TheLittleSongbird
Project Viper could have been much worse than it was, and there have been both worse and better movies. There are redeeming qualities certainly. Theresa Russell does bring some charisma and grit to her femme-fatale sort of role as well as showing beautiful looks. The music doesn't really sound all that original, I agree that it was reminiscent of Alien, but it was memorable, it was haunting and it was suspenseful(a shame that the movie didn't live up to it). A couple of effects are decent, though both are crude and bizarre looking, but the ones in the opening scene and the viper chasing the jeep through the caves were not bad at all. However, I never found Project Viper thrilling or really all that unsettling either. The very derivative(there are scenes that do look as though they were lifted out of better stuff like It, Air America and Species) and disjointed storytelling, the talky and overly-serious in tone scripting, the laborious pacing, the clichéd and underdeveloped characters and haphazard filming really undermined any atmosphere Project Viper could have had that the music promised. Apart from Russell the acting is not great at all. Tim Thomerson is not too bad actually but is saddled with a stereotyped sheriff character that you just don't care for at the end of the day. Patrick Muldoon is the worst, he manages to be both annoying and bland. All in all, has its redeeming qualities but didn't do all that much for me. 3/10 Bethany Cox
Paul Andrews
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.
Matthewwk
well i first watched this movie today and from what i read in the TV Guide listing , i thought it would be good. The premise of the plot seemed like a good one, but they just didn't write the story well enough for it to be considered a hit. I started to get bored of it and do other things for a little bit in the beginning , but then i decided to go back and watch it tell it ended. some of the plot holes i noticed make the actors in the movies look like raging moons. Judging by how many i caught the time i actually watched this movie, there properly is more that i didn't see.The first one i noticed was when the 3 of so called, "Scientists" were in the house doing some computer research on viper. The power suddenly went out (there is there first clue they idiotically missed) so instead of realizing its viper , they just assume something unknown caused this power outage , even though they know viper is in town , and that he feeds on electricity because he is part hardware. Then the second part of this scene that made little sense to me , is that one of the Guys was actually dumb enough to go down into the basement to try and restart the breaker , which didn't work... DUH! Another thing that didn't make sense is instead of after hearing a loud growling noise , instead of running like a mad man out of there which he had time to do , he just stands there not even looking behind him at the basement for 5-10 seconds while Viper comes up behind him and rams him in the ass , eating him and killing him. How stupid can a person be ? I thought these guys where supposed to be smart ? Some of the techniques used in here make it look like a 60's horror film , and less like a 2002 Sci-fi flick. The next thing i noticed that made little sense was the Viper tracking machine was going off like a chicken with its head cut off, and the both the 2 guys who went into the basement went right by it and even looked at it for a second , but still continued , didn't they know it was a viper tracking system , and it was going off ? even a child could figure out something is up. The next thing that i guess sort a of make sense , but we didn't really know it at the time is , when the 2nd guy goes down into the basement , after seeing the dead guys remains that are left after viper ate him, he decides to have a sit on the step there and ponder his life. we find out later that he has some control of viper with that little device he has , but he didn't have it in his hands and viper could of killed him in seconds before he had time to shut viper down. The next thing i see is , after the girl scientist in the house sees the tracking device , she actually knows what it means , thats not the hole though , the hole is what happens next , she hears the 2nd guy on the phone talking to the guy that is funding his traitor-ist/spy what ever he is. She obviously can hear him because she's looking to see where he's out , so if she can hear what he's saying , why does she need to get closer for him to see her ? which soon after gets here killed ? what a stupid bimbo! There is no reason for her to stand out in the open so the 2nd guy can see her and know she's knows what's going on , other then so the guy can see her , and kill her. The next thing is after the guy goes into an office room there , she decides to go to the office where the guy in and fallow him i guess or maybe she wants to go out the door and runaway, she must really want to die. of course the guy comes out and starts chasing her around the house trying to kill her, the weird part is when the guy says no your not leaving and looks the door ? he doesn't use a key or anything , so why later when she comes back down stairs and tries to go out the door , wont it open ? last time i checked all you have to do is turn the look to unlock the door from the inside , the same lock he turned to so called lock it ? she either really dumb or really stupid , maybe both. She just really wants to die i guess , she then runs down into the basement , where she's 1 die is dead by viper , and decides to stay down there , until finally she gets killed. real shocker! geesh if that was a real situation , fate must of really hated her! The next one is more of a goof then a plot hole. When the guy and the girl are in the jail cell , and the 3rd guy that was the only survivor from the house shows up , were we learn he can control viper.etc. well when viper shows up there , viper is in the main jail room ,because the 3rd guy is standing next to him looking at the hero guy and girl who are still in the cell, but after he pushes the button viper falls down and then after the good guy opens the stall banging the 3rd guy in the head , he drops the controller , and it goes into the jail cell next to them , viper then re-emerges. after the girl kicks smacks the controller out of the cell , the guy steps on it smashing it , and viper rebuilds its self . then the good guy kicks the bad guy into the cell where viper is now ? wait i thought he was in the main room not a cell ?? and then when the Sheriff and deputy come in with shotguns and go cuss and start shooting at it , viper is in the main jail cell again! not in the jail stall where he was when the hero guy kicked the bad guy there into viper where he got ate. They screwed up this scene by putting viper where he needs to be to fit the script , and where he physically should be. well done writers!(sarcasm!) There are a few more but i just have to mention one more, that maybe be one of the biggest idiotic movies of this movie. When the sheriff and the hero and girl are in the cave , for some reason the sheriff tells them that he's dyeing of cancer and he should deploy the emp , so he grabs the emp bomb and decides like a complete moron to run right next to viper , i guess he wants to get eating quickly , and if he thinks that wouldn't happen , he's dumber then a rock , because of course viper immediately eats him! DUH ! I'm not sure why the writers wanted to kill him off like that , but hey what ever , maybe they where drinking when writing his part. Well thats all I'm going to tell about , i don't want to bore you to much :P i will give this movie a 3/10 for at least trying to put together a movie, but I'm sorry to say , you failed! Next time you write a movie , make sure the people who are portrayed in the movie have an IQ over 40 , or maybe the writer needs to have that before he writes another imbecile movie like this!
guidomaschio
The start isn't bad, but after the end you will find that this film has only two good things to offer: Theresa Russel and the musical score, (that is clearly cloned from the music of the memorable Ridley Scott's "Alien"). The remaining is the usual dull stuff. I found annoying the male protagonist that, in a story supposed to be serious, is acting like he was in a James Bond movie, with the difference that here the jokes appear to be really misplaced.A movie to watch with an eye only, while you are doing something else.
4/10
