Spasms

Spasms (1983)

You scream, you expand, you explode. A new source of evil is discovered and is out of control.

A gigantic serpent is captured on a remote island and shipped to an American college for experimentation.

Date of release
1983-10-28
TMDB
4.6 / 10 (38)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Horror, Science Fiction
Director
William Fruet

Casting

Interesting facts

Spasms is a 1983 Canadian horror film directed by William Fruet and starring Peter Fonda, Oliver Reed, and Kerrie Keane. It is based on the 1979 novel Death Bite by Michael Maryk and Brent Monahan

Production

Writers Michael Maryk and Brent Monahan wrote the novel Death Bite in 1979 to cash in on the success of Peter Benchley’s Jaws in the hopes that their novel would likewise be turned into a feature film. Hollywood agent Martin Erlichman bought the rights to the novel for $5,000 for one year.

The film was originally announced in January 1981 newspaper reports to begin shooting in February of that year. During the planning stages, the original aim was to use live snakes for portions of the attack sequences. Herpetologist and snake wrangler Bob Zappalorti was going to provide the reptiles and Raymond Mendez, a well known model-maker, insect wrangler, and photographer would create hand puppets for close-ups.

As pre-production went on, the film went through several rewrites and different directors who eventually left when principal photography failed to materialize. When filming finally started, original production studio Filmpro Limited went bankrupt less than a week in, and banking firm Cinequity Corporation took over bringing two inexperienced men on board as producers.

Filming took place in-and-around various locations in Toronto, Ontario. The Kincaid estate was Valley Halla Estate by the Rouge River, and the opening sequence was filmed at Scarborough Bluffs Park. The animatronics used to realize the snake were designed by Mendez and Neal Martz.

Despite the impressive nature of the finished product, Fruet was unsatisfied with how it looked on-screen when interacting with the live actors, and limited its appearance in the final film through the use of POV shots and quick edits. A climactic end battle between Oliver Reed and the snake was planned and filmed. It included scenes of the snake partially swallowing Reed's arm, and him stabbing and dismembering it with a knife.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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