Cinema Fearité presents 'Spasms'
Cinema Fearité pays tribute to Peter Fonda by revisiting his creature feature 'Spasms.'
This past weekend, Hollywood lost one of its legends with the passing of Peter Fonda. Fonda was best known for starring with Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson in the counterculture classic Easy Rider, but he worked all over the place, appearing in everything from westerns like 3:10 to Yuma to action bombs like Ghost Rider (both in the same year of 2007, by the way). His body of work is versatile and varied, and he worked with everyone from Corman (on The Wild Angels) to Carpenter (surfing through Escape from L.A.). So, of course, he made his share of horror movies, flicks with names like Race with the Devil and Spirits of the Dead. But his finest horror hour might just be 1983’s Spasms.
Spasms stars Fonda as a psychologist named Dr. Tom Brasilian who is contacted for help by a millionaire named Jason Kincaid (Oliver Reed from Burnt Offerings, The Devils, and Paranoiac). Kincaid claims to have a psychic connection with a giant serpent which he unsuccessfully hunted years before on a Micronesian island. He has had the beast captured and brought to America so that Brasilian can study his mental link with it. Unfortunately, a snake-worshipping cult led by Reverend Thomas Thanner (To Kill a Clown’s George Bloomfield) has set its sights on the snake as well, and has sent two agents named Warren Crowley (Class of 1984’s Al Waxman) and Deacon Tyrone (Angus MacInnes from Hellboy) to retrieve it for themselves. This sets off a deadly chain of events that results in the snake being freed – and attacking anyone in its path.
Spasms was directed by William Fruet (Death Weekend, Killer Party) from a script that he wrote with Don Enright (Not of This World), adapted from the awesomely named novel Death Bite by Michael Maryk (13th Child) and Brent Monahan (An American Haunting). It’s a classic Canadian “Canuxploitation” film, just ahead of its time with cinematic moments that recall (or in some cases, maybe inspired?) everything from Jurassic Park and Creepshow to Final Destination and Them That Follow. It’s a mishmash of a creature feature, a satanic cult movie, and a death curse flick. With scantily clad Canadian women everywhere.
Peter Fonda’s Dr. Brasilian is the moral center of Spasms, sort of like the “straight man” of the movie. Even though there is truth to his psychic snake claims, Kincaid is a nutjob, obsessed in a “Moby Dick” way with this giant serpent. Reverend Thanner is the typical corrupt cult leader, and Deacon Tyrone is essentially an extension of his arm. Crowley is comic relief at his best, and a bumbling antagonist at his worst. With Kincaid’s assistant, Suzanne (Kerrie Keane from Bates Motel), as a sounding board, Brasilian is the voice of reason, the science that counters the superstition. He’s also the only character who isn’t after the snake for self-serving reasons. Once the threat is realized, he wants to destroy it, no questions asked. A character like this needs to command the screen, and in Spasms, command the screen is what Fonda does.
Even though Spasms employs the “less is more” philosophy when it comes to showing its monstrous snake, the movie’s visual effects are legendary. It’s the snake bite effects in the movie that are notable. The serpent’s bite is highly venomous, and the wounds inflicted swell, pulse, and, eventually, melt right off of the victim’s body. The makeup effects use plenty of latex filled with fake blood and pus, and the movement is provided by air pumps inflating sacs mounted under the rubber apparatus. Initially, these bites are all on appendages like arms and legs, but, of course, eventually a character gets bitten on the face, and the audience is treated to a head wound clinic that rivals anything done by Cronenberg in his prime.
Speaking of Cronenberg in his prime, Spasms was photographed by cinematographer Mark Irwin, who also shot the early Cronenberg classics The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, and The Dead Zone. Spasms is a dark movie, with Irwin painting shadows anywhere and everywhere he can throughout the course of the movie. There’s a cool snake point-of-view shot that happens repeatedly, sort of like a Snake-O-Vision, that lets the audience see what the serpent sees through a cold blue monochromatic filter. Even Kincaid’s psychic memories and impressions of the beast’s exploits are bathed in the blue tint. It’s a fun and unique way to represent the snake, since the creature itself is shown so infrequently.
The musical score for Spasms was composed by Eric Robertson (If You Could See What I Hear, Plague), and it’s a serviceable little sci-fi/horror soundtrack. But the real musical draw to the movie is “Serpent’s Theme,” a synth-and-percussion piece written by cinematic stalwarts Tangerine Dream (Strange Behavior, Near Dark) that, of course, signifies the rise of the film’s monster. It’s repetitive, but tribal and primal enough to be the most memorable snippet of music in the film.
Peter Fonda’s resume is long and storied enough for it to seem like he was the type of actor to never turn down a role. But, in reality, he loved what he did. And that love came through in his movies, no matter how big, small, good, or bad they were.
