Yes, charismatic cult actor Lance Henriksen was basically the one and only reason I decided to watch "Delta Heat". Luckily he plays one of the leading roles - with verve, as always - and he even has a hook for a hand! Well, more like a tool, really, as he still has his hand but it's severely traumatized due to a drug-bust gone bad which had him landing in a river, after an explosion sent him off flying, where his arm got munched on by a crocodile. A strangely edited flash-back scene in slow-motion that was! But yeah, whatever.
Was this movie any good? Yes and no. Parts of it play out like a cop-buddy kind of film, with Anthony Edwards & Lance Henriksen teaming up to find out who killed Edwards' partner and what all is going on with the alleged drug trafficking in the swamps. They both had okay chemistry together, so I didn't mind that. The kind of mystery plot wasn't too bad either; you basically have to figure out who the bad guys are along with the puzzling enigma surrounding the character of Forbes, the supposedly dead & crazy drug-lord. The 'guess what's going on' aspect was fairly good constructed as well. But what absolutely didn't work, was the humorous approach to numerous events. A hook-joke here, a witty line there, Edwards getting all his suits messed up, etc. And to make it worse, the musical score tried too hard to make it obvious that we're supposed to find this funny.
One thing that did freak me out rather immensely though... I have to be careful how I put this or I might give away too much plot info... Let's just say at one point we get to see a severely deformed human being. The dude freaked me out completely. And while trying to wrap my head around the fact how they managed to pull off his looks with conventional make-up sfx, I completely overlooked the obvious... That was a latex dummy? I guess the image on my VHS tape was a bit blurry, because I got fooled over this one. I guess it had to be a dummy, or otherwise they must have found some seriously messed up extra out there in the Louisiana swamps...
But in general, this is just the okay film to watch on a cold & rainy, Sunday afternoon. Luckily, I might add, the sensual & sexy Betsy Russel was a welcome apparition and sure heated up some scenes. I just figured out she's also starring in the last five "Saw" films or so (together with Shawnee Smith - there's another beauty from the past), so I guess that's as good as any reason to finally check them all out.
