This is one of those films where people are split right down the middle on it. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 59%, and most of it's detractors are of the "LOL, this isn't Nightmare on Elm Street!" camp.



"Bill Pullman stars as Dennis Alan, a Harvard researcher sent to Haiti by a pharmaceutical company to investigate the zombie legend and any possible connection it might have to a rumored drug that could be used as a new breed of powerful anaesthetic. Once on the Caribbean isle, Alan is aided by a good voodoo priest or "houngan" (Paul Winfield) and his daughter (Cathy Tyson), who runs a local clinic. Alan's search also pits him against an evil houngan, Dargent Peytraud (Zakes Mokae). Peytraud also controls the Tonton Macoute (the Haitian secret police), who are involved with soon-to-be-deposed dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

The Serpent and the Rainbow was based on the book of the same name by Wade Davis, an ethnobotanist whose real-life hunt for the zombie drug was credited with cracking the medical mystery behind the myth."

Something about this film really hit me hard when I first saw it. I was fairly young, and knowing it was by the same director as Nightmare on Elm Street made me think it was gonna end up being "zombies or slashers" but I was way far off base. This film was truly terrifying in a completely different way and still holds up very well today.

Anyone else a big fan or anti-fan of this film?