Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
My brother is responsible for me suffering through this one. He calls me up one weekend from wherever he is staying in this country this week complaining that there’s nothing on TV which has forced him to scroll through the On Demand menu to find something to watch. So he asks me if I’ve ever heard of RHI Entertainment since there are a lot of their movies available. Is he serious? I’m a professional bad movie watcher, man. Asking me if I’ve heard of RHI is like asking Hugh Heffner if he’s ever heard of titties. So I advise him on some of these offerings when he mentions this film ‘Vipers’, which oddly enough I haven’t seen yet. Considering I just watched both of those gawdawful ‘Anaconda’ sequels I figure ‘what the hell, let’s go snake crazy’. Guess what? This movie is better than those awful ‘Anaconda’ sequels while still managing to be completely terrible all on its own. Outstanding.
To the surprise of absolutely no one there is some lab somewhere performing unethical experiments on snakes on command from some EvilCorp. Funny how these experiments are never on garden snakes but always the worst snakes that God has dreamed up. Today its vipers because viper venom, when altered at the DNA level, can cure breast cancer or something. This film gets out the gate on a suspect note as we witness this evil corporate dude who has come to the snake lab to make sure that the snake researcher is going to kill these super vipers. The snake researcher doesn’t want to kill the vipers but he relents. The evil corporate dude proceeds to pull out his pistol and kill everybody in the room because he doesn’t want the vipers killed. Crazy man. Anyway all these flying bullets around glass cages full of genetically altered vipers can’t be a good thing and now these vipers are out and pissed off.
Welcome to the vipers initial destination, the sleepy island of Eden. Meet a young pair of minority newlyweds who are feeling the need to consummate. Well, at least the young lady did flash us her absolutely perfect pair of boobies before getting eaten by the vipers. Bones and all. Now things get really convoluted in this flick. Meet Iraq war vet and MD Dr. Cal Taylor (Jonathan Scarfe) who was the best friend some dude in
Iraq who got killed, whose father is the current island Doctor (the late Don Davis). This dead dude was dating marijuana grower Nicky Swift (Tara Reid) before they broke up, and town cop Hendricks used to have a crush on Nicky when they were in high school together. On a side note, looking at the pair, I don’t think Nicky was even born yet when Sheriff Hendricks was in high school but I suppose that’s neither here nor there. Right now the sheriff is dating Ellie (Claire Rankin) who is married to Jack (Aaron Pearl) who is dating town floozie Georgie (Mercedes McNab). Ellie and Jack have an EXTREMELY bratty and disrespectful teenaged daughter Maggie (Genevieve Buchner) who can’t die soon enough. Ellie and Nicky hate each other due the sheriff’s high school crush while Dr. Cal is in love with Nicky based solely on the conversations he had with his dead friend back in Iraq. While they listened to Pink Floyd. What does any of this have to do with snakes eating people? NOT A GATDAMN THING!!!
Thank GOD the vipers finally show up and get down to business of cleaning up this mess. Also showing up on the island are that evil corporate dude dispatched by another evil corporate dude played by Corbin Bensen and also along for the ride is a good hearted Doctor (Jessica Steen) who created the snakes for the good of mankind until the evil corporation she works for decided to ‘take it to next level’ without her approval. Can our heroes kill the snakes and escape the island before EvilCorp nukes the island? I sure as hell hope not. Go EvilCorp!
Understand how bad ‘Anaconda III’ and ‘Anaconda IV’ have to have been to be worse than ‘Vipers’, but ‘Vipers’ is better. The reason is simple. ‘Vipers’ has more snakes killing more people which is all we want from these movies. Sure the snakes were fake looking as all get out, but these fake snakes clutched throats, ate faces, performed cunninglingus and were just all around rude. Outside of that these killer snake movies are all on the same level of awfulness. The lame stories are almost identical, the evil corps are all the same, the suspect acting is the same, the questionable special effects are the same but this one has the added addition of possessing the most melodrama I’ve ever seen in a Nature Gone Wild flick. ‘Days of Our Lives’ called to let me know that is flick was too melodramatic. Killer snakes and melodrama are two genres that do not belong together. No way, no how.
If you have a fever for a killer snake flick that simply won’t go away then just detox baby because none of these are going to cure that jones. Nothing to see here, keep it moving.
