Spontaneous Combustion (1990)

directed by Tobe Hooper
USA
97 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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In the wake of Tobe Hooper's unexpected death, most people are gravitating towards his earlier works and of course his masterpiece Texas Chain Saw Massacre. There are some amazing and intimate reviews coming out examining his contributions both to the horror genre and to peoples' personal lives, and I thought I would contribute by defending one of his films that seems to have fallen by the wayside. Spontaneous Combustion is not a flawless film, but I hope that I can convince at least somebody that it has a lot of merit.

I was surprised that this movie so directly addresses the sinister underpinnings of the United States' atomic bomb program in the 50s. It's made very explicit that everything that goes wrong within this movie, and everything that plagues its main character, stems from rampant nuclear testing and a misunderstanding- if not blatant, intentional misuse- of nuclear power. There's something I want to point to as an example of the subtlety of this understanding: I'm not sure how true it is, but it's said that the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion was often called the "Fire of Heaven" throughout history, until an incident in which a priest burned alive, after which it was regarded as a more malicious force due to it affecting the clergy as well. This is, I think, a spectacular metaphor for the hypocrisy of the U.S.'s role in nuclear warfare- the awe with which the scientists and government men treat it when it's focused on somebody else, the proudness (in the moment, perhaps not so much today) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the sudden awareness brought on this country's citizens that their fire of heaven can hurt them just as well.

There's a clarity to this movie that I also thought was interesting, and maybe it's just an unusual choice of dialogue or actors but it adds to what I felt was an undertone of direness. Instead of wordless screaming or generic pleas to a higher power the characters often address their situation directly, yelling "There's fire coming out of his arm!" or "The water just acts like fuel!" or anything else highlighting the impossibility of their suddenly having found themselves in flames. This made me think a lot about how direct Texas Chain Saw Massacre also was about its violence. Tobe Hooper seems to be best, even in movies that are less celebrated, at bringing your attention into the moment and forcing you to reckon with the nature of danger and fear.

I'm honestly just rambling a little bit at this point- most reviews dismiss this offhand due to a variety of things: the cheesiness of it; Brad Dourif's overacting; the comically sinister villains. But like I said, I want to defend this movie as something that is worth a second glance because it looks from my angle like the majority of its flaws are not entirely its fault. The lack of access to perfect special effects in 1990 isn't its fault, the way it aged looking like something from closer to 1960 than 1990 isn't its fault. It's got a lot of issues but there's something good and worthwhile underneath it all.