The Snake Woman (1961)
Old-fashioned, low-budget, black-and-white British chiller. In 1890, a herpetologist cures his wife's insanity with regular injections of snake venom. She dies after giving birth to a baby girl with cold skin and no eyelids. The local midwife curses it as evil. She also manages to get the local villagers to burn down the father's home/laboratory. The local doctor takes the baby to a shepherd for the night, thinking the father is still alive, then runs off to Africa. Twenty years later, the baby is now a Snake Woman. The villagers put up with the fact that, every once in a while, somebody gets killed by a poisonous snake. They don't have any illusions about who's responsible, particularly the midwife, who also has witch-like powers. An old army officer, apparently new to the area, witnesses a guy dying from the bite of a cobra. (The Snake Woman has the ability to change into different venomous serpents, by the way.) He writes to Scotland Yard, they send our hero out to investigate. Midwife tells him to shoot three bullets into the equivalent of a voodoo doll, which means that he will be fated to kill the Snake Woman in the same way. He eventually does, of course, although he remains skeptical about the whole thing until the end. Just slightly over an hour long, the movie has no surprises in its simple plot. The weirdest scene comes when the hero finds the human-shaped skin that the Snake Woman has shed. Special effects are minimal. The transformation from Woman to Snake is done in the easiest way possible. Scene of Woman, cut to scene of victim, cut to scene of Snake. The very last scene, with the mandatory ending of dead Snake turning into dead Woman, is done with a poorly done dissolve. It's all silly and predictable stuff, but the cast takes it seriously and does the best they can. The midwife really chews up the scenery.