Atheris is a genus of venomous vipers known as bush vipers.
In 1890 in the village of Bellingham Northumberland a herpetologist, Dr. Horace Adderson, has been giving his wife Martha regular injections of snake venom to control her mental illness. Even while she is pregnant. Martha dies while giving birth and the local midwife Aggie Harker (Elsie Wagstaff) believes the baby is evil and tries to kill it. Aggie is a witch. When she is stopped she runs to the village and stirs up an angry mob. The mob sets the doctors house on fire. The doctor who delivered the baby saves it by giving her to a local shepherd to watch until her father can come for her. Dr. Murton (Arnold Marle) doesn’t know that Dr. Adderson died during the fire by a snake bite. Dr. Murton then leaves Bellingham for an extended period of time to do research in Africa.
Twenty years later Dr. Murton returns to Bellingham. He finds out that several people have died on the moors. Each death was caused by King Cobra venom. The villagers believe that the Curse of the Snake Woman is responsible. Scotland Yard arrives to investigate the happenings. Charles Prentice (John McCarthy), from Scotland Yard, is of course skeptical of the curse.
Charles meets Atheris (Susan Travers), a beautiful but unblinking and cold to the touch young woman. Atheris is the Adderson baby all grown up. Charles discusses the case with his boss and again seeing Atheris, Charles goes to talk to the witch Aggie. She performs a ritual to break the curse and instructs Charles on what he needs to do to complete the ritual. Charles is still a bit of an unbeliever at this point. At the local pub Polly the barmaid talks to him about the curse. He is beginning to believe. He goes looking for Atheris and finds a full body skin that she shed. He now knows the truth and what he must do to stop the killings.
“The Snake Woman” is a low budget British movie released in 1961. The film didn’t go very far with either critics or the movie going populous. It’s almost one of those forgotten movies. And no wonder, although the acting is fine there isn’t much else there. No monsters, no special effects, not even a real mystery. People are dying by snake bite and it’s obvious who’s doing it. The movie is mostly convincing Charles what everyone else knows. Granted 1961 wasn’t a banner year for horror movies, but if you have a movie called “The Snake Woman” perhaps you should have a woman that looks a little bit like a snake in it. At least it still has a village mob with torches and pitchforks.
What gets me is that his unbalanced wife has more sense than the stupid mad doctor who is injecting her with poison. Especially while she is pregnant. His wife gives a wonderful speech about life and what it looks like in the beginning and all her husband can do is shoot her up with snake venom. Her speech was the most interesting part of the movie.
Although Sidney Furie is an established director of many films, at the time he directed “The Snake Woman” he was still developing his style. All in all the movie is a little ridiculous but harmless.