Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Venomous (2002)

There really ain't much about this flick that warrants watching it. Direction is credited to one "Ed Raymond," but the true man behind the damage is one Fred Olen Ray — a man known for an occasionally fun film, especially when he populates the cast with women who obviously have stock interests in silicon production companies. Regrettably, Venomous is as low on silicon as it is on anything that might make you want to watch it. However, if you happen to need a good night's sleep and are out of sleeping pills, this flick might do the trick.
Poor Treat Williams.
Venomous is the type of film one makes at the start or the end of a career, and Williams, as the headlining star, wanders through the film on auto-pilot, as if unable to comprehend that despite all the big-name projects he started out in, he now no longer has a serious career. But even on auto-pilot, he remains the best thing in the flick — which really isn't saying much.

Venomous
is a z-rate version of Outbreak (1995), but instead of a monkey spreading the Ebola-like plague, it's genetically re-engineered snakes that have escaped from a governmental lab. (In a typical in-the-biz in-joke the virus is called the Satan Bug, after the snoozer film of the same name from 1965.) The snake and the plague hit the town where Williams is the town doc, his ex-wife follows soon from D.C., and then suddenly the town is quarantined and the evil powers-that-be have convinced the Prez that total annihilation is the only answer. Can the snakes and the government be stopped? Well, what do you think?

Venomous
: no thrills, no suspense, no tits, no budget — the last can be forgiven, but not the rest.

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