IMDb RATING
4.9/10
3.2K
YOUR RATING
A young man finds out that his parents had been used in an atomic-weapons experiment shortly before he was born, and that the results have had some unexpected effects on him.A young man finds out that his parents had been used in an atomic-weapons experiment shortly before he was born, and that the results have had some unexpected effects on him.A young man finds out that his parents had been used in an atomic-weapons experiment shortly before he was born, and that the results have had some unexpected effects on him.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaIn a promotional Fangoria interview for Exorcist 3 (1990), Brad Douriff mentioned how disappointed he was with final version of Spontaneous Combustion and how what was originally very interesting and promising movie was ruined by studio interference and producers during production;
"You see me playing my heart out in scenes that are not working, and the reason they're not working is that movie doesn't make sense. It's almost funny. As a matter of fact, the better my acting was in some of the later scenes, the funnier film was. I found myself at the mercy of people who didn't know what they were doing. I probably shouldn't be saying this, but my feeling is, the producers destroyed it. Tobe could have made three different movies with material he had, and each one would have worked. But by the time he got it, it had changed from a love story to a suspense thriller about my character's paranoid fantasy, to a "guy goes crazy" film about this insane killer who becomes a destructive force that's going to wipe out mankind. We went back and kind of restructured it as a love story, but it didn't really help. The beginning of the film was great, and a certain portion of my stuff was fine, but then it became stupid when all the flame stuff started happening."
- GoofsThe position of the syringe stuck in Lisa, changes.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Cinemassacre's Monster Madness: Spontaneous Combustion (2009)
- SoundtracksI Don't Want to Set the World on Fire
Written by Eddie Durham (uncredited), Eddie Seiler (uncredited), Sol Marcus (uncredited) and Bennie Benjamin (uncredited)
Performed by The Ink Spots
Courtesy of MCA Records
Featured review
I really wanted to love Spontaneous Combustion: I like the basic idea, Brad Dourif is a cool actor, Tobe Hooper is the legendary director responsible for my favourite horror film, and some of the flame effects are pretty intense (I repeat: 'some'). Hell, there's even a fun cameo from John Landis. The problem is that the film just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Dourif plays Sam, a young man who discovers that the anti-radiation experiment which caused his parents to spontaneously combust in the 1950s is now responsible for some equally strange side effects in his own body. As Sam tries to prevent himself turning into a small pile of smouldering ash, he realises that his whole life has been a lie perpetrated by sinister industrialist Lew Orlander (William Prince).
With some incomprehensible cobblers about an evangelist who preaches to Sam over the radio, a puzzling sub-plot involving a nuclear power station, a killer who inexplicably uses glowing green goop in a syringe to bump people off, and the never-adequately explained presence of a continually growing birthmark on Sam's hand, I lost the plot about half-way through and had to content myself with the occasionally impressive body burn stunts and a modicum of manky make-up effects.
The first movie made by Hooper after his unsuccessful three film deal with Cannon, Spontaneous Combustion unsurprisingly didn't set the box-office on fire either, and the director's career has failed to reignite ever since.
Dourif plays Sam, a young man who discovers that the anti-radiation experiment which caused his parents to spontaneously combust in the 1950s is now responsible for some equally strange side effects in his own body. As Sam tries to prevent himself turning into a small pile of smouldering ash, he realises that his whole life has been a lie perpetrated by sinister industrialist Lew Orlander (William Prince).
With some incomprehensible cobblers about an evangelist who preaches to Sam over the radio, a puzzling sub-plot involving a nuclear power station, a killer who inexplicably uses glowing green goop in a syringe to bump people off, and the never-adequately explained presence of a continually growing birthmark on Sam's hand, I lost the plot about half-way through and had to content myself with the occasionally impressive body burn stunts and a modicum of manky make-up effects.
The first movie made by Hooper after his unsuccessful three film deal with Cannon, Spontaneous Combustion unsurprisingly didn't set the box-office on fire either, and the director's career has failed to reignite ever since.
- BA_Harrison
- Apr 2, 2010
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $5,500,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $50,367
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $50,367
- Feb 25, 1990
- Gross worldwide
- $50,367
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