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Snakes in Movies   The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)   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 an old military adventure movie of the sort they thankfully don't make any more, but which is fun to watch if you can take into account the era in which it was made when it might have been believable that an English officer could cover his face with shoe polish, put on a fake beard and a turban, and mingle with the natives. There are a couple of fun scenes with snakes that are included for comic relief. Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone are junior officers in a regiment of the Bengal Lancers on the northeast frontier India who have a friendly rivalry. When they go to their quarters and hear a snake charmer playing his flute, Cooper gets angry and tells the snake charmer to leave, saying that he hates the sound of the flute. So Tone goes to the snake charmer and takes his flute. He plays it later to annoy Cooper, saying that it reminds him of Scottish bagpipes, because Cooper is supposed to be of Scottish heritage. When Cooper is shaving, Tone once again plays the flute to annoy him. Cooper asks him nicely not to play the flute and Tone agrees not to, but when Cooper continues shaving, he continues playing. Then we see a cobra enter from the ceiling and drop onto the floor. It crawls over to Tone and raises up next to him as he is lying on a couch playing the flute. We're supposed to think that the music attracted the cobra to Tone. since that's the common misconception, and laugh at the circumstance Tone finds himself in. When Tone sees the snake, he begins playing more frantically, and that sends Cooper back to where he is playing. When Cooper sees the cobra he laughs and starts directing Tone how to play for the snake, enjoying his dangerous predicament. Eventually Cooper goes and gets a pistol and shoots the snake. Tone tells Cooper he's going to sell the flute and that's the last time we hear Tone playing the flute. The snakes we see in the snake charmer's baskets and the snake dropping from the ceiling appear to be real snakes, but the snake we see crawl up to Tone is a fake one, or just a shadow.