Simply Perfect

One of my all time favorites.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Jack "Soldier" Kelly (Lorenzo Lamas) was in the Marine's Search and Destroy Special Forces known as "Snake Eaters". He's an undercover cop in a rundown city. After spiking the criminals, he is fired. Junior and his backwoods criminals kill his parents and kidnapped his sister Jennifer. Jack comes to hunt down the perpetrators and gets a motorcycle seadoo to do it.This movie should prove that Lorenzo Lamas is a horrible actor. He's not the only one in this movie. There are some very cheesy lines that are almost funny. Everything is so bad that it borders on being a spoof. The problem is that Lamas and the gang aren't good enough to take advantage of its inherit camp. I kind of laugh at how bad this is but I don't feel good doing it.

"To Him, America is just another jungle." Jack "Soldier" Kelly (Lamas) is an ex-Marine (part of an elite "Search and Destroy" unit dubbed "Snake Eaters) who now works as an undercover cop in the big city. His unorthodox ways and flippant attitude really annoy all of his co-workers, including the two cops in the car clearly meant for "comic relief" and painfully undisguised exposition. Soldier's also pretty handy at making booby traps. When his family is attacked while on a boating trip by crazed bayou folk, and his sister kidnapped and imprisoned by said folk, Soldier must go into the backwoods to find the truth...and his sister. He is helped along the way by kindly boat rental manager King (Hawkins) and his daughter, simply known as "The Kid" (Bell). In fact, the evil rednecks live so far up river, King and Kid trick out his beloved chopper and turn it into what can only be described as a "boatercycle". Surviving on his wits alone, will Soldier be able to defeat the entire inbred family before it's too late? A tagline on another poster for Snake Eater proclaims "As dirty as Dirty Harry (1971). As dangerous as Deliverance (1972)". This seems to sum up the mindset of the filmmakers. Although neither Clint Eastwood or Jon Voight had to deal with "Torchy", aka Ron Palillo.It is somewhat interesting to watch Lamas go from the city with its spray painted, run-down tenements and homeless people, to the supposedly "tranquil" countryside. Lamas never misses a chance to be shirtless and oiled up, and his snake belt buckle is usually on display. He's so crafty he hides the surveillance wire in his mullet. He has plenty of catch phrases, and nowhere is the goofy humor more on display than in the comical, prerequisite barfight scene. He's at a roadhouse called The Cage, and he must tangle with a biker who wears a necklace made of teeth. Lamas' biker-dude image here must have proved so successful, it was parlayed not just into the Snake Eater sequels, but the TV show Renegade.While the similarities to Radical Jack (2000) are somewhat disturbing (of all the movies in the world to borrow from, why would the makers of Radical Jack choose Snake Eater?), the bayou folk really are a cross between stupid and menacing. Junior (Scott) is their leader, along with Slim, Jesse, Sissy, Joe, and of course Clyde, who looks like a Doozer from Fraggle Rock. If they ever make a live-action Fraggle remake (it's really only a matter of time, isn't it?) he has a job secured. One of the more disturbing things they do is gag someone with a live fish, which is actually pretty silly. Interestingly enough, Junior attempts to force feed Soldier's imprisoned sister a snake. This dovetails nicely with the film's strange obsession with feeding people live animals, and the title of the movie itself.Weirdly paced (some scenes are way too long and drawn-out than they need to be) and seeming somewhat like a TV movie at times, Snake Eater is passable entertainment, but probably won't knock your socks off.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

As an action film that one would pay to see in the theatres, yikes!!! This movie is incompetent on almost every level - BUT....for those of us who enjoy cheesy bad movies - this one is a winner. REAL bad acting, there is a guy who plays the "funny" sidekick cop to Larry Csonka, legendary Miami Dolphins running back, no less. And this guy's performance is so bad, so over the top, he makes the Dead End Kids look subtle. Lamas (who I'm sure is gorgeous to the gals) is one of the most "dead-eyed" actors I've ever seen. It is a simple revenge flick - where Lamas' parents are killed by crazed rednecks (plus they kidnap his sister - who gives a truly awful, amateurish performance). The dangerous psycho hillbillies have to be seen to be believed - talk about scenery chewing. Sheesh. Any film that has hillbillies torture people by putting them in big fluffy sleeping bags and hanging them from a tree - well, how can you not watch??

This is the first of three movies featuring the character Jonathan(Soldier)Kelly played to perfection by Lorenzo Lamas. There are small parts by well known people you'll enjoy finding for yourself and there are some scenes so violent that I cut them out of my copy so I could sleep at night. Watch Lorenzo sing, strip and do dead pan comedy in the opening scene and look for a special scene at the end to tie it all together. Soldier is an ex-Army Ranger who brings jungle tactics to the violence we can find in our society- this time in the search for the killers of his parents and his kidnapped sister. Some great tongue in cheek comedy lightens the load and what is a Lamas movie without a display of martial arts?