In The Flying Serpent, Zucco plays archeologist Andrew Forbes, who discovers a living feathered serpent -- the Quetzalcoati of the Aztecs. But when he gives one of the beast's feathers to his wife, the beast follows her and kills her. Since Zucco is so good playing a mad scientist, he decides this would be a good way to get back at his enemies -- just give them a feather, then sit back and wait for the bloodbath. And somewhere in the movie there's Montezuma's fabulous treasure!
Aiding Zucco in this flick are a host of unknown, little known, and familiar (in a "What's his name? Dunno, but he looks familiar" way) faces: Ralph Lewis, Hope Kramer, Eddie Acuff, Wheaton Chambers, Henry Hall, Milton (Miltin) Kibbee, Budd Buster (love that name!), and Terry Frost. Richard Crane (who went on to play the title role in Rocky Jones, Space Ranger) has an uncredited role. The monster is played by a somewhat undersized, goofy model maneuvered by strings. (There is some debate whether the strings are visible; some swear they are viewed in every shot, others deny stoutly it. I suspect these people were watching different prints of the films.)
The Flying Serpent was directed by "Sherman Scott," who was really Sam Newfield, the man who gave us The Terror of Tiny Town, at least nine Lone Rider films, a bunch of Billy the Kid films, and many, many other totally forgettable movies. John T. Neville provided the script -- which was the last of his 60 credits on IMDb.
The Flying Serpent can be viewed as Bela Lugosi's The Devil Bat-lite.
Enjoy.
https://archive.org/details/THEFLYINGSERPENT1945_1
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