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Rick Cramer gets evil via snake bites in Venom.
Venom comes to you from the creator of Scream and the director of I Know What You Did Last Summer… but manages to take just the teenaged slice ‘em up style of those films and completely forget about even a remotely coherent storyline. What ensues is a sub-90 minute romp through the Louisiana Backwater — which apparently is only known for its voodoo charm.
The plot (and I use that term loosely) is as follows: a weirdo local trucker attempts to help an old woman who has been in a car accident… manages to fall over the bridge in said vehicle… is attacked by preposterous CGI venomous snakes… dies… then comes back to life to seek revenge on, well, everyone.
That’s pretty much it. Now, before you go running off to your local DVD retailer to buy this piece of film greatness, stick around for another minute or two.
The first 15 or so minutes of Venom wanders aimlessly as we get to know a few of the main teeny-bop characters. It’s your typical bunch of idiot kids — the good girl, the dumb blonde, the heart-broken ex-boyfriend, the one who likes alcoholic beverages (even though they play a character who is not of age) and the token black girl who dies for no reason whatsoever. Just your typical cookie-cutter, barely B-movie characters.
The car accident is the first main thrust of any sort of forward-minded plot motion. An old black woman, who obviously is well-versed in voodoo, predictably crashes into the side of a narrow bridge in the middle of nowhere. As the car teeters back and forth on the edge of the bridge (read my Beetlejuice review here), that redneck trucker Ray (Rick Cramer) manages to save the old woman from total annihilation. But wouldn’t you know it, the woman has a mysterious wooden chest in the back seat that she apparently needs… and the oh-so-generous Ray is more than happy to oblige. So Ray hops back into the car to grab the chest, except the vehicle conveniently becomes unbalanced and off it falls into the swamp.
The upside-down car slowly sinks to the bottom, with Ray inside… the chest opens, and out pops a bunch of silly snakes. Only these aren’t just any typical swamp snakes. Nope, these bad boys are special serpents used in a voodoo ritual known as milking. This ritual is done by a voodoo priestess (I guess that’s the proper term), and basically involves holding venomous snakes by the tail near a person possessed by an evil spirit. The snake bites effectively “milk” out the evil and save the person. The spirit is then trapped within the snakes body.
How does this relate to the film? Well, the snakes inside that wooden chest have been used for this very purpose in the past, and by biting Ray they’ve caused a reverse reaction to occur. The evilness in all those men and women has been implanted into one soul… and now he’s out for revenge. The resulting 60 minutes consists of senseless killing after violent maiming.
Truth be told, I had very low expectations going into this one. Normally, I wouldn’t have even touched a film like this, but hey… it was free. So I gave it the benefit of the doubt and gave it a look-see. And, even with such lowered expectations, it was still a darned disappointing flick.
How could a movie be so bad? Let’s take a look at one of the writer’s resumes. For the past decade, Fline Dille’s main accomplishments have been as storyline writer for some notable video games (Constantine, Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu, Dead to Rights, and Soviet Strike). Before that, he co-wrote An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, as well as two popular television cartoon series — G.I. Joe and Transformers.
Alright, that might not be totally fair… but seriously, did these guys really think Venom was a good idea? I mean if I wanted to see a film where a half-decomposed, swampy-looking guy goes around and kills people, I’d pop in a chapter from the Toxic Avenger series. I mean, at least Toxie was mildly entertaining from the brilliant minds at Troma.
The one positive distinction this film carries is its fairly entertaining kill scenes. This is where most of the little originality the film possesses comes to the light of day. It seems like director Jim Gillespie slept through the entire filmmaking process, until it came time to off one of the characters. Sad, yes. But at least the film has the gore going for itself.
I can safely say this is the absolute worst film I’ve had the chance to review for Tail Slate thus far, and deservedly garners the dreaded 0-skull rating. It has subpassed (is that the opposite of surpass?) the likes of Undead, The Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave, April Fool’s Day, and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason takes Manhattan. Massively infamous company there, folks… but Venom is the King of the Mountain to date.
Flick Figures: Death-defiling; bodies hanging from chains; pools of blood; multiple counts of stabbings and impalings; choking with chains; 1 exploding body; crowbar-fu; sandblaster-fu; snake-fu; legs roll; 1 motor vehicle crash-and-sink; and many pools of tears — those were mine as I watched this one.
Next Week: The Horror Hotstove makes its first showing in 2006. Also The Horror Guru will take a look at the upcoming release of When A Stranger Calls... the remake of a 1979 film by the same name.
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