I saw a Wes Craven double feature last night at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. They showed The People Under the Stairs and The Serpent and the Rainbow. Between the two movies, Wes Craven was interviewed by some dude, and then they opened up the floor for a Q&A.
I had never seen The Serpent & the Rainbow before. As he talked about the movie, I gathered that it was based on ethnobotanist Wade Davis’s (nonfiction) book about a Harvard scientist that was sent to Haiti in search of a “zombification” drug - it renders recipients completely paralyzed, but conscious. Doctors would often pronounce the recipients dead, and they’d wake up later in a casket under the ground.
He explained that as a punishment, the drug would sometimes be administered and the recipient would be buried as if they were dead. They would then be dug up days later and severely beaten, and then given brutal doses of the herb datura and set into the wild to fend for themselves.
I became aware of datura sometime back in high school, and was fascinated by it, particularly by the fact that people use it recreationally. I remember spending countless hours reading about people’s experiences with it in the Erowid Experience Vaults. It sounds absolutely insane, and I can’t imagine why anyone would ever go near the stuff.
Anyway, this really caught my interest - It was fascinating to hear about people being put through the wringer, psychologically, as a form of punishment. I think it’s safe to say that you would be a shell of your former self after going through all of this.
They went to Haiti to shoot the film, and Wes talked about some sort of ceremony that they attended. He said that people were dancing around a fire, and at a certain point, there was a noticeable switch in their behavior. He said that some of the dancers began to eat hot coals off of the fire. He had a glass of wine in his hand, and one of the people noticeably acting different approached him, took the glass out of his hand, and ate it, bite-by-bite. He saw no blood in her mouth, and she showed no signs of pain at all, but said that by looking into her eyes you could see that she was “not there”. I would imagine that this isn’t related to datura, but the behavior could be attributed to some sort of drug or voodoo practice.
He didn’t elaborate all that much on this, but he mentioned that someone involved in the production of the film was talking to one of the voodoo priests. He told him that he wanted to learn more about the whole “zombification” process. The priest replied, “then you will learn”.
I don’t think that the guy told anyone else about this right away. He was shacked up in his trailer, and communication was limited to very brief conversations through the door. After a day or two of this, with deadlines to meet, Wes and someone else decided that they had had enough, and wanted to get to the bottom of the odd shift in behavior. They demanded that the guy allow them into his trailer. When they finally got in, plates full of untouched meals were all over the place. Apparently the guy had totally gone off the deep end. They had to send him back to the US, and when he arrived at the airport, he didn’t even recognize his wife. Later, he said that the last thing he remembered was the priest telling him, “then you will learn”.
It’s crazy to think about how there are people so far removed from “society” as we know it, tucked away in these Haitian “secret societies” of sorts, that have the knowledge and means to do things to our minds that we know little to nothing about.
I realize that this is an awful recollection of the story, but he told it in about 2 minutes, so that was all that I gathered. I’d like to know more about this, but I wasn’t able to find any other interviews where he talks about it. Had the Q&A not taken place prior to the movie being shown, I doubt I would have been nearly as interested in the film itself. The movie was a bit over-the-top, so I’d imagine it is “loosely” based on the book. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got, just found it very interesting and I thought I’d share.
As an afterthought, I always associated Wes Craven’s name with the “Scream” movies. Horror nerds, you can tell me I’m an idiot, but I liked the Scream movies. I’m not a horror aficionado by any means, and I had no idea he had been directing movies since the seventies. Anyway, he announced that he will be working on Scream 4… So there ya go.
