They Shall Take Up Serpents Backdrop Blur
They Shall Take Up Serpents Poster
United States
NR 0h 18m

They Shall Take Up Serpents

For the past eighty years, believers living in the Appalachian hills of the southeastern US have incorporated handling serpents and drinking strychnine (a “salvation cocktail”) into their religious beliefs and practice. While serpent handling has been outlawed in all but two southern states, there remain several thousand practicing snake handlers today, most of whom live in poor coal mining communities. In accordance with their faith, handlers refuse medical treatment when bitten. Nevertheless, there have been fewer than 100 confirmed deaths in the history of snake handling. In They Shall Take Up Serpents, we hear the voices of believers and nonbelievers alike, widows who have lost their husbands to snakebites and wives who fear the same fate. The documentary is an intimate portrait of unwavering faith and religious ecstasy virtually unknown in mainstream American traditions.

Watch Now

Top Cast

Overview

For the past eighty years, believers living in the Appalachian hills of the southeastern US have incorporated handling serpents and drinking strychnine (a “salvation cocktail”) into their religious beliefs and practice. While serpent handling has been outlawed in all but two southern states, there remain several thousand practicing snake handlers today, most of whom live in poor coal mining communities. In accordance with their faith, handlers refuse medical treatment when bitten. Nevertheless, there have been fewer than 100 confirmed deaths in the history of snake handling. In They Shall Take Up Serpents, we hear the voices of believers and nonbelievers alike, widows who have lost their husbands to snakebites and wives who fear the same fate. The documentary is an intimate portrait of unwavering faith and religious ecstasy virtually unknown in mainstream American traditions.

Rating

NR / 10
0 Reviews
0 Popular

Recommendations

Night Will Fall

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Night Will Fall

7.6 2014
We Live in Public

In 1999, Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris recruits dozens of young men and women who agree to live in underground apartments for weeks at a time while their every movement is broadcast online. Soon, Harris and his girlfriend embark on their own subterranean adventure, with cameras streaming live footage of their meals, arguments, bedroom activities, and bathroom habits. This documentary explores the role of technology in our lives, as it charts the fragile nature of dot-com economy.

We Live in Public

6.9 2009