The first and last time I saw this Tobe Hooper movie was back in 1990, I was nineteen years old, the strangest thing about it was that at that time I was totally gripped by it, but also at the same time I couldn't forget about it.The sole reason at that time was the participation of Brad Dourif in the main role of Samson/David Bell, the man with a curse on his very soul! Just recently I managed to pick up the Anchor Bay Region 1 double header release which aside from Spontaneous Combustion, also included the seriously excellent Society.Having just watched SC again, the movie despite some real shoddy effects moments, really has held up well after all these years, as previously mentioned, Dourif holds the movie together despite his performance taking flight on many occasions.I have to say though that two other performances really stood out for me, one being the criminally underused Brian Bremer as Samson's father, you know I still remember Brian as Bunt in Stan Winston's excellent Pumpkinhead' from that performance to his turn here, he has always been an actor to remember.The other was Cynthia Bain as Samson's potential love interest, I cant for the life of me remember her character's name, of course both her and Bremer were both in Pumpkinhead, both shared some serious screen time in that movie and it's two bad they didn't here.Hooper might be considered as a master of horror, and despite having watched nearly all his horror offerings, I can honestly say that aside from SC and The Funhouse, nearly everything else has been more miss than hit, oh the scars that I still carry from sitting through The Mangler.But enough about the bad and remember this decent little flourish that Hooper concocted from his own story, with some decent set pieces and a brisk pace, Spontaneous Combustion certainly set my cinematic world on fire some twenty plus years ago and to this day I recall with fondness.Check it out - 9/10

After sad concourse of circumstances Sam Kramer is a grown-up not exactly knowing his real past and who his parents were. Sam's mother became pregnant with him when the young couple was subject to bomb shelter testing experiment. As a result he was born gifted with fire-starting abilities. Still he and other "experimentals" are being watched by the government. As soon as Sam starts understanding more and more about his origin, troubles begin.This nice thriller/drama brilliantly mixed with horror is a another fine touching movie by great Tobe Hooper, whose "Texas chainsaw 74", "Funhouse", "Lifeforce", "Texas chainsaw part 2" and "Mortuary" I admit to be true unique masterpieces. I understand it might sound strange, but adding this great score, even makes this movie somewhat lyric.

This a fascinatingly awful movie. It make so little sense that it starts to make a kind of weird internal logic of its own. Well, it would if it didn't keep darting off up side-alleys until eventually floundering under the weight of its own indecisiveness. The movie can't make up its mind whether it is a straight forward 'Man Turns Into Monster' flick (like all those 1950s 'THE INCREDIBLE insert verb ING MAN' movies), or a ghastly big business conspiracy theory movie, or a mystical afterlife contact story, or... or what? Take your pick. It's just a mess. Grotesquely over the top and firing off in all directions, leaving loose ends flapping all over the place. It was as if Tobe Hooper had been taking David Lynch pills. Unfortunately he didn't take enough.

Tobe Hooper has made great movies so I was certain this couldn't be BAD. I didn't read any reviews and tried to watch this unintentionally humorous film. At times this made me laugh, sometimes I almost fell asleep, sometimes made me almost CRY for Hooper.I rated this 3/10 because its 1990 "horror"-movie and many interesting or funny things happened there. Throughout the movie I was thinking something like "they simply CAN'T add more things in this movie..." .. but they did.Some tell this is some sort of Firestarter clone but truly isn't. It's based on that idea but thats all. This is combination of horror, comedy, weird religion/god things, funny gore, simple effects, drama, horrible acting, unbelievable script..and more.*spoilers* Story is: Government tries to create ultimate weapon using nuclear power or something and fails, during process child is born for 2 test persons. When mom sings to her child after the birth, both husband and wife burns and it is SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION. Government buries whole thing and leaves this child live amongst other people and ... then after x years this kid is grown up and realizes he has been born for a reason and whoa he can burn things with his brains. Then everything goes unbelievable messy nothing really explains anything and .. Well when The Government realizes "okay now he can set this fire thing to work" they take him to normal hospital where is some nuclear toxic what they are going to use on this man BECAUSE they could kill him, no they can't shoot him no! .. and argh, I guess thats enough to tell, I promise there is 100 more weird things in this movie.Well if you want good laughs watch this one. Gosh.