Black Snake is a film that is somewhat hard to categorize. Despite being a Russ Meyer film, it doesn’t have enough nudity to be a bona fide soft-core romp. While it sometimes tries to be funny, it doesn’t have nearly enough humour to be a comedy. Even though it’s about the evils of slavery, it’s just not serious enough to work as a drama. While there are quite a number of scenes of violence, it never builds up any tension to make it a thriller. And irrespective of the exotic location, there is no adventure element to the narrative either. Black Snake is definitely, however, an exploitation flick. Taking the above into account, it really is very difficult working out what exactly Meyer was attempting to achieve with this film. At times he seems to be presenting the story about the atrocities of slavery absolutely straight but at others he most certainly isn’t. It’s not hard to see why this film struggled to find an audience – it doesn’t really seem to be aimed at anybody! One thing is for sure though, like many early 70’s productions it certainly seems to have one foot in the blaxploitation bandwagon. Although it’s difficult to see that particular genre’s core audience getting much out of this flick.

The key elements of Black Snake seem to be harsh racist language, bloody violence and a (very) little bit of nudity. The storyline is unremittingly grim, with a group of nasty individuals lording over a slave colony – a sexy female plantation owner, a thuggish Irish foreman and a black enforcer. An accountant travels to the island under a false name to try and find his brother who disappeared there. As it turns out the brother is now a mute vegetable who roams about the island independently. Throw in a rape, a shark attack, numerous whippings, a crucifixion, a burning and an attempted buggery and you have the makings of an exploitation movie. While it’s a Meyer film it would be remiss not to comment on the women. There are only two in the picture, a slave girl and the sadistic plantation owner played by Anouska Hempel. The latter looks and acts the part but she really isn’t a patch on Meyer’s usual strong women. It seems that RM later realized himself that Black Snake was a step too far in an unfamiliar direction. After this film he would go back to basics with a string of 70’s films that are far more typical – Supervixens, Up! and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens.