My review was written in May 1990 after watching the movie on Media Home Entertainment video cassette.
Silly beyond belief, Tobe Hooper's "Spontaneous Combustion" is a horror pic that literally goes up in flames. Receiving only spotty bookings since its February release, dud is now available in home video stores.
Much has been written about the social themes of horror films, but this one is overly self-conscious, wearing its conscience on its sleeve.
An interesting prolog has Stacy Edwards and Brian Bremer as a literally nuclear family: subjected to atomic bomb tests to see if man can survive the effects of radiation. Hooper mocks the gung ho attitudes and newsreel films of a previous era here with the gusto of "Atomic Cafe".
However, film proper is ridiculous. Their son grows up to be twitchy Brad Dourif who suffers more from contrived and unconvincing scripting than his unwanted "Firestarter" abilities.
In a mood of escalating paranoia that is deflated by the unintentional camp laughs, pic limns Dourif's travails due to his suddenly activated uncontrollable ability to turn his arm into a flamethrower. Film becomes nonsensical as soon as it insists that he is not seriously injured by these escapades; at least his parents credibly burned to a crisp in the intro.
William Prince is the transparent bad guy, manipulating people's lives in an ongoing experiment to create for America "the cleanest killing system on Earth". Along the way the film turns nihilistic, with almost the entire cast turning into crispy critters, including guest star John Landis who's murdered by phone. Typical of the video age, film has no ending -it just stops with no explanation or resolution of the preposterous final scene.
Acting is unimpressive, a side effect of poor material. Technicians make solid contributions, from Steve Neill's makeup effects to Stephen Brooks' visual effects produced at John Dykstra's Apogee banner.
