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Snakes in Movies   The Night Evelyn Came Out of The Grave (1971)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is an Italian thriller or Giallo about rich and handsome Lord Alan Cunningham who goes crazy after his red-headed wife Evelyn dies in childbirth. Alan likes to lure red-headed strippers and prostitutes to his rundown castle where they get naked, put on shiny black boots, and then get whipped and strangled by Alan. It's not clear if he kills them or just tortures them, but either way he's a horrible person. Still, somehow, he's the protagonist in this movie, proving that good-looking rich people can get away with anything, even murder. His psychiatrist, who locked Alan in an asylum for a long time but never told the police about the violence, convinces Alan to get married to help him forget about Evelyn and stop all the torturing and murdering. Alan meets a hot blonde named Gladys at a party and immediately proposes to her. But it turns out their meeting was not as spontaneous as he thought. The snake scene shows up late in the movie, which ends is several twists, so I'm going to discuss the scene from the perspective of what we know about the characters when the scene takes place, not what we know later, to avoid spoiling the ending. Shortly after she becomes the new Lady Cunningham and starts living in Alan's castle, Gladys sees a red-headed woman who shouldn't be there and Alan sees the ghost of Evelyn. These things make Gladys suspect that Evelyn is still alive, so she goes to the family crypt to see Evelyn's corpse to make sure she's dead. Evelyn's brother George lives and hunts on Alan's property and doesn't like it that Alan married Gladys. He stops her in the graveyard to tell her not to violate Evelyn's grave, but she ignores him and asks the groundskeeper to show her the family tomb. Then we see a man put a briefcase on a coffin and open it to reveal a snake in a clear plastic container. We don't see his face so we don't know who he is. He puts on thick yellow gloves (to keep from getting bitten by the snake and because killers usually wear gloves in Giallos) then he takes the snake out of its container. The action then cuts back and forth between Gladys, George, who is hiding and watching Gladys, and the man with the snake. Gladys bribes the caretaker to open the coffin. Then we see the man carrying the snake. Then we see Gladys and the caretaker surprised to discover that Evelyn's coffin is empty. Then we see Albert and the man with the snake sneaking up on Albert, holding the snake's head to his neck, and making the snake bite him. Albert grabs his throat, looks like he's in agony, then falls to the ground. We see the yellow-gloved man drag Albert on the ground and throw him into an open grave, still alive. Later he shovels dirt on Albert and buries him alive. People do crazy things in thrillers, including killing people with venomous snakes, and obviously I don't mind that he did that, because it gives me something to talk about, but when you think about it, using a snake to kill someone is a very dumb thing to do. Why take the trouble to find a venomous snake, find a special container for it, get some snake-proof gloves, risking your own life handling a dangerous snake. It would be a lot easier and just as silent to hit the victim on the head or maybe slit his throat. (Later we see the killer kill someone else with a blow to the head, why not this guy?) I'm not saying it's ever OK to murder someone, but if you do, using a snake is too complicated. (And afterwards, what do you do with the snake?) Maybe he used the snake to avoid leaving a murder weapon for the police to find or maybe he used it to make it look like an accident, but a snakebite to the neck will never look like an accident to any police detective who's not an idiot, and the man was buried immediately afterward, so nobody was ever going to see what killed him. I think the snake we see is a Grass Snake, Natrix natrix, a species common throughout Europe, including Italy where the movie was made, and a snake that's harmless enough to use on a movie set. Apparently, some versions of this movie have been heavily edited and censored, but you can watch the whole movie with all of its nudity and read a synopsis of it over at The Silver Scream.