Snake Eater

As an action film that one would pay to see in the theatres, yikes!!! This movie is incompetent on almost every level - BUT....for those of us who enjoy cheesy bad movies - this one is a winner. REAL bad acting, there is a guy who plays the "funny" sidekick cop to Larry Csonka, legendary Miami Dolphins running back, no less. And this guy's performance is so bad, so over the top, he makes the Dead End Kids look subtle. Lamas (who I'm sure is gorgeous to the gals) is one of the most "dead-eyed" actors I've ever seen. It is a simple revenge flick - where Lamas' parents are killed by crazed rednecks (plus they kidnap his sister - who gives a truly awful, amateurish performance). The dangerous psycho hillbillies have to be seen to be believed - talk about scenery chewing. Sheesh. Any film that has hillbillies torture people by putting them in big fluffy sleeping bags and hanging them from a tree - well, how can you not watch??

Lorenzo Lamas stars as Jack `Solider` Kelly an ex-vietnam vet and a renegade cop who goes on a search and destroy mission to save his sister from backwoods rednecks. Atrocious movie is so cheaply made and so bad that Ron Palillo is third billed, and yet has 3 minutes of screen time, and even those aren't any good. Overall a terrible movie, but the scenes with Lorenzo Lamas and Josie Bell hanging from a tree bagged and gagged are worth a few (unintentional) laughs. Followed by an improved sequel.

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.

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.

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.