Spasms (1984)

So much average

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

SPASMS tops my list for the best killer snake movie out there. Jason Kincaid (Oliver Reed) has this massive serpent captured and brought to the US because it killed his brother and he now shares some kind of psychic link with it (!). He enlists the help of psychologist Tom Brazilian (Peter Fonda) to study the animal and the mental connection, but they don't count on a group of snake worshiping Satanists (!!!) to complicate matters by accidentally setting the beast free. Amazingly, director William Fruet (FUNERAL HOME) gets the cast to play this entirely straight with Reed - who shot the snake themed VIPER (1981) the same year - really throwing himself into his crazy part (even if he seems to be whispering every line). The attack scenes are really well staged (a sorority house siege being the highlight) and DP Mark Irwin makes the movie look way better than it should. Dick Smith handled the gooey special effects; the bursting bodies are great 80s bladder effects but the snake is kept offscreen for the most part. Tangerine Dream supplied the "Serpent's Theme" for the soundtrack.

Wanted to drop a quick note here in defense of Brent Monahan, a high school buddy and friend of my husband's. Brent has stated that the movie's script was altered at least 75% from the original story that he had penned--a common practice in Film Land. Even "An American Haunting" suffered a deviation of 30% from his original story. He will be having a new film produced from one of his works, but only on the stipulation that his own script is used. So lets hope that we will finally get the chance to see his entire novel as it was written.In my experience, unless the original author gets to write the script, stories are often massacred beyond recognition.

Horrendously bad film about a giant, telepathic snake gone berserk. Reed and Fonda insist on bringing N'Gana Simbu, the Demon Serpent, to the US, and surprisingly- the Demon Snake escapes! All "hell" breaks loose: much chomping and mauling of unsuspecting victims, everyone involved is baffled (audience included). After plenty of bad acting and confusing plot, our heroes finally confront this dreadful beast (in person this time, not thru ESP), culminating in the ultimate battle of man vs. supernatural snake! The movie bills itself as using "the most advanced techniques in the field of cinematic special effects", which obviously must have included employing alot of fake blood and constructing large snakes out of papier mache. The film's abrupt ending leads me to believe the film's budget suddenly ran out, or maybe the actors just stormed off the set in complete embarrassment. It's a mystery as to how Fonda and Reed got mixed up in this debacle.

An astonishingly inept monster/slasher movie, in which the monster is just a reptilian version of Jason ("Friday the 13th") : it runs around (and runs faster than a jaguar), killing people with no reason. The film is irredeemably bad and no sane person will want to waste 86 minutes of his life with it.