Curse II: The Bite

Federico Prosperi directed Curse II: The Bite under the pseudonym Fred Goodwin, and B-movie mainstay Ovidio G. Assonitis produced it as an in-name-only sequel to 1987’s The Curse. The effects were designed and built out of George’s own Los Angeles shop, S.M.G. Inc. Which of his crew went out to the New Mexico location, and who applied the prosthetics there, isn’t recorded.

George later named Curse II among the effects jobs immediately before Society. ¹

The transformation runs in visible stages. Clark (J. Eddie Peck), bitten by a radioactive snake, gets a hand that swells and discolors on screen across a run of appliances. The hand then splits open and a living snake head takes its place, jaws and tongue working. The climax pushes the mutation through his entire body: chest and face swelling, flesh splitting at the torso and throat as dozens of snakes pour out of him on camera. How the rigs worked (what ran on cable, what ran on air) is not documented in any crew account found. Published reviews describe only what is on screen.

Scream Factory’s 2016 double-feature Blu-ray, paired with The Curse, gives the snake-hand effects a clean print.