If someone ever asks you, “What’s the worst possible way to combine Oliver Reed, Peter Fonda, and a killer snake?” just hand them a VHS copy of Spasms and tell them to clear their schedule. Not because the movie is long—it isn’t. But because they’ll need time afterward to weep, drink, and maybe reconsider the trajectory of Western cinema.
On paper, this should have been a schlocky delight: giant supernatural serpent, telepathic link to a tormented millionaire, and Oliver Reed snarling his way through sweaty monologues. Instead, Spasms plays like a bad fever dream you have after eating undercooked chicken. It’s sluggish, incoherent, and so deeply unscary that you could screen it at a preschool without traumatizing anyone—except maybe the parents forced to watch.
The Plot: Snake Eyes, But Blind
The story begins with Jason Kincaid (Oliver Reed), a millionaire whose brother was killed by a massive taipan snake in Micronesia. Kincaid himself was bitten but instead of dying, he developed a psychic bond with the serpent. Yes, you read that correctly: he can sense what the snake is doing. Apparently, snake venom doesn’t just kill you—it gives you broadband access to a reptilian mind.
Naturally, instead of taking up therapy, Kincaid pays to have the beast captured and shipped to his mansion. Because when you’ve been psychically linked to a murder noodle, the only logical solution is to put it in a box and bring it to suburbia. He enlists the help of Dr. Tom Brasilian (Peter Fonda), an ESP researcher who looks as if he wandered in from a different, equally boring movie. Together, they attempt to… well, it’s never quite clear. Sever the psychic link? Kill the snake? Pad out 90 minutes until someone finds the ending?
Meanwhile, a Satanic cult also wants the snake because apparently reptiles = demons. This subplot is less “terrifying Satanic dread” and more “local theater group in rented robes.” They hire ex-CIA agent Warren Crowley (Al Waxman), who spends most of the film looking constipated and bribing people. By the time the snake escapes and goes on its half-hearted rampage, you’ll find yourself rooting for it—not because it’s scary, but because you want something, anything, to finally happen.
The Snake: Rubber, Stock Footage, and Sadness
Here’s the problem: if your entire movie revolves around a killer snake, you might want to actually show the snake. Spasms disagrees. For long stretches, the serpent is represented by blurry POV shots, reaction faces, and Oliver Reed clutching his temples as though hungover (which, let’s be honest, was probably not acting).
When we finally do glimpse the creature, it looks less like a menacing apex predator and more like a rejected animatronic from a roadside reptile zoo. The special effects team, clearly working with a budget of $12 and a roll of duct tape, gives us quick flashes of scales, rubber jaws, and gooey corpses. Imagine Jaws, if the shark were replaced with a garden hose wearing dentures. That’s Spasms.
The gore is equally unconvincing. Victims swell up, explode, or bleed in ways that suggest the FX department was staffed entirely by interns with a ketchup bottle. There’s one scene where the snake attacks a sorority house, and instead of terror you feel like you’ve stumbled into an improv sketch: half the girls scream, half just look vaguely annoyed, and the snake itself seems embarrassed to be there.
Oliver Reed: Drunk, Sweaty, and Psychically Linked
Bless Oliver Reed. The man could snarl Shakespeare, wrestle a bear, and charm his way through a pub crawl, sometimes all in the same night. Here, he’s saddled with Jason Kincaid, a character who spends most of the movie staggering around sweating profusely, clutching his head, and muttering about his psychic visions. In other words: a fairly accurate depiction of Reed on a Sunday morning.
Reed gives it his all—there are moments where he seems to genuinely believe he’s in a film about cosmic horror—but the script betrays him. His big showdown with the snake ends not with terror or triumph, but with random psychic explosions. Yes, apparently snake telepathy can also detonate the landscape. By the time he charges at the creature with a knife, you half-expect him to demand another bottle of scotch as payment.
Peter Fonda: Somewhere Else Entirely
And then there’s Peter Fonda, who looks like he wandered onto set while searching for the nearest weed dispensary. As Dr. Tom Brasilian, he’s supposed to be the rational scientist, but his entire performance can be summed up as “stoned man squints at clipboard.” There’s no urgency, no fear—just a guy who appears perpetually confused about why Oliver Reed is yelling at him.
Fonda spends most of his time fiddling with EEG machines, spouting technobabble about brainwaves, and standing around like he’d rather be back on his motorcycle. When he finally gets to fire a gun at the snake, it feels less like heroism and more like someone trying to put an injured animal out of its misery.
Supporting Cast: Satanic Extras and Snake Chow
The rest of the cast fares no better. Kerrie Keane plays Suzanne, Kincaid’s niece, whose sole purpose is to doubt everything until she’s proven wrong and then scream at the appropriate intervals. Al Waxman’s Crowley is a villain so bland you’ll forget he exists until the snake eats him. The cult members drift in and out of scenes like they’re late for a potluck.
The real stars are the victims—anonymous extras who exist to swell, scream, and die. Their deaths are meant to be shocking but play more like slapstick. One poor guy inflates like a balloon and keels overboard, an effect so cheesy you half expect circus music to kick in.
The Horror: A Snake in Slow Motion
Let’s be clear: Spasms is not scary. At all. It is not suspenseful. It is not creepy. It is not even accidentally unnerving, unless you have a deep phobia of bad haircuts from the early ’80s.
The film’s greatest failure is its refusal to embrace its own lunacy. Telepathic snakes? Psychic seizures? Satanic cults? This could have been campy gold, a grindhouse masterpiece of absurdity. Instead, it’s played so straight you can hear the creak of collapsing ambition. The pacing is glacial, the dialogue is leaden, and the kills are laughable. By the time the snake finally dies in a burst of gunfire, the only thing you’ll feel is relief.
Final Thoughts: A Venomous Waste of Time
Spasms is the cinematic equivalent of being bitten by a snake, only instead of dying quickly, you spend 90 minutes swelling with boredom. Oliver Reed sweats, Peter Fonda shrugs, the snake barely appears, and the Satanic cult is about as threatening as a PTA meeting.
If you’re looking for a creature feature, watch Anaconda. If you want telepathic weirdness, watch Scanners. If you want Oliver Reed shouting nonsense, pick literally any other film. Spasms is for completists only—the kind of horror fans who treat suffering through garbage as a badge of honor.
Otherwise, the only real spasm you’ll experience is the twitch in your eyelid from sheer frustration.
