Silent Venom (USA, 2009)

Let's hear it for the not-very-famous wrestler Fabulous Freddie Valentine, a man who follows his dreams. Including that of being a filmmaker, which is one of the many things he does under his slightly more familiar name by birth, Fred Olan Ray.

Sure, most of his low to Z-budget movies are not very good — see: Biohazard (1985), Venomous (2001), et alia — but give the man credit: he may be doing what he loves badly (well, "badly" most of the time), but he is doing it and living from it. Remember that the next time you're slinging burgers at McDs or preparing to earn your rent money by wiping the smegma off your john's Oscar Meyer as your own dreams slip further and further away...

We don't know who had the original idea for the movie, director Fabulous Freddie Valentine or regular TV-movie scribe Mark "Amazing Onionhead" Sanderson, but the inspiration is obvious: here, instead of Snakes on a Plane (2006) with a slumming name star having fun, we have snakes on a submarine, with no-name actors and slumming lower-echelon stars desperate to pay their rent.

German trailer to
Silent Venom:

But if Snakes on a Plane fully embraces its low-culture, grindhouse roots (who can possibly forget the well-aimed snake bite to the blonde's naked nipple?) to become dumb exploitation fun, Silent Venom prefers an attempt at low-budget TV-level seriousness and wallows within a sphere that could be described as "family appropriate". (Indeed, despite the singular female character's mania to have a shower on the sub, we never even get a discreet skin scene.*) Much like the older, campier, faster, more violent and far-better science-fiction movie Space Marines (1996), Silent Venom comes across as a kiddie film without kids in the cast. Thus, how much you will enjoy this movie depends on how much you like commonplace TV movies and movies aimed at family audiences.

* Krista Allen, who plays the singular female character, has taken nude showers in other film projects — like in the super cheesy horror movie Haunted Sea (1997 / trailer). That film is a sleazier reinterpretation of Roger Corman's horror comedy Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961 / trailer / full film).

Considering this D2V movie's TV-movie and family-audience vibe, it is easy to understand why some claims have been made that Silent Venom is an oblique remake of an obscure CBS movie of the week, the long-forgotten Fer-de-Lance (1974 / full movie), starring David Janssen ([27 Mar 1931 – 13 Feb 1980] of Cult of the Cobra [1955 / trailer], The Swiss Conspiracy [1976] and Moon of the Wolf [1972]). That said, while the somewhat dull and not too fun Fer-de-Lance and the somewhat dull but occasionally fun Silent Venom do share some basic plot similarities (specifically: snakes on a submarine), we see Silent Venom as influenced less by that slab of CBS flotsam than an older, better-known TV series: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68). The underplayed-but-present concept of oversized "mutant snakes" fits well into that series general science-fiction orientation — monsters on the sub were not unheard of in that series — and one could easily imagine the manly main trio of the sub, Commander James O'Neill (Luke Perry [11 Oct 1966 – 4 Mar 2019] of American Strays [1996], below from his turn as a disgraced homophobic preacher in the TV series Oz [1997-2003]) & Lt Commander Houston Davies (John L. Curtis) & Eddie Boudreau (Anthony Tyler Quinn), along with some recognizable-name special guest star, having a new low-budget adventure every week. The only thing in Silent Venom that ultimately undermines that concept is that the movie ends with Luke Perry's character's retirement.

Silent Venom opens on a Pacific island that looks a lot like California scrublands, where we meet the movie's asshole-you-want-to-die, Jake Goldin (Louis Mandylor of The Prometheus Project [2010]), get to watch two non-characters die — one by snakebite, the other by being eaten by a huge, mutated snake in a scene as laughable as anything found in The Snake King (2005) — and meet Jake the Assistant's hot herpetologist boss, Dr. Andrea Swanson (Krista "Can't Act MILF" Allen of Feast [2005 / trailer]), who wears tight string tops and is conducting nefarious military experiments and mutations on poisonous snakes. Then, on a generic military-office set, we meet Commander James O'Neill (Perry), whose moment of integrity has cost him his career, being given a chance to save his retirement by Admiral Bradley Wallace (Tom "I Take Every Job I Do Seriously" Berenger) by delivering a decommissioned, and thus unarmed, submarine to somewhere in Asia.

And so it comes to pass that when Dr. Swanson and Jake have to evacuate the island due to incoming Chinese, O'Neill's sub is the only possible option. Being the capitalistic, egocentric scumbag that he is, Jake smuggles some two dozen deadly snakes (including two giant mutant ones) aboard. Of course, as soon as the sub starts playing cat and mouse with a Chinese war fleet, they promptly escape and start killing sailors.

Okay, Krista Allen is seriously miscast as the herpetologist, but her character is relatively unimportant to the movie; that they even cast such a hot actress in the role is only to add some sexual tension between the tightlipped and sleepwalking Luke Perry, something that only truly ignites during an oddly funny scene in which Commander O'Neill slowly unwraps deadly snakes off Dr. Swanson (only to toss them carelessly aside): director Fabulous Freddie Valentine films the scene as if it were an act of teasing foreplay — not that the tease ever pays off.

Jake Goldin, on the other hand, is truly well cast and successfully channels the irritating immaturity of his annoying younger-brother shtick of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002 / trailer) and its sequels, like the last, My Big Fat Greek Wedding III (2023 / trailer), whence the image below comes, to be the guy you're truly happy to see die; Goldin is so naturally unlikable (but for one inexplicable scene in which he takes umbrage at the sexism of young — and soon dead — sailor Rhodes [Haran Jackson]) that you could almost believe that he must be like that in real life. (But then, who knows, maybe he is.)

Berenger, in the stock part of the good man back at the base, is on screen more than one might expect for what was surely a one-day job, but as always he doesn't let on in any way that he knows he's in a crappy movie. (Rather unlike Perry, whose dry, tired characterization of Commander O'Neill often comes across as the result of a subliminal desire to be anywhere but in the movie.)

Silent Venom is more than slightly padded in more ways than one. Not only do most scenes drag out in TV-movie fashion and the two-part credit sequence way too long, there is an overdose of stock-footage submarine shots. And the whole cat-and-mouse subplot of the sub trying to avoid being detected by the evil Chinese seems less relevant than casual padding of a narrative that really had nowhere else to go once the snakes get released.

Likewise, considering how much easily damaged technical equipment is found on a sub, a lot of guns are shot rather pointlessly at snakes, most of which — all but the two big mutant ones — are not exactly a big target. Still, it's fun watch the snakes disappear and reappear: much like how all the bite victims (but for the galley cook) seem to get beamed into the sickbay, the timing of the snakes' appearances is immensely inconsistent — for example, the snake canister is barely opened and one is seen slithering on Jake's bag and under Dr. Swanson's towel — and they almost seem to appear and disappear at will, like when they basically are just suddenly there between Boudreau and Dr. Swanson when the two are running down the subway corridor.

In short, Silent Venom is as flawed as any other Fabulous Freddie Valentine movie but slightly more enjoyable than many, providing you can harness your inner-child and enjoy it for what it is in its core: a family-appropriate TV movie.

The really young ones and people suffering ophidiophobia might find the flick terrifying, especially since it obviously uses a lot of real snakes (all but the mutated ones), but everyone else will see the movie as harmless fluff that offers nothing new and no surprises. No way necessary viewing, Silent Venom passes the test of possible TV viewing when stuck with the kids or with nothing else is at hand. But don't bother searching this one out, because it sure ain't that good.