Silent Venom (2009)

Sorry, this movie sucks

good back-story, and good acting

Beautiful, moving film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Genetically enhanced deadly snakes get loose on board a submarine on its final run. It's up to tough veteran Lt. Commander James O'Neill (a solid performance by Luke Perry) to figure out a way to stop them before it's too late.Director Fred Olen Ray, working from a compact script by Mark Sanderson, keeps the enjoyably inane and eventful story moving along at a quick pace, stages the snake attacks with flair, treats the silly premise seriously, and generates a good deal of claustrophobic tension. Moreover, it's acted with zest by an enthusiastic cast, with especially praiseworthy contributions from the foxy Krista Allen as perky scientist Dr. Andrea Swanson, Tom Berenger as the hard-nosed Admiral Bradley Wallace, Louis Mandylor as greedy bumbling jerk Jake Goldini, Anthony Tyler Quinn as O'Neill's loyal longtime friend Eddie Boudrea, and John L. Curtis as eager rookie officer Houston Davies. The cruddy CGI snakes possess a certain lovably low-rent charm. Theo Angell's slick cinematography provides a nice glossy look. Stu Goldberg's robust score does the rousing trick. A fun little Grade-B flick.

This movie has been re-titled "Sea Snakes." Maybe it had a name change to dodge a bad reputation. Anyways, it's a movie about snakes on a submarine. " Aha," you say. "The crew will simply isolate compartments, wear breathing equipment, and turn the compartment oxygen off." Well, we all know that would make for a 15 minute movie ... So pretend that it's not a real submarine, a real submarine crew, or real snakes. Oh yeah, the scientists aren't real either. I guess this is my beef with this flick, no suspension of disbelief. Most of the stuff looks fake, and it's hard to care or get engaged. There's a lot of technical errors and they are annoying. One teeny example: in one scene the ship's corpsman (the medic) puts some anti-venom next to a bunch of glass containers, all sitting on top of a cabinet. That's OK if the cabinet is affixed to a building in a non-seismic zone. All those glass jars would have fallen off the cabinet and shattered once the sub went to sea. If you want to see bigger technical errors or learn lessons in careless movie making, watch the flick. Just don't expect to be entertained.

"Silent Venom" is--no surprises here--essentially snakes-on-a-sub. The U.S. Navy has sold an old submarine to Taiwan and Admiral Bradley Wallace (Tom Berenger of "Sniper") assigns Lieutenant Commander James O'Neill (Luke Perry of "The Fifth Element") to skipper the sub. It seems that O'Neill disobeyed a direct order and he stands to lose his retirement benefits as well as his rank, but Wallace engineers a deal that will save the Lieutenant Commander both his rank and honor. Naturally, our hero does not care to sail as a skipper on an unarmed sub. Meanwhile, on an island, Dr. Andrea Swanson (Krista Allen of Emmanuelle, Queen of the Galaxy") and her unethical research assistant Jake Goldin (Louis Mandylor of "Renegade Force") have been conducting research on venomous snakes so that they can provide the Pentagon with anti-toxins for troops in chemical warfare situations. The Red Chinese decide to stage maneuvers and the Pentagon needs somebody to pick up Swanson. You guessed it. The old sub is the closest thing to transport so Admiral Wallace orders our hero to let them hitch a ride. The catch is that Dr. Swanson can neither divulge the nature of their research nor that they are bringing snakes aboard a submarine. Furthermore, Swanson has only a few bottles of anti-toxin that has never been tested so she does not know if it works. No sooner have Swanson and Jack settled into the sub than the snakes get loose. A curious sailor is the culprit."Silent Venom" is reminiscent of a 1974 made-for-television David Janssen thriller "Fer-de-Lance." The bigger snakes are clearly computer-generated-imagery while the smaller snakes appear to be real snakes. Veteran exploitation filmmaker Fred Olen Ray of "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers," knows his craft well enough to milk a modicum of suspense out of the formulaic screenplay by Mark Sanderson. Indeed, Ray has called the shots on over an hundred of these direct-to-video movies. The best scenes show both the real-life actors handling the snakes. Luke Perry has to remove several snakes from the neck of Krista Allen. "Silent Venom" qualifies as strictly an exercise in boilerplate suspense. The ending is clever.Tom Berenger doesn't have a big role, but everybody does fine.

Fred Olin Ray with Luke Perry and Tom Berenger is what amounts to "Snakes on a Sub". the plot has a decommissioned sub going to rescue a research team from an island. The crew is unaware that the people they are rescuing are doing research with poisonous snakes, and that the snakes will inevitably get out at the worst possible time.How many films have there been with computer generated snakes over the last couple of years. Too many if you ask me, I'm guessing that the effects supply store had a fire sale and every low budget producer bought a snake program. That said as these sort of dumb films go this film is pretty good. Of course you'll have to over look a couple of logic gaps the size of Montana but assuming you can do that you might enjoy yourself. Actually if you watch this with friends in a witty mood, you'll have an even better time.