Sometimes all you can do is say "Wow!" and that's how I feel about this Saturday Night Special feature presentation from down deep in the bowels of "The Dungeon!
This thing is called "Spasms" and like "Wild Thing," it is a Canadian project! An alternate title is "Death Bite." It's about a giant snake with a bite so vicious, that people on the island and other religious groups actually think it's the Devil! The snake's bite is so horrific that in a matter of minutes, a victim will swell up into a bloated mess and eventually just blow apart!
"Spasms" stars Oliver Reed and Peter Fonda, and that's basically the best thing about it!
Oliver Reed's character shares something unexplainable with the snake. It killed his brother, and he now sometimes sees through the snake's eyes. Peter Fonda's character is a Doctor who is supposed to figure it all out. Good luck with that!
Personally, for me Oliver Reed can do no harm! He could just sit in a room and stare, and I'd still find him interesting, and it's a good thing, because that's what he does a lot in "Spasms."
Peter Fonda is also always fun to watch on the big screen, but for completely different reasons!
Kerrie Keane is Oliver Reed's character, Jason Kincaid's niece. It's slightly odd that Kerrie's first big screen appearance was in "The Incubus" where she played Laura Kincaid!
The side story is there's a serpent worshiping religious cult who also wants the snake!
Al (The Clown Murders) Waxman is the phoney baloney shyster who says he can deliver the snake to the cult! He's an idiot!
This is just a cool portrait of Oliver Reed I had to include!
Jason Kincaid is nuts! He had the snake brought to America. Of course it gets out and goes on a killing rampage and he sees the whole thing!
I'm pretty sure that in every movie Peter Fonda is in, he gets to choose what his character wears, and what kind of vehicle he drives!
A fairly sizable chunk of the film is spent looking at the world from the view of the snake!
This is what the snake saw when this stupid guy from the church opens the box and lets it escape!
The stupidest part of the movie is after the snake kills a couple of people and exists the building, Peter Fonda goes looking for it knowing it will want to find a warm spot, and even though he saw dead bodies with guns couldn't stop the snake, he goes after it with a garden rake.
The snake is now on a mission to kill every female extra on the set!
This one he manages to chase into a bathroom where her blonde room mate is conveniently taking a shower!
We also see a lot of the surrounding countryside through the snake's eyes!
In fact you never see anything but a blur of the snake until the closing minutes
It wasn't even easy to get these shots. Too bad, because the snake actually looks pretty scary from these two photos!
I never saw many of these krazy 80's movies the first time around, and ones like this and "Wild Thing" can be pretty entertaining I have to admit. I didn't say good, I said entertaining, and sometimes that's just good enough!
