Spasms

A giant serpent is captured on a remote Pacific island and brought to a college in the United States for study. The creature escapes the laboratory, leaving a scientist and a wealthy associate to track it down as it kills people in its path. A hunter who has long shared a strange mental link with the beast also becomes involved, while a cult that claims the serpent as its own interferes with the search.

Spasms is a Canadian horror and science fiction film directed by William Fruet, who wrote the screenplay with Don Enright. It was released in October 1983 and followed Fruet's earlier feature Cries in the Night and preceded Killer Party. Peter Fonda and Oliver Reed head the cast, with Kerrie Keane, Al Waxman, Miguel Fernandes and Marilyn Lightstone among the credited performers, twenty-seven in all. Maurice Smith and John G. Pozhke produced for Hyperion Productions.

Made for a budget of five million dollars, the film drew little enthusiasm from viewers, holding a rating of 4.4 out of ten on IMDb from roughly fifteen hundred votes and a similar 4.6 on TMDB from a much smaller sample of thirty-eight. The low scores and modest vote counts suggest a production that found limited lasting attention beyond its two well-known leads.