Project:Viper

[Fearless Freep]

Last night's late night entertainment was Project: Viper

The basic story is that a shuttle mission to Mars is carrying some sort of prototype living creature (VIPER) that's a combination of living matter and microchips.  Somehow it escapes it's containment and kills the crew.  Shortly after, one of the scientists who designed the creature is killed and a look-alike for her infilitrates a top secret lab and steals the only other creature.  The government brings in special agent Mike Conners (Patrick Muldoon) to hunt down whomever stole the creature and recover it.  He thinks the theft was an inside job so is rather upset to be assigned to work with the team of scientists that designed the VIPER who are also his number one suspects.  The plane carrying the creature crashes someone north of Mexico near a small town, morphs into a vicious living liquid, a starts killing the populus.  Our team, headed by  Dr.Burnham (Theresa Russell) arrives in town to try to hunt down and control the creature.   Since people are being killed off, and Conners and Burnham show up in town claiming to be working for the government to find a crashed plane, the local sherriff (Tim Thomerson!!) thinks they are in on the killings and arrests them.    When the creature makes an appearance before him, he realizes they're telling the truth, and it's off to kill the monster in a deep cave!

I had to check the production credits because this felt like a UFO Productions film.  It wasn't but it had the same earmarks of fairly low budget, reliance on CGI for creatyure effects, mediocre acting,  pretty bad dialogue and plot points that made no sense at all.  The story even had some simularities to "Interceptor Force" and "Python" (talk about guilt by association)

The CGI effects were, well, cheesy CGI effects.  I usually won't hold it against a movie and I won't here.  One part did irk  me, though is  that  when the plane carrying the VIPER crashes, the the footage is from "Air America" (C-133 crash). In In the final shot of the crash, you can seen that the fuselage has been seperated.  Later, a CGI picture of the plane shows the plan perfectly intact.  If you're going to lift film from another movie and then put a CGI image in of the same elements, there's no excuse for such mismatches.

The acting was  expected from recent modern B movie fare.  Nothing to make you wince at, but nothing really inspiring.   What made the acting hurt, though, was the dialogue.  Some of it was pretty silly.  The forced antagonistic banter between Conners and the scientists was pretty bad, especially the scientist's constant harping that Conners is a idiot when nothing he's done desearves such treatment.

What really characterizes, and ultimately kills, many of these movies is just plain bad story writing.  Characters seem to like true motives and only do things because, well, that's what their assigned character does in movies like this.  For example, the theft *was* an inside job, financed and driven by a higher government official.  But said official's rationale for stealing this thing are never explained.  Thats just what high-ranking officials do in movies like this, it seems.  Also the antagonism between the scientists and the non-scientist as the're stuck hunting down the monster.  Also, the whole "shuttle mission gone amuk" at the beginning of the movie really doesn't play into the rest of the movie.  The mars mission gave motivation for the development of a morphing bio-computer hybrid, but the escape of the creature on the shuttle didn't really impat the story, other than a last 'shock' ending.  Also, the fact that VIPER can cause electrical shortages in the nearby area, especially conducive to escaping, or is attracted to readioactivity, are never really explained.  Why the scientists have no idea what the creature would do in an earth atmosphere (how did they test it?) seems a little contrived as well.  In short, the writers seems to put in plot points simply because  they wanted the dialog to work around that point or wanted to force the story in  a certain direction., with little thought to a logical unified whole story.

In conclusion, the movie was not really that bad.  Something you would see on a late Saturday night on Sci-Fi .  Nothing really moving, just some low-grade silly sci-fi time-passing. If you don't mind simplistic story writing with little cohesion and imemorable characters against CGI monsters.

[Foywonder]

Nope, not a UFO Films production but something far, far worse...directed by Jim Wynorski!

[Fearless Freep]

directed by Jim Wynorski!

Wow, impressive resume, for some suitable definition of 'impressive'

[Brother Ragnarok]

Not to be confused with the short-lived series about the shape-shifting crime-fighting Dodge Viper.  Which was pretty cool, actually.

Brother R

[JohnL]

Project Viper looked like a low budget Blob ripoff.