my friend bought me two dvd collections called Zombie collection and Walking Dead collection for my birthday. On the Zombie Collection one it claims to have a "Fully Restored and Enhaced Digital Masters" version of all of the movies on it. This movie is one of the 5 on it.
Cool gift, your friend hooked you up with some good trashy B to Z horror movies there, but those box sets were made by Diamond Entertainment which are one of those companies that specializes in buying fairly decent quality VHS copies of movies that aren't currently protected by copyright laws to make DVDs of an sell cheaply in retail outlets. Your buddy is a friend to have hooked you up with like 15 hours nonstop horror, but they are not "digitally remastered" from anything other than maybe a prior rental SP mode playback VHS.
SNAKE PEOPLE is a "lost" film in that whoever owns the original rights and presumably the elements as well is apparently completely uninterested in resurrecting it in what might be considered an archivally sensitive manner, and I believe the film has passed into the public domain since every PDM company on the planet specializing in horror films has made a point to release it at some point.
This going to sound crazy but I have seven DVD versions, all of the same edited TV print: Diamond Entertainment (backed with SCARED TO DEATH with Bela Lugosi, another perennial public domain title), Brentwood Video (from their "Killer Snakes" collection, which also has Bruno Mattei's BLACK COBRA WOMAN to recommend it), a Platinum Disc Corporation four movie "Horror Classics" collection (with CHRISTMAS EVIL and Riccardo Freda's THE GHOST to give it some gravitas), two different pressings by Family Dollar (one with the 70s sleaze classic STANLEY and another Karloff film called SABAKA that's a historical drama set in India). And I also ended up with SNAKE PEOPLE on the Mill Creek 50 movie "Chilling Classics" box set that is on a disc with more public domain regulars SISTERS OF DEATH and WAR OF THE ROBOTS. They are all universally pathetic, but if it's all you can find and the price is right (a couple of dollars) any one of them will do, since they all show identical versions of the film. There is also a DVD release by Eclectic Cinema but I won't touch it, those people are notorious commercial bootleggers.
The two DVD versions in existence that actually aren't THAT bad are one by Retromedia that actually is digitally remastered from a 16mm positive print, and then Something Weird Video's DVD of RATTLERS which features SNAKE PEOPLE and also appears to have been transferred from 16mm by SWV, who are usually pretty good about using their own prints from their libraries rather than just ripping off somebody's old VHS.
That much I can also confirm because I have one of SWVs VHS tapes of SNAKE PEOPLE which is exactly the same print though without much in the way of remastering. And I also have a British PAL tape by a company called Cineplex that has the slightly shorter version called CULT OF THE DEAD that is apparently identical to the North American "Boris Karloff Collection" VHS of the same name.
However, if there was one version I would recommend seeking out above all others it would be the vintage VHS release by Unicorn Video if only because it is very collectible and more than was the source of ALL the public domain DVDs aside from Retromedia's -- who's digital "enhancement" of the picture gives the movie a kind of odd digital haze that purists might object to -- and the Something Weird DVD RATTLERS DVD is out of print and their VHS releases are plagued by quality control issues.
The end verdict however is that it appears that the only surviving transfers of SNAKE PEOPLE for home video utilized what is probably the television censored syndicated print; even Unicorn was notorious for sourcing television prints and rumor has it that as much as 17 minutes of footage was removed between the original release in Mexico and the print that eventually turned up on television during the early 1970s. You might try finding a Spanish language version (Unicorn usually made both English and Spanish language versions of certain films, i.e. THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN and NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS) but my own personal opinion is that the original elements and/or master assembly prints are hopelessly lost, and all we have are the crummy transfers on these DVDs and various video releaes. The only saving grace is that since the film is identified as a 1:37:1 "open matte" shoot you don't have to worry about looking for a widescreen print, and aren't missing any picture information on the fullframe versions known to exist.
Except of course, the picture information on whatever segments were cut.
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