Silent Venom (DVD)
Foywonder
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Reviewed by The Foywonder
Starring Luke Perry, Krista Allen, Louis Mandylor, Tom Berenger
Directed by Fred Olen Ray
Distributed by Fox Home Entertainment
Watching Silent Venom, I found myself wondering if Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (review) had really raised the bar for this type of direct-to-DVD killer animal flick. I’m serious. For everything that was downright bad about Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, which was a lot, there was a giddy enthusiasm flowing through the veins of that low rent schlock that kept it from completely sinking into an apathetic abyss. Silent Venom could have desperately used some of that enthusiasm. It could have used any enthusiasm. You’d think with Fred Olen Ray at the helm a “snakes in a sub” premise wouldn’t play out as flat as Silent Venom proves to be.
Luke Perry is cast as a twenty-year Navy veteran submarine commander being forced into retirement. If Luke Perry as an aging sub commander is hard for you to buy into, then just wait until you see Krista Allen cast as a herpetologist.
Perry plays his role so stoically he borders on lifeless, sounding like he’s half whispering his lines much of the time. Allen counters with an equal lack of passion in her line readings. Covered in poisonous snakes, a single bite from any could prove lethal, and, still, she speaks of this life or death predicament with nary a smidgen of emotion. There is also supposed to be a hint of romance between the two – supposed to be.
At least the lead actors in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus got into the groove of their film’s campiness and didn’t just go through the motions like disinterested actors only concerned about collecting a paycheck.
Admiral Tom Berenger gives Perry his final assignment to transport a decommissioned submarine to its new Pacific Rim owners. But when the Chinese Navy begins staging maneuvers in the vicinity of an island where Krista Allen is experimenting with snakes to produce a potential anti-toxin to counteract certain bioweapons, the unarmed sub and its skeleton crew have to slip past the entire Chinese Navy in order to rescue and return the scientist and her top secret serpentine cargo.
Her snake-hating partner (Louis Mandylor, brother of Saw psychopath Louis Mandylor), seeing only black market dollar signs, defies her orders and sneaks aboard even more poisonous snakes that were to have been left behind or destroyed, in the case of the two mutant snakes they discovered on the island.
Unmarked canisters containing god knows what as part of a top secret military project? Better believe a curious soldier will pry it open to get a look at what’s inside. If not, the whole movie would have been one giant cliché-a-rama about an understaffed and outgunned submarine trying to sneak out of hostile territory, unable to surface due to an enemy fleet above and trying to evade an enemy sub lurking in the same waters with them. We still get plenty of sub clichés as is – too much for my taste. The venomous snake threat often gets relegated to being the secondary threat. Neither threat comes even remotely close to creating any tension.
Let me back peddle for a second. Some of you might have noticed the phrase “mutant snakes” in the previous paragraph. Highly venomous snakes weren’t enough so a pair of mutant snakes that can grow to Sci-Fi Channel proportions have been tossed in for good measure. The explanation for their existence is almost an afterthought; let’s just say if you think lead paint on children’s toys is bad, then just wait until you find out what the Chinese have been pumping into some of the waterways.
The problem with the mutant snakes is the same problem with the non-mutant snakes: they don’t do much. Except for the computer-generated mutant snakes, Ray uses real snakes, which is a good idea in theory, except unless you’re predisposed to being afraid of snakes, all the real snakes do is slither about not looking at all like they’re looking to do harm. When the whole selling point of your film is “snakes on a sub” and the snake attacks are neither suspenseful nor campy, it kind of defeats the purpose of the film. Even the final encounter that sees Perry ducking and weaving as an abnormally large computer generated snake rears up on its end tail snapping at him, followed by him rolling around on the floor with a big rubber snake, isn’t as fun as it ought to be.
No fun either are the special features, of which there are none other than subtitles(!) and trailers.
This is also a movie directed by Fred Olen Ray where Krista Allen makes it known that she really wants to take a shower, and from there we are treated to neither gratuitous nudity nor so much as an attempted snake attack in the shower. Bad form, Mr. Ray.
Special Features
2 out of 5
Special Features:
1/2 out of 5
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