Friday night double-feature: Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag / Snakes on a Plane

If you have not seen it, please allow me to recommend an amusing old Joe Pesci movie called Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag, in which a New Jersey mobster has to take proof of a gangland hit --- the aforementioned heads --- to the boss across the country. Of course, a medical student on his plane has the identical duffel bag, and they manage to exchange luggage. The medical student is heading to Mexico on vacation with his fiancé's parents, who are hilariously played by George Hamilton and Dyan Cannon. The mob boss is starting to believe that the hit never took place. The medical student's fiancé and her mother discover the heads. Pesci's character has to track down the medical student. Mexican gangsters and police, hotel staff, dogs and coyotes, and heads stolen from the medical school all add twists to the story. 

We watched this in a Friday night double-feature with Samuel L Jackson's Snakes on a Plane, which I'd never managed to see.  It is exactly what it claims to be. (Indeed, when the movie first came out and Samuel L Jackson was interviewed on The Daily Show, his answer to Jon Stewert's question about the movie was direct and succinct: "Well, Jon, it's about snakes. And they're on a plane.") Jackson is a character in the movie, rather than carrying the whole thing by himself, which is a good thing. Roughly, the plot is that Jackson is an FBI agent who has to transport a witness from Hawaii to Los Angeles, but the mobster he's going to testify against has put poisonous snakes on the plane to prevent that from happening. It's pretty much as you'd expect: the couple joining the Mile High Club are the first to get attacked, the obnoxious businessman passenger gets it, the mom with the baby are saved by a brave stewardess, the two brothers traveling to meet their mom in LA help each other. There is some suspense, but think of it as a suspenseful comedy and you'll be fine.