Main Cast: George Zucco, Ralph Lewis, Hope Kramer, Eddie Acuff, Wheaton Chambers
Release Year: 1946
Country: US
Run Time: 59 minutes
Plot
This threadbare PRC production plays like an Aztec variant on the studio's earlier Devil Bat, with PRC favorite George Zucco assaying the Bela Lugosi role. Zucco plays mad archaeologist Andrew Forbes, who stumbles upon the nest of a monstrous winged serpent -- the apparent source for the myth of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl -- while on a dig in Mexico. After the creature seeks out and kills his wife to recover one of its missing feathers, Forbes learns that he can eliminate his enemies (and protect a cache of plundered Aztec treasure) by planting one such plume on their person and letting Quetzalcoatl do the rest. Like most PRC quickies, this one is painfully cheap but quaintly entertaining; credited director Sherman Scott is actually prolific B-movie journeyman Sam Newfield. The Quetzalcoatl myth would be more cleverly mined by horror auteur Larry Cohen 35 years later in his low-budget monster-fest Q. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
Review
Since there is no possible way to actually research the matter at this late day and age, we shall probably never know whether PRC's depiction of how a mix between a flying reptile and a chicken actually lands is authentic or not. But according to the evidence at hand, this strange and ancient creature merely plunks down rather inelegantly in a way that looks positively painful. Not that The Flying Serpent should be viewed as a biology lesson; after all, PRC was not in the business of educating their customers. Yet producer Sigmund Neufeld's version of Montezuma's revenge is actually very instructional in its own way, especially in how to shave a movie budget down to a bare minimum, such as using the old jail set seen in all those Buster Crabbe Westerns for a modern-day coroner's inquest. To hold an examination of a suspicious death in a honky-tonk jail cell makes all the sense in the world, of course, in a movie whose main goal is to scare you with what for all intent and purposes looks like an elongated and very angry turkey. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Edward C. Jewell - Art Director, Sherman Scott - Director, Holbrook Todd - Editor, Leo Erdody - Musical Direction/Supervision, Bud Westmore - Makeup, John H. Greenhalgh, Jr. - Cinematographer, Sigmund Neufeld - Producer, John T. Neville - Screenwriter
