Des serpents à bord

Two scientists are working on an island with poisonous snakes, testing various types of venom. When a submarine picks them up to take them home, they are taking the most deadly species with them. As you would expect in a thriller, the snakes get out of their boxes and start to kill the submarine crew. To make the situation worse, the submarine is chased by the Chinese navy, since their mission took them into Chinese waters.

For a very low budget movie, 'Silent Venom' is fast paced entertainment, naturally with cheap effects, but never boring. Luke Perry (as Commander O'Neill) plays the captain of the boat, Krista Allen is the scientist Dr. Swanson, and Louis Mandylor whom I remember from 'Relic Hunter' plays her shady assistant Goldin whose greed causes most of the trouble.

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.

Intentional camp, and fun enough for a good laugh. Snakes have gotten tired of planes, trains, and automobiles, so now they set sail under the sea. It's up periscope, finance a film budget of $49, and bon voyage.

"Captain, we have snakes on board." Oh really? Perhaps that means the rubber toys that vaguely resemble snakes. Also, some hilariously cheap CGI serpents that move more like video game cartoon characters than a snake. Shots of them slithering around aimlessly on the floor with no actors anywhere around pop up once in a while; this may be inserted stock footage of real ones in a glass case. The actors trying to look scared of these blue screen and/or rubber beasties is priceless. One scene has a guy gingerly lifting a the rubber toys off of an imperiled person, then hurls it wildly lol.

It's all a government conspiracy; astonishing. Some evil guy sends a scientist on board to covertly transport genetically engineered snakes for military use (neglecting to inform the crew of the hissing cargo, of course). Maybe it's the DNA mutation that makes them look so fake, and lazily hang out doing nothing like they've been drugged. Anyway, things progress exactly as expected, in the ludicrous fashion that's expected.

Turn off the brain before watching.

First, there was "Snakes on a Plane". Next, we were given "Snakes on a Train" by poverty-row studio The Asylum. Now, with "Silent Venom", we are given (thanks to notorious director Fred Olen Ray) snakes on a submarine! In fairness to Ray, this movie looks a lot better than a lot of his past cheapies. They actually got a decent-looking submarine set, for one thing, and it's acceptably photographed. But those looking for low budget horror thrills will be very disappointed. The movie is pretty dull in its tone, the movie moves very slowly, and there's very little blood. (Also, the CGI snakes look REALLY bad and are not the least bit scary.) The movie has a lot of stuff happen offscreen or is never explains (Just what is that mysterious substance that's found on a pipe at one point?) Perry looks aged, and Berenger fans will be disappointed because he's hardly in the movie. To sum up, it's incomprehensible that a major Hollywood studio would handle this direct-to-DVD release.

"Snakes on a Sub" (or "Recoil" or "Silent Venom") was on my list of films to see, simply because I had to know why some (once mighty) actors would want to appear in a Fred Olen Ray (or whatever name he's going by this week) movie... The answer is (obviously) money.

The film wastes no time in letting the audience in on what to expect. Really (and I mean really, painfully) bad CGI snakes, that the average 12 year old kid could do a better job with on his home PC. It makes you wonder if they even tried? Yes, they look like cartoons of the worse kind. That being said, the story is not all that bad... Once the premise switches over to the what (and why) a submarine is involved, it actually pulls you in, and you begin to forget about the stupid snake storyline. There is an underlying war-themed adventure about an out of commission sub (and crew) that accidentally wanders into enemy waters. Very well acted by both Berenger and Perry, this part of the film really worked for me, and I became engrossed in the story. The dialog appears to follow proper Navel protocol, and you begin to feel for the characters. Unfortunately, we are soon reminded that this is "Snakes on a Sub" and the B-Movie resurfaces. I think it could have made a decent war drama on it's own, however not many people would likely rent (buy) it for that.

"Horror Sells!!!"

Thus, we are left with good acting and really, painfully, horribly, cheesy FX and an hour and a half of our lives gone forever...

Enter at own risk.