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Vipers
R1 - America - Genius Products Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (17th October 2008). |
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The Film
 The 'Maneater Series' of film has a lot of untapped potential. It could be a big machine for grinding out super cheap, bloody killer animal movies. Instead it manages to grind out made-for-TV-movies that rarely, if ever, breech ‘so bad it’s good’ territory. Yet some are still able to make it out of the made for TV pit by being beefed up with a little extra violence or sex, that’s so gratuitous and obviously added with the hope of drawing in viewers, it’s hilarious. Thankfully “Vipers” (2007) falls into this region. A secret government plan has lead to the genetic engineering of some super deadly vipers, bred for their venom which cures breast cancer. However a group of these super vipers escapes the research facility and wind up on Eden Island and the panic begins. On Eden Island, Cal Taylor (Johnathan Scarfe) arrives to take over the local doctor’s practice and develops a crush on garden-shop owner Nicky Swift (Tara Reid). But once the snakes begin to strike, the whole town rallies together to fight against the killer snakes, hoping to make it through the night so that Homeland Security can lend them a hand. The story is really poorly put together and only gets you to the point of having snakes attack people, but the snakes are such terrible CG it becomes incredibly fun to watch. Not only do the snakes’ movements stand out, but when they start taking their victims, which are apparently only naked people from the first 20 minutes, the wounds and blood are all so terribly fake it’s really fun to watch. As I mentioned earlier, “Vipers” has some pretty blatantly added female nudity to try and gain some appeal on DVD since it couldn’t have gotten away with it on TV. There are times when a couple is having sex in bed and will cut quickly to a scene where the woman is partially nude only to cut to the opposite camera angle for some dialogue where she is perfectly covered up in the blink of an eye. Of course the acting can’t really go much further either, Tara Reid makes it very apparent that she is only doing the film for the money and wants it to be done with. Her mostly flat and disinterested delivery though has some great bad-movie lines including maybe the best line of the film: “This isn’t Terrorism. Those are snakes!” The supporting cast contains a few familiar faces from other TV shows, including the late Don S. Davies and Mercedes McNabb of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1997-2003) and “Angel” (1999-2004) fame. These two are very apparently much more comfortable with the low budget, awesomely bad movie and do their jobs well, while the rest of the cast, except for the extras, seems to think that they’re involved in some greater project when in actuality, the film is good for an hour and a half of laughs and not much more. Overall, “Vipers” is an awesomely bad direct-to-video/made-for-TV film, but its plain terrible if you’re not in the right mood to laugh at some bad acting, writing (by Brian Katkin), directing (by Bill Corcoran), and abysmal computer generated snakes. However “Vipers” doesn’t do any of this intentionally (like the classic “Snakes on a Plane” (2006)) it’s all just a horribly put together film that could be worth a laugh if you find it in the bargain bin.
Video
Presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, the video transfer on “Vipers” is fine, it looks the same way it would have when it aired on TV originally. However the CG and lighting and camera are all terrible and rarely if ever blend together. Other than these, the transfer doesn’t drop out on the visual aspects, but it doesn’t have much to show.
Audio
The English Dolby 5.1 sound works out okay, the audio and levels come through fairly clearly, but there are some odd dropouts and balance issues. These don’t break the movie by themselves, the film does a good enough job of that on it’s own. Instead they’re more of a small frustration that can get in the way. Additionally for 5.1 surround, the audio is surprisingly flat and doesn’t make full use of the available channels. There are no optional subtitles available on this disc.
Extras
There are no special features other than two start-up bonus trailers for: - “Scifi Saturday” runs for 35 seconds. - “The Maneater Series” runs for 1 minute and 24 seconds.
Overall
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