Red Serpent

I've seen many comedy's; Undercover Brother, Scary Movie 1 and 2, the Austin Powers series and loads more. There were some that just made me chuckle, some that gave me two or three really good laughs, but none ever really got me to roll over the floor.

I watched this movie with a bunch of friends. We were kinda bored, stuck in a student apartment, and this guy said he had a cool movie.

What followed were the funniest one-and-a-half-hours of my life. We ended up watching it three times, every single time we picked up new brilliantly placed jokes and cliché's that are so bad, they oughta be satires. Looking back, it still cracks us up. This thing is a masterpiece.

Have you ever felt you're not a man for comedy movies? They don't really crack you up? Watch this with a bunch of friends. If it works out well it might end up like it did for me: the funniest 90 minutes of my life.

You'll never know when he'll strike! God, even the tag line is hilarious.

I did get paid to script-doctor "Red Serpent." It "starred" Roy Scheider (before he died; although that could've been optional I think). They flew him into Moscow for two days and had him read lines off a cue card into a cell phone in front of the Kremlin.

Then I got a call to script-doctor the project. My assignment: "We don't want this to be too 'Russian.'" Notice I'm not in the credits. As a Script Doctor, that's not how it works usually. It's a day-job with no credits or residuals. (Damn! If I got residuals I could probably SuperSize at McDonald's some day!) But it was worse -- 2 hours worse -- before I got it.

Half of it had been shot (all of the Scheider scenes and most of the action stuff). I contributed to pasting the existing stuff into something vaguely coherent. I was not entirely successful in that enterprise.

Plot holes! I scoff at plot holes! They gave me plot canyons! 'Cause y'know, an hour of Roy Scheider talking into a cell phone with the Kremlin looming in the background and everyone else in the cast (except for Michael Pare) reading their lines phonetically with heavy Russian accents... it's one of my prouder moments and actually paid the rent for most of a year.

And you shoulda seen some of the pages that didn't make the final cut! I tell ya, it had a chance to be really really.... not awful.

Not really.

This movie can be slow at times but overall will leave the viewers with question of whether or not it was worth it. Not until the second viewing could I appreciate the subtleties and intricacies contained therein. The movie was excellent with respect to the acting, directing and especially editing. Other titles to look for are show chickens and College Town USA. If you expect to find this movie as another Roy Schieder in Jaws, look elsewhere. If you on the other hand wish to see a feature rich with humor (albeit unanticipated) look no further. Other films I would cite as a reference point would be Gummo, Evil Dead, and Bottle Rocket.

The last years of Roy Scheider's life had him making one direct-to-video movie after another. Most of them were awful, and "Red Serpent" may be his worst. He only shows up for a few scenes, but he manages to give a really awful performance in part due to his really unconvincing Russian accent. (And he has a sex scene showing him with his shirt unbuttoned - ugh!) As for the rest of the movie, it manages for the most part to be even worse than Scheider's performance. You can tell they tried to save this in the editing room due to some real awkward editing and insertion of new material. But there are countless other flaws, like bad audio or inappropriate music. But the biggest flaw of the movie is that it's so boring, with most of the movie devoted to dreary chat or people stumbling in the snow. The reason why I'm not giving this one star is that there is occasionally some nice visual candy, ranging from impressive camera movement to pleasing cinematography. Though the movie is still definitely a stinker!

Defining this movie as awful is a compliment. I can't imagine that money could make a PRO such as Roy Schieder lend his name to such a plot less and silly movie. After the naive exploding cars (not shown just heard) and stuff the ending is the cherry on the cake. This movie deserves the Razzie of the Century. Anybody that reads these comments and then watches this movie anyway will not be able to say they hadn't been warned. The dubbing out of sync makes even the most terrible of villains become a clown. The snarling between people "fighting for their lives" just seems to be slapstick. The "technological" effects show screens with the pertinent details of each main character. The speed of these screens is so exaggeratedly fast that not even a trained fast reader could do without the DVD remote. Luckily for all the serious movie lovers of this world the efforts of these "craftsmen" have not had a sequel. Bad taste, bad costumes, bad acting, bad directing, no continuity. I have never seen a movie about which not one good thing could be said until I saw this one.