You wouldn’t normally see a Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus), albino or otherwise, in an exhibit otherwise filled with African animals, coming-to-life-due-to-an-Egyptian-artifact or otherwise. Last I checked, Burma (Myanmar, whatever) wasn’t in Africa. What you want is an African Rock Python (Python sebae), which, as far as I know, doesn’t come in albino. Mind you, African Rock Pythons are pretty unpleasant snakes (certainly compared to the more placid Burmese), so maybe you don’t want one of them.

Snakes make several appearances in this, possibly the most morally objectionable of the Bond films (as opposed to merely sad and risible). In one of the opening scenes, a man is bitten to death by a snake during what is purportedly some voodoo ceremony. The snake appears to be an Emerald Tree Boa (Corallus caninus), though I suppose it could also be a Green Tree Python (Morelia viridis) a long way from home — I’m not that good at telling the difference. Although a tree boa’s bites are pretty nasty thanks to its long sharp pointy teeth, it’s decidedly nonvenomous and would not kill with a single nick. The snake makes a second appearance toward the end of the movie, along with a number of other snakes kept in a coffin; those snakes include Boa Constrictors (Boa constrictor), Burmese Pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) and a few colubrids that are probably rat snakes. It goes without saying that pythons don’t belong in the Caribbean.

Neither, for that matter, do Speckled Kingsnakes (Lampropeltis getula holbrooki), one of which threatens Bond in his bathroom about half an hour in. Now I’ve kept two speckled kings, and while they do have a tendency to chew on your fingers, they’re quite harmless; Bond’s dispatching of said snake with an aerosol fireball is wholly gratuitous. It wasn’t even all that big a kingsnake.

Mr. Bond falls into a pool containing a huge, Bond-eating python, but he defies Drax’s latest attempt to plan an amusing death for him by stabbing the python in the throat with a pen. “You’re not a sportsman, Mr. Bond,” says the quotable Drax. “Why did you break off the encounter with my pet python?” Bond’s inevitably cringeworthy riposte: “I discovered he had a crush on me.” Groan.

Now, the snake in question is almost certainly not real — even in the opening frames, where it’s flicking its tongue most realistically, I think it’s a fake. The pattern most closely resembles a Reticulated Python — in this case, a morbidly obese one. But Reticulated Pythons come from southeast Asia; Drax’s lair is in the Amazon. Could there possibly have been a large, aquatic snake indigenous to the Amazon that would have been capable of snuffing the life out of gonorrheic British secret agents? I know there is one; the name’s on the tip of my tongue …

Our favourite ophidiophobe encounters snakes twice in the first of the three Indiana Jones movies. First, in South America, he finds himself in Jock’s plane, sharing a seat with Jock’s pet snake. You’d think that, being in South America, they’d use something South American, like a Boa Constrictor, which isn’t exactly hard to find. But no: they used a Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus) instead.

Then, of course, the scene: the Well of the Souls, full of snakes. As Spielberg recounts on the bonus disc, they started with a few thousand harmless snakes, then had to add more. Trouble is, most of what they added were glass snakes — which is to say, Glass Lizards (Ophiosaurus), legless lizards that are definitely lizards, with eyelids, ears, lizard scales and breakable tails (hence the name). I spotted an awful lot of them in the scene’s wide-angle shots; as for the smaller nonvenomous snakes, I couldn’t make them out, though I think I spotted at least one garter snake (my favourite snakes, so of course I would).

There were pythons, which were easier to spot: the striking snakes were small Reticulated Pythons (Python reticulatus) from southeast Asia, not the sort of thing you’d find in Egypt; there were some larger-bodied pythons, but I couldn’t tell whether they were African sebae or Asian molurus — it doesn’t matter, since neither are found in Egypt. And look: here are the Boa Constrictors they could have used at the start of the movie!

The cobra scene was well done: actors behind clear plastic for safety, of course. But the cobra was a Monocled Cobra (Naja kaouthia), rather than an Egyptian Cobra (Naja haje). Egyptian Cobras are psycho; Monocled Cobras are more common in captivity and have more distinctive markings.

But no asps (very dangerous), so far as I could tell.

Conan takes time out from the thieving and the plo chops to take on Sith Lord Thulsa Doom, leader of a snake cult, who himself can change into a snake. So of course our man Thulsa has a few snakes around the premises, including a big fake python with improbable fangs. Real snakes used in the movie were almost all Boa Constrictors (Boa constrictor), though I spotted at least one Yellow Anaconda (Eunectes notaeus). I couldn’t get a good look at the snake used as an arrow; my best guess is that it was a Gray Rat Snake (Elaphe obsoleta spiloides). That gives Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age a decidedly New World bent. Where are the Toltecs? I bet Conan would have some fun with Toltecs. Being crucified on the Tree of Woe has nothing on having your beating heart cut out.