2. FANGS FOR WATCHING: Charm your senses with an anguine flick.

Zuma is a comic book movie, but no worries if you’re burned out on those. It’s also super weird.

Phillip (Mark Gil) and Isabel (Dang Cecilio) are archaeologists exploring a temple who discover a sarcophagus filled with snakes. Soon, Zuma (Max Laurel) is unleashing, walking the streets with a giant snake on his shoulder. Don’t get the idea that Zuma is the hero here. He’s a servant of the Mayan god Kukulkan — or the Aztec snake god, depending on where you get the information — and loves finding virginal women to defoul, doing things like sending snakes to bite boyfriends to death while enslaving women like Galela (Raquel Montesa). He also has a daughter, Galema (Snooky Serna), who has snakes in her hair instead of on her shoulders like her dad.

This is way too long — over two hours — but I haven’t watched many Filipino horror films. Just for the idea of a snake god that eats hearts and spoils virgins being made into a movie, well, I had to watch it. I’ll watch the sequel,  Zuma II: Hell Serpent, too.

Just look at this Wikipedia entry about Zuma: “After his revival, he goes to the modern world in a killing rage, slaughtering particularly virgin women, whose hearts are ripped out and consumed, which gives Zuma his strength and vigor. Aside from using his two-headed snake as a weapon, Zuma’s powers include invulnerability (specifically, bulletproof) and the ability to control snakes. In later versions, Zuma can heal people. His weakness is the venom from his daughter, Galema, who is also his archenemy. Galema’s mother is a humawhomat Zuma has taken as his bride. Galema grew with foster parents that made her to be a good person. Zuma also beget another child named Dino who has a head of a dinosaur and a body of a human. Dino initially allied with his father, but he later abandoned him because Dino fell in love with a human.”

Never change, the Philippines.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.