This Watergate-era “snakesploitation” movie is a strange cocktail of 50s sci-fi, 60s soft-core, and 70s dystopia stirred into one surprisingly intoxicating viewer experience. Featuring none other than Strother Martin as a genial but creepy herpetologist, SSSSSSS opens with a title card that ominously proclaims: “All the reptiles shown in this film are real...we wish to thank the cast and crew for their courageous efforts while being exposed to extremely hazardous conditions.” And indeed, we’ll later witness Martin keeping his cool while he milks venom from a squirming black mamba. The plot revolves around the herpetologist’s scientific, and lunatic, interest in a new human-snake species that would demonstrate the superior survival skills required to live in a harsh environment – a much smarter use of the snake trope than earlier exoticising voodoo genre movies like Cult of the Cobra. SSSSSSS has been ridiculed by some, but it is a well paced and visually inventive movie that I think should be on any list of iconic American movies from the 1970s. Directed by Bernard Kowalksi (Attack of the Giant Leaches, and a smattering of episodes of Columbo, Airwolf, and Knight Rider), and produced by the same team that would later make Jaws. - Alamo Drafthouse