Spasmes

Spasms stars Oliver Reed as Jason Kincaid, a wealthy big game hunter who, while hunting in the jungle of a remote island, becomes cursed by a demonic serpent. Since the encounter, the hunter is telepathically linked to each attack done by the snake by way of an all-blue color perspective. The serpent is eventually captured after a vicious rampage against the island's native inhabitants and smuggled to North America for research when it escapes it's handlers. From there all hell breaks loose setting up a final, fateful confrontation with Reed's character. Spasms is a fairly decent suspense movie that will keep you riveted as you follow the snake's indiscriminate path toward each doomed victim it encounters. Special effects are generally good for it's time, showing some of the damage impact of the serpent's poison on it's victims but shots of the rarely shown snake itself does reveal some limitations due to lack of budget...this movie would be a good candidate for a CGI enhanced remake with increased budget to tie up the original's loose ends; mainly the believability of the snake itself. The movie is loosely adapted from the novel "Death Bite". Spasms is an increasingly hard to find title which so far is only available in it's out-of-print VHS format.

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.

Nothing qualifies such bad reviews of a movie called "Spasms". It's about a giant snake and Oliver Reed shares telepathic powers with it. What more is there to expect? Not likely another early 80s director with a diminished Canadian budget could have done better. There's lovely gore effects, some effective shocks, and Oliver Reed emotional and tormented by his predicament. Unfortunately, there is also Peter Fonda and his terrible female costar. But at least one man undergoes such massive spasms he first tranforms into Robert Z'Dar, then pops. Not much more I can ask for than that. For all its sloppy editing and a plot which contains too much unresolved material, the movie delivers its share of drive-in quality thrills. Plus, the Tangerine Dream end credits piece rocks.

The story in a nut-shell. Oliver Reed has a psychic link to a satanic super snake which emerges from hell every seven years and kills people on a tropical island. He can see through the snakes eyes when it kills! Obviously the best thing to do in a situation like this is to bring the snake to the US (Actually Canada filling in for California) Naturally the snake gets loose and continues doing what giant venomous satanic super snakes do best. BITING PEOPLE!!! Good stuff.

The FX are done on the cheap. Lots O POV shots, inter-cut with VERY quick shots of a GIANT balloon-y snake head on a too thin looking body, inter-cut with screaming bloody people tossed around. The whole thing was done on the cheap for the most part. There is one well done super venomous bite that makes a guy break out a little. They probably spent half the budget on that one shot. You'll know the scene when you see it. If you like bad horror flicks from the 80's. You'll probably dig this movie. If the snake doesn't scare you, Oliver Reeds mustache will.

The same year as starring in killer snake movie Venom, Oliver Reed also appeared in killer snake move Spasms (although this film would be released two years later, in 1983). I'm not saying that the actor was in a rut (okay, that IS what I am saying), but surely he was making these movies for beer money. Peter Fonda, whose career was hardly on the up either, co-starred, but the real draw was surely the massive reptile itself: what a shame, then, that the snake remains hidden for most of the film (the animal's attacks employing blue-tinted snake POV shots), and is quite laughable when it is finally revealed.

Directed by William Fruet, the man behind such mediocre thrillers and chillers as Death Weekend, Killer Party and Blue Monkey, this scary snake flick stars Ollie as Jason Kincaid, who has been cursed with nightmares ever since he was bitten by a supposedly supernatural snake that appears once every seven years in deepest Micronesia (the same part of the world where the strange plant in Blue Monkey originated). Wanting to put an end to his terrifying dreams, Kincaid has the creature captured and shipped to the States, and enlists help from expert in psychic phenomena Dr. Tom Brasilian (fnarr, fnarr!), played by Fonda. Unfortunately, an evil snake cult are keen to acquire the deadly serpent, and accidentally release it during a bungled raid on Brasilian's laboratory.

The ensuing chaos includes Brasilian and Kincaid's niece Suzanne (Kerrie Keane) coming face-to-fang with the escaped snake in a greenhouse (a scene that provides a 'parrot scare', a variation on the classic 'cat scare'), the snake going crazy in a sorority house (the reptile launching the body of one victim through a shower screen where another girl is washing herself), and the snake's hilarious slither through a crowded park, which allows Fruet to include a shot of a well endowed woman on roller skates (camera levelled at her chest) and a buxom blonde in a tiny pink bikini playing frisbee.

Hot woman in one-size-too-small swimwear aside, the film's most memorable moments come courtesy of make-up effects legend Dick Smith, who uses some terrific bladder effects to show the result of the snake's bite: as the victims go into shock, their veins bulge and their flesh swells until the pressure causes the skin to burst. I only wish there had been more of Smith's work, 'cos it's really good.

Fruet wraps things up leaving several plot threads unresolved: an incestuous relationship between Kincaid and his niece is hinted at and then totally ignored, while the snake cult conveniently vanishes. The rushed finale sees Kincaid using his psychic connection with the snake to track it down and try to kill it, Reed wandering around his house, having psychic flashbacks to the snake's previous victims (thereby padding out the runtime a tad), before meeting his scaly nemesis. Having only seen glimpses of the creature thus far, we finally understand why: it's rubbish. The Ollie vs Snake showdown is very disappointing: Kincaid is killed all too quickly, Brasilian arriving on the scene moments later to shoot the (now stationary) reptile in the head with his machine gun. It all sssseeems a little too eassssy for my liking (sssorry, I couldn't resssisssst).