turn into a giant Anaconda, crawling out of the crypt, through some skulls, across the swamp, through a man's campground and over his camp stove. (There are a lot of shots of the slow-moving snake, including some close-ups that make its big head look gigantic.) Finally we see the big snake up in a tree as Gunter walks by and stops underneath it. The snake drops onto Gunter like they always do in movies and they wrestle for a minute or two before we see Gunter motionless with blood coming out of his mouth and the snake crawling away. According to an IMDB comment, all of the animals used in the movie belonged to Frank Weed, and that might explain why the shots of the animals and their action is so good, even the snakes, which are notoriously uncooperative. The wrestling looked fake to me, but most people wouldn't notice. If you've ever seen a large constrictor in action, you know that they strike and sink their sharp teeth into their prey refusing to let go, then they wrap their body around their prey and squeeze until they suffocate it. This pet snake's head hangs limp, proving that it's just not into the farce. Right after we see Gunter's dead body, the movie cuts to a shot of a Florida Kingsnake on the ground. Then we see Billy (Bill Marcus), the Seminole Indian who rowed Gunter out to the burial grounds but refused to stay because he believes in Tartu's curse. He picks up the snake then puts it in a bag. The only reason for the scene is to show a car full of student archeologists arrive on their way to the burial grounds, but maybe Frank Weed also wanted to show off his cool uncommon snake. As soon as the students get to the cursed area, Tartu starts getting rid of them. After two couples leave camp to dance in bikinis, make out, and go for a swim, Tartu turns into a shark and kills two of them. Then Tartu turns into a Cottonmouth and chases a student named Johnny (Sherman Hayes) who left camp to go for help. When Johnny stops to rest, the snake lunges up and bites him on the face. It then strikes him several more times until he drops dead. We see a real venomous Cottonmouth swimming, then we see a pretty bad fake snake hand puppet striking and biting. We also see what I think is the Anaconda with two fake fangs glued inside its mouth in a close-up of the striking snake. Later Tartu also changes into an Alligator later to chase and kill Cindy, the last student, which you can see here.