Snakeeater (1988) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Just thinking ... I wonder if Lorenzo Lamas can tell the difference between his father and Ricardo Montalban.

There is something I really like about these Snakeeater movies. They are low budget movies, and they are quite bad. This film looks bad, the acting is awful, and the budget was about zero. It's like a low-budget Canadian ripoff of a Hal Needham movie with higher violence levels and some nudity. Yet the filmmakers manage to create a certain kind of watchable grade-Z entertainment by realizing everything is awful, and not taking it seriously.

For the record, Lorenzo Lamas plays Snakeater, a former Special Forces guy who is now a cop, but gets suspended in every one of the three films, because he breaks the rules, dammit. Once his superior takes his badge and gun, Lamas always takes on some high-minded crusade of his own. His character is a blend of Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson. Like Bronson, he is always ready for bloody vigilante justice. Unlike the serious Bronson, but in the Reynolds tradition, he drinks a lot of beer, gets in a lot of bar fights, drives a lot of fast vehicles, and battles the bad guys with quips, insults, and snide remarks.

In this particular Snakeeater adventure, the Snakemeister's crusade was rescuing his own sister from some hillbillies who kidnapped her after killing his parents. That sounds like a pretty serious matter, but have no fear that it will become a tragedy. Snakeeater gets through it all with martial arts and sarcasm. He treats the guys who slaughtered his parents with the same jokey disdain he would use for somebody who cheated in a bar fight.

In order to battle various toothless rejects from the Deliverance auditions, Lamas must journey deep into the tropical jungles of Canada, where the hillbillies are generic Southerners, but the cops speak with heavy New Jersey accents. Go figure. The Canadian swamp hillbillies kick Lorenzo's ass, he kicks back with various forms of -Fu, and so forth until a bloody ending leaves our hero standing proud. Along the way he meets some naked chicks. The end.

Well, not quite the end.

After the plot is completely resolved, there is a comical scene in which Snakeeater, back on the force, captures Horshack the Arsonist. This scene has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and is completely anti-climactic after the bloody and tragic gun battle.  In Snakeeater's corner are two cops, one of whom is played by former Miami Dolphin running back Larry Csonka. Horshack was supposed to have Screech and Mr Kotter in his corner, but nobody showed.

Given the presence of Csonka and Horshack, I've deduced that the purpose of this scene must be to present a perfectly realized example of advanced Stanislavsky acting technique. By the way, compared to that other cop, Csonka's performance seemed like Kenneth Branagh in Henry V.

Csonka and his partner always complain that the boys at HQ don't show them any respect. Here's my advice, boys. Ditch the lavender colored police car.