Speed Review: Snapdragon (1993) A Not So Happy Ending February 12, 2021 13:00

Snapdragon happy ending

There's a killer on the loose in China Town, posing as a prostitute murdering her victims during sex by slicing their throats with a retractable razor blade hidden in her mouth.  She leaves behind a bloody Chinese symbol of a Snapdragon on the mirror as her calling card.  Detective Peckham (Chelsea Field, Scott Bakula's wife) is promoted from Vice squad to help solve this string of murders. She enlists her boyfriend, police psychiatrist Dr. David Hoogstraten (Steven Bauer) to assist in profiling the killer, its a favor that begins to take David down a dark path when he's introduced to a amnesia patient by a Doctor colleague and asked to help her as well.  David quickly falls for this woman, Felicity (Pamela Anderson), a soft spoken blonde beauty with nightmares that seem oddly similar to the murders his girlfriend is investigating.

Steven Bauer, Rocky meets Joey Tribbiani in Snapdragon

Snapdragon is another Pamela Anderson vehicle that fails to understand if you're going to make a bad film with one of the most popular playmates of all-time at least make one where she receives a bulk of the screen-time.  But much like Raw Justice, Pamela gets wasted in a film that undoubtedly no one is watching for any other reason but her, in a role that maybe important to the "story" but very light on actual screen-time.  So unless your a glutton for mediocre "erotic" thrillers (which is a stretch to call this one), Pamela's thirty second skin scene, and some very limited acting scenes, isn't worth the sit through when there's no shortage of material from her that doesn't require you to sit through a film where the viewer is supposed to believe a guy who is a cross between Rocky and Joey Tribbiani is a doctor!  Not to mention the aggravating score that seems to play non stop through the entire film, even dialogue, making it almost impossible to follow an already paper thin plot.  But at least the film features a scruffy Lloyd Braun (who ironically also plays a psychiatrist), so that mildly amused me.

Pamela Anderson topless in Snapdragon

Overall, Snapdragon is in the same ballpark as the film Pamela would go on to be "featured" in next, Raw Justice.  The only difference is it actually tries to be serious but unfortunately has very little, to no, action and therefore ends up being boring.  I preferred her character in Raw Justice but considering in both films she's sorely underused the positives and negatives between both films negate each other.  Once again it's simply a crime to waste her on a limited role, especially in the prime of her youth.

4/10


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