- Director
- Wes Craven
- Year
- 1988
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 98 min
Also released as
- Ormen och regnbågen
- La serpiente y el arco iris
- Voodoo
- Käärme ja sateenkaari
- Змей и радуга
- ゾンビ伝説
- Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow
Filed under
The Serpent and the Rainbow
The Serpent and the Rainbow is a 1988 American possession film directed by Wes Craven.
Wes Craven in Haiti, adapting a real ethnobotanist's account of the drug behind zombie folklore.
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A Harvard scientist travels to Haiti to find the compound that can render a person apparently dead and then revive them, and is drawn into the politics of the Tonton Macoute and a genuine burial-alive.
Craven adapted Wade Davis's non-fiction book, and the film's best material is grounded: the pharmacology of tetrodotoxin, the social function of zombification as punishment, and Haiti in the last days of the Duvalier regime, where it was partly shot.
Bill Pullman is the scientist and Zakes Mokae is frightening as the secret-police captain who is also a sorcerer.
The nightmare sequences, a bride with a snake, a coffin filling with blood, a nail through a scrotum, are among the most vivid Craven directed.
It is one of his most underrated films and the only one grounded in real anthropology.
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Canada
UK
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 10 Aug 2026
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