The Serpent and the Rainbow
A skeptical Harvard anthropologist races to Haiti to secure a mysterious powder that can resurrect the dead, only to confront a nightmarish realm of walking zombies, blood rites and ancient curses that threaten his very sanity.
“Don't Bury Me...I'm Not Dead!”
Synopsis
A Harvard anthropologist is sent to Haiti to retrieve a strange powder said to have the power to bring human beings back from the dead. In his quest to find the miracle drug, the cynical scientist enters the rarely seen netherworld of walking zombies, blood rites, and ancient curses. Based on the true-life experiences of Wade Davis and filmed on location in Haiti, it's a frightening excursion into black magic and the supernatural.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 22
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Glenn FarrShot by John LindleyScored by Brad FiedelDesigned by David Nichols
Box Office
1988 · Box office
⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.8× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$19.6M
Also known as
- Die Schlange im Regenbogende
- La serpiente y el arco irises
- L'Emprise des ténèbresfr
- Il serpente e l'arcobalenoit
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Cast & Crew
22 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Directors
1Writers
3Producers
2Other crew
6Parents Guide
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