The new Dark Force Blu-ray release of Fangs (aka Holy Wednesday), a fabulously deranged 1974 horror film, is a cause for great slithery joy.
This loony film was shot in San Bernardino and is the only feature film directed by Art Names, who usually worked as sound mixer on such films as The Hitcher, Alligator, The Black Godfather, etc. And it stars Les Tremayne, a character actor memorable in The War of the Worlds, The Angry Red Planet and countless Perry Mason episodes. He plays loveable old coot Snakey Bender, who lives out in the desert and delights in showing school children his collection of snakes.
Snakey also lives for Wednesday night, when he gets together with his good buddy Burt (Richard Kennedy) and they get drunk and march up and down listening to John Philip Sousa records.
He also brings his favorite snake over to the fourth-grade teacher’s (Bebe Kelly) house while she writhes around on the bed getting sexual satisfaction. As trade off she gets her class to gather up mice and other rodents to feed Snakey’s serpentine menagerie.
But an uptight preacher Brother Joy (Marvin Kaplan) is morally opposed to the kids gathering up offerings for these devil creatures.
Then Snakey’s “Holy Wednesday” (the other title this movie went out as) goes to shit when Burt gets married to a go-go dancer (Janet Wood) and she puts a stop to their John Philip Sousa nights.
A sleazy brother and sister that run the local grocery store- played by Alice Nunn (“Large Marge” from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) & Bruce Kimball (seen in a million drive-in favorites like The Pink Angels, Chain Gang Women and Drive-In Massacre)- catch Snakey delivering snakes to the teacher and blackmail her into having sex with them, putting an end to Snakey’s late night reptile deliveries.
So Snakey gets revenge by using his cold-blooded creatures as weapons of revenge, afterwards hurtling the dead victims in their cars off a cliff and marching home dreaming of John Philip Sousa playing in his head.
I’m not going to give anything more away except to say it plays out with such whacked-out weirdness and dark humor it just makes you crazy watching it. And Tremayne, as the crazed codger in his filthy shirt and worn overalls, delivers a wonderfully demented performance as the snake-obsessed avenging angel.
It’s a movie that follows the Willard-school of creepy loner who finally gets back at all those who wronged him. But all that John Philip Sousa stuff- not to mention the school teacher rubbing snakes all over her body in bed- is so warped I was in reptilian heaven watching it.
This is definitely a movie that I never saw on VHS, but here it’s presented from the film negative so it looks impossibly great. It’s truly a sleazy, ludicrous film, and, while you may never want to hear the song “Stars and Stripes Forever” again afterwards, it’s certainly more fun than any Oscar nominee I’ve seen this year.