Obviously posed as a “snakes on a submarine” variation of Sam Jackson’s seminal 2006 burlesque, Silent Venom takes submarine captain Luke Perry (really?) on a mission to an island off the coast of China to evacuate a couple of scientists who have been conducting government experiments with snake venom. Krista Allen from Feast plays one of the scientists. With her face practically glowing with silicone injections, Allen talks to all the other characters in a little girl voice that only becomes funny when you realize she’s not doing it on purpose. Tom Berenger, looking as puffy-faced as Ryan O’Neill after an allergic reaction to nuts, is on hand to add some street cred to the whole straight-to-DVD mess, but during his few brief scenes he seems to be holding back feelings of abject embarrassment and profound sadness. Watching Silent Venom is like watching a direct telecast from B-movie actor hell.

Krista Allen and her greasy research assistant have been breeding different species of snakes in order to develop an anti-venom to be used in the event of terrorist bio-weapons attacks. When Captain Luke Perry arrives with his submarine to evacuate them, the greasy research assistant smuggles a bunch of horny pit vipers onto the ship with the intention of selling them once the boat reaches the States (like the price of gold, the market price for horny Asian pit vipers rises during times of recession). A couple of curious sailors bust one of the cargo containers open, and before you know it, Captain Perry has got one hell of a mess on his hands!

For the serpent fetishists out there, Silent Venom doesn’t have much to offer. No Hayekean snake-tease here, as much of the movie is comprised of laughably generic military talk with Captain Perry babbling his way through the evasion of a Chinese sub. We’re talking a half hour of watching Luke Perry whisper orders while standing on a hand-painted submarine movie set the size of a coat closet. It’s agonizing. When the snakes finally do appear, it’s in the form of two-second insert shots. It’s like they threw a handful of snakes into a room, shot thirty seconds of them writhing around and hissing, and then plugged a few frames of snake footage into the narrative at random times. There are also a couple of CGI snakes, but lets not even get into that.

Silent Venom comes from director Fred Olen Ray, the man responsible for a bevy of Cinemax softcore films, including titles as brilliant as Tarzeena: Jiggle in the Jungle and Girl with the Sex Ray Eyes. I’m sure he has his share of fans. But without titties or simulated boning to focus his camera on, Ray has a hard time building any tension. Any tension at all. Sometimes you want to see a snake attack, and sometimes you want to see a “snake attack”. Whatever your pleasure, you can count on Silent Venom letting you down.