Spasms

Spasms

Let no one think I have anything against Canada, ok? However, there's one moment in Spasms when we're shown a plane landing in San Diego or Sacramento or somewhere, I'm sorry I can't remember where, but it has something to do with why I liked this movie so much. More on that later. Anyway, The character's plane lands in California, and the next scene shows their car driving to the passenger's final destination, wherever that may be, and that huge honkin' tower in Toronto is so visible in the background that we have to assume everyone involved in this movie was a complete drunkard. That's not why you should rent Spasms, however.

You should rent Spasms if you enjoy movies that are so bad it's difficult to tell if the creators were serious or making a lazy joke. In fact in this case, one has to assume the creators themselves weren't really sure if they were serious.

Ditto for all the actors. Yeah, all the performances in this epic are so bad, over the top, or just inexplicable that the whole affair is cranked up a notch into the sublime. The world of this movie exists in a place you've never heard of and don't want to know.

In this world, the millionaire character played by Oliver Reed seems to have a mysterious psychic connection to a satanic super snake which emerges from hell every seven years to annoy the natives from central-Canadian-casting who live on a remote island. Oliver's character, Mr. Kincaid, decides he'd better come up with some kind of cover (don't want any embarassment to arise from the old satan-snake psychic connection) to get the snake to Canada (er .... California) so he can end his torment.

Thing is, when the snake kills, Kincaid sees through it's eyes. Why? That way, they can use p.o.v. shots for most of the snake action, eliminating the need to show the $300 dollar model they built. At one point Kincaid is forced to leave a business presentation early. In boozy breathlessness he opines how he "saw a man die ... felt him...die." Personally, I was rooting for the entire cast to die at this point, but further scenes of snakely mayhem made me glad they didn't.

In fact some of the scenes are quite dynamic, snakes a runnin'up on people at 45 mph and whipping them around in the air like bloody chew toys, interspersed with shots of Kincaid contorting his face like he's trying to pass a kidney stone. Wow.

Anyway, who better to use as a cover for snake importing than rogue professor Dr. Brazillian (!) played by Peter Fonda (!) who gives the weirdest performance in the film. I'm thinkin' he got the script a day or two before the shoot, and the combination of coke and pot put him in a space where he just DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THE CHARACTER. Further complicating matters is the scary satanic snake cult and the silly private eye/ fat buffoon they employ to reroute the snake into their clutches. The goofy character known only as Crowley provides some totally unnecessary comic relief and another stupefying lead performance

Eventually they kill the snake.

I'm sorry, did I ruin it for you?

I should mention that a few beers helps this film out a lot, but if you've got a healthy sense of humor and low expectations, then this is truly one for the ‘so bad it's good' column.None of it makes any sense, from premise to performances, and it's crammed full of details to mock and wonder at.

If you're really a glutton for punishment, try this as a triple feature, in no particular order:
Ulee's gold
Spasms
Anaconda