Project Viper |
  • USA • 2002 • 85m •    • Directed by: Jim Wynorski. • Starring: Patrick Muldoon, Theresa Russell, Curtis Armstrong, Joe Avalon, John Beck, James Cromwell, Tamara Davies, Lydie Denier, Redmond Gleeson, Daniel Quinn, Steve J. Hennessy, Billy Keane, Todd Kimsey. • Music by: Neal Acree.      A NASA spacecraft taking an experimental bioengineered life form, named V.I.P.E.R., to live on Mars doesn't even make it out of Earth's orbit before the thing escapes its pod and slays the crew. Luckily, NASA can cover up the disaster, because that creature is stuck in outer space. The bad news is, it wasn't the only V.I.P.E.R. made, and the other one has escaped its earthbound confines and is now haunting rural California, where it uses its tentacles to grab and devour anything that breathes. NASA sends its best off-the-books agent, Mike Conners, to find the creature and evaporate it.
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Review:
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 takenstolen 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.
Review by Paul Andrews from the Internet Movie Database.
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