Project Viper (2002)

ridiculous rating

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This underrated movie had excellent Quality in every aspect except perhaps screenplay. The photography, Audio & editing are comparable in quality to any top rated scifi. It also had recognizable Stars like John Beck (Mark Grayson on Dallas). It also had some fairly decent effects. The story was good regarding 2 engineered creatures from a CIA front company. One creature sent to Mars kills the astronauts. A second creature, stolen using sophisticated methodologies which gets loose. Inside job. Agents & developers sent to find it.Here are the weak points in the screenplay. Dumb character behaviors such as putting their hands in creature goo, wearing no protection, having no weapons when sneaking up on it (such as a freeze gun or flame thrower or chemical deterrent) until the end. Scientists can't describe their own creation, have no sense of urgency, have bad attitudes and are of no help, 3 ignore their own tracking device alerting the creatures presence, and go right where they shouldn't (even though they know it is there & just killed their teammates). The town is not evacuated & no military presence (probably lack of budget.) Town cop locks up gov't & NASA agent. Gov't agent is a bad version of a 007 wannabe (not the actors fault). The screenplay must have been written by an untrained neophyte. Except for the screenplay, this movie is excellent quality. Better than the junk films getting hundreds of millions which can't compare to this underrated film. The critics sound like 10 year olds who trash things as bullies wanting attention. This film doesn't deserve the treatment this roving gang of underage neophytes & bullies are dishing out. This movie was shamelessly included as one of two bonus movies on a DVD which was only listed after you started the DVD. Yet the real rotten movies far worse always seem to get their own DVD with great artwork & disappointment when you start them. There are bad movies, but this isn't one of them. People also need to remember the actors are following a specific script, dialogue, behavior & setting. They are following script & direction. They do what they are told by the script & director. Not making it up as they go along.Don't listen to people who deliberately trash good films like beating up a school mate just for the fun of it.This came on an Asteroid DVD at Walmart. I highly recommend the film. Especially to those who loved 50's & 60's & 80's scifi. The story; reminds me of an Outer limits episode, The Voyage Home, in the 90's where a creature from Mars came back with the Astronauts (One was Michael Dorn, Worf from Star Trek). He was in that OL episode. Not this film. Their creature had a few more tricks but similar.This film has better production quality than Alien Even better than the recent Star Wars film with Ford & Fisher.This film has a recognizable cast & a decent story. If not for the screenplay with poorly written scenes. Actually, the scenes were good. It was the character behaviors in those scenes which were badly written. This could have been a top ten movie if they had been given enough budget for an upgraded creature. I rarely rate movies this high.Try it. If those of you over 40 like it, please share it.

I've set this as containing spoilers, but it's hard to spoil an already awful movie.A cliché move with cliché roles done on a shoe string budget. The lack of money is obvious given the two scenes taken from other movies. The first scene a car crash down a hill taken from species, and the second a plane crash taken from Air America. There may have also been a third scene taken from Broken arrow of a mine exploding.The actors aren't normally this bad but being hampered by the awful dialog I almost felt sorry for them. It's the actor job equivalent of stacking shelves at a super market.The only reason I didn't vote this movie as (1)-Awful is because I actually watched it all, and if I had voted it (1) it would be saying it was as bad as Street Fighter.

Project Viper starts on a spaceship named the Olympus which is heading for Mars on a mission to deliver a genetically created organism named Viper which will terraform the planet & make it inhabitable for us humans. Unfortunately things go wrong & the entire crew end up dead & the Olympus ends up floating helplessly in space. NASA suspect a conspiracy & call in Mike Connors (Patrick Muldoon) to check things out & retrieve the other Viper from Novagen Industries where it was developed, however some very bad people want the sole remaining Viper & kill scientist Diane Cafferty (Lydie Denier) & replace her with someone who looks exactly the same. The impostor manages to gain access to the Novagen labs where she steals the Viper, despite the best attempts of Connors & the security guards she manages to escape. Connors job is now to track the Viper down & destroy it, he enlists the help of the Novagen scientists who created it, Nancy Burnham (Theresa Russell), Steve Elkins (Billy Keane), Sidney Bream (Tamara Davis) & Alan (Daniel Quin) to track it down. News soon reaches Nasa that a plane has crashed near a Mexican town & the Viper was definitely on board, by the time Connors gets there the Viper has disappeared, is on the loose & killing anyone it comes across...When I discovered that Project Viper was directed by Jim Wynorski under his usual pseudonym of Jay Andrews my heart sank, I went from hoping that I was about to watch an entertaining sci-fi horror to just hoping I would stay awake for the duration & not lose the will to live. The tedious, slow-moving, unoriginal & overly serious script by Curtis Joseph & David Mason is standard low budget sci-fi crap that focuses on the deeply dull conspiracy theory's & double crosses rather than the films main selling point the genetically created creature thing which isn't even mentioned let alone seen for a good 30 minutes! The character's are dull & clichéd, the plot twists are extremely predictable & routine. It's never really explained how the Viper thing was created & Project Viper eventually descends into a bland alien killing random townspeople type film that there are literally 100's of already. There are so many better more worthwhile sci-fi monster films out there for anyone to be bothering with such a bland, boring, routine, unexciting & throughly predictable piece of low budget film-making.Director Wynorski again turns in another forgettable slice of low budget nonsense. It has no style or visual flair & two of it's best scenes are in fact taken/stolen from Species (1995) & Air America (1990), I wonder if he's allowed to just take footage from another film & use it? The special effects aren't too bad actually, the opening shots of the spaceship orbiting the Earth are fairly impressive as is the scenes of the Viper chasing a jeep through some caves at the end, I was expecting worse. There's no gore in it, a couple of gory mutilated bodies & that's it.I'm pretty sure the budget was low on Project Viper but that still doesn't excuse it from being bland & dull, it's reasonably well made but it's hardly going to win any awards. The acting was poor & nobody seemed liked they wanted to be there & had that 'what am I doing in this?' look on their faces, I can't say I blame them. Just to reassure actors everywhere there is life after a Jim Wynorski film as Russell has gone from this to having a role in the forthcoming Spider-Man 3 (2007) film.Project Viper is crap, it's as simple & straight forward as that really. Not worth your time or money, there are far better films out there, one to avoid.

A nasty security agent (Patrick Muldoon) and a sexy scientist from NASA (can you imagine Theresa Russell as a scientist?) try to find out what happened to a creature generated from human DNA and chip and raised in Mars that eats human flesh. This is an average and full of clichés action/ sci-fi movie, with some reasonable special effects. Theresa Russell as a fatal woman, whore, or detective character is acceptable, but as a NASA scientist seems to be too much for me. Forgettable and recommended only for a rainy day without any other option. My vote is five.