The Flying Serpent
The Flying Serpent (1946) Rewatch: ✅
Retreating to safer grounds after finding The Tunnel pretty obnoxious. First watched this one at some point in the early eighties and loved it, have loved it ever since. Proper comfort watch.
Perhaps my favourite George Zucco plays George Zucco in… role too. He’s absolutely perfectly cast as the professor who keeps Quetzalcoatl locked up and uses them to do murders for them to cover their tracks to stop people discovering they are the person who keeps Quetzalcoatl locked up and uses them to do murders. Oh, and also has a very big stash of treasure, natch.
Given the film pretty much announces this in no time whatsoever, there’s never any doubt about who is behind the murders so you’re left with the pleasure of watching Zucco navigate people into the situations where a giant flying reptile bird is going to tear out their throat, whilst everyone else slowly unravels that it is he, Zucco, arranging the murders.
Man, I love it. I love the winged puppet, the way the camera likes to frame them chewing at someone’s body during each murder, George Zucco is fabulously wicked, there’s an entire thing where someone gets murdered live on radio by the winged beasty, and at one point they get an ornithologist in to have a gander at a feather, because science.
Twenty out of ten.