Snake Eater

Now, I've seen a lot of bad movies. I like bad movies. Especially bad action movies. I've seen (and enjoyed) all of Jean-Claude Van Damme's movies, including the one where he's his own clone, both of the ones where he plays twins, and all three where he's a cyborg. I actually own the one where he plays a fashion designer and has a fight in a truck full of durians. (Hey, if nothing else, he's got a great ass and you almost always get to see it. With DVD, you can even pause and zoom in!) That's why you can trust me when I say that this movie is so bad, it makes Plan 9 look like Citizen Kane.

Everything about Snake Eater is bad. The plot is bad. The script is bad. The sets are bad. The fights are bad. The stunts are bad. The FX are bad. The acting is spectacularly, earth-time-bendingly bad, very probably showcasing the worst performance of every so-called actor in the cast, including Lorenzo Lamas, and that's really saying something. And I'd be willing to bet everyone involved with this movie is lousy in bed, to boot. ESPECIALLY Lorenzo Lamas.

It does manage to be unintentionally funny, so it's not a total loss. However, I recommend that you watch this movie only if you are either a congenital idiot or very, very stoned. I was able to sit through it myself because I needed to watch something to distract me from rinsing cat urine out of my laundry.

It didn't help much, but it was better than nothing. One point for Ron Palillo's cameo as a gay arsonist.

My review was written in March 1990 after watching the movie on Media Home Entertainment video cassette.

This Canadian action pic has a delightfully tongue-in-cheek quality that should appeal to video fans. Pic had a theatrical run last May, starting in Nashville.

Lorenzo Lamas of tv's "Falcon Crest" shows big screen savvy in the title role, referring to an elite search & destroy unit that he served in during his marine tenure. (His nickname, however, is "soldier", stressed in a theme song.) He works as an undercover cop for explosive boss Larry Csonka, giving the ex-football star a nice little acting role.

When geeks resembling the cast of "Deliverance" kill Lams' parents and kidnap his sister he goes on the hunt. Helping out our hero is Ronnie Hawkins, as an aging biker, and pretty Josie Bell.

Helmer George Erschbamer gets good mileage out of the biker subculture and the film benefis from a catchy musical score (integrating steel drum motifs) by John Massari. A sequel toplining Lamas has already been lensed.

Lorenzo Lamas stars as Soldier, a police officer and former marine (I'm guessing a Grenada vet) who unleashes the fury of hell at the expense of hillbilly rednecks who for some reason kill innocent families. (We are never offered an explanation, although i'm guessing that it is because of a lack of anything to do.) For some reason I was "blessed" with receiving all three Snake Eater movies on DVD, of course when you are in a movie club, you often times get stuff you don't ask for. While I never asked for this title, I wasn't all that upset. Indeed the title is a good chuckle since it sounds more like a porn then it does an action movie. Plus the movie is utterly ridiculous, I mean this is a movie where Lamas tries to stop a gang of gun wielding psychopaths with only a hunting knife. Although he finds a gun in the water, which he stupidly lost in the first place. (Seriously you are armed to blitz a gang of mutant hillbillies and you lose your gun!) Of course the Rambo heroics are brought full circle with lame acting, over the top action and below standard production values. Was actually made for television, and although the movie is fairly stupid, there are moments of such absurdity that this could very well have been the best TV show since the A-team. Of course what we are left with in the end is yet another Lorenzo Lamas lunkhead action flick. Let it be said though this is more interesting then his other efforts. At least what I have seen. (Not much.)

* * out of 4-(Fair)

This movie's limitations in terms of acting, dialog, and plotting, are easily overcome by its consistent delivery of "entertainment value." What's more, leading man Lorenzo Lamas takes his shirt off in several scenes, baring his unshaved chest and thus significantly increasing the movie's "beefcake" factor. Curiously, there is no shot of his bare buttocks even though he strips in one scene and even though the female in this scene exposes her breasts. The only major fault in "Snake Eater" lies in its final catch-an-arsonist scene which needlessly extends the movie's running time by four or five minutes and causes it to end, disappointingly, on an anti-climactic note.

This movie has some of the worst acting that I have ever seen! Some scenes are original such as the nails coming through the floor. This nail trap catches these bad guys. The rest of the movie degrades as you go. I can't believe that this movie is not even in the bottom 100 movies of all time. I also can't believe that there are sequels! The next crap movie that I want to watch is R.O.T.O.R. Could R.O.T.O.R really be much worse than this?