Silent Venom

Terrible even by direct-to-video standards, Silent Venom details the chaos that ensues after a scientist (Krista Allen’s Andrea Swanson) and her bumbling assistant (Louis Mandylor’s Jake Goldin) surreptitiously bring 20 deadly snakes aboard a decommissioned submarine – with the bulk of the proceedings subsequently following the ship’s crew, including Luke Perry’s James O’Neill and Anthony Tyler Quinn’s Eddie Boudreau, as they attempt to battle the highly poisonous reptiles. It’s a campy premise that should’ve resulted in a fun, unapologetically tongue-in-cheek endeavor somewhere along the lines of Snakes on a Plane (Snakes on a Sub, perhaps?), yet director Fred Olen Ray’s various efforts at overcoming the movie’s obvious low budget generally fall flat and there’s ultimately little doubt that the whole thing suffers from a pervasive atmosphere of shoddiness that proves impossible to overlook. The consistently illogical nature of Mark Sanderson’s screenplay is exacerbated by the film’s almost egregiously deliberate pace, with the former exemplified by the laughable manner with which the snakes repeatedly slither under the feet of the uniformly oblivious characters (ie apparently none of these folks possess peripheral vision). And although the various performers certainly try their hardest at elevating the material, Silent Venom remains a particularly potent exercise in bottom-of-the-barrel filmmaking virtually from start to finish – with the lack of gore and hilariously subpar special effects ensuring that even horror buffs will find exceedingly little worth embracing here.

* out of ****