SILENT PREDATORS is your usual monster-of-the-week TV movie with snakes being the menace of choice this time around. As a typically sanitised television movie this offers up few scares and even fewer thrills, instead happy to plod through TV-level inanity for the most part; everything is predictable, clichéd, and well-telegraphed in advance.The only thing of note about this film is that John Carpenter had a hand in writing the story, which in any case is entirely derivative. Folk in a small town discover that some killer foreign snakes have been breeding in the area and are now killing the townsfolk. A smarmy property developer (Jack Scalia) tries to cover everything up while loner hero Harry Hamlin (once of CLASH OF THE TITANS fame) strives to save the world.SILENT PREDATORS is a film populated by ageing TV stars and features a non-threatening menace, although I'm happy that real snakes were used instead of stupid CGI creations. The PREDATOR-style snake vision is a step too far, though, and the attempts to create an exciting climax fall flat.
... View MoreLiving and working in Tokyo has some advantages, one of them being the fact that Channel 12 runs movies every afternoon -13:30-15:30- Monday to Thursday; some of course boarder on the inane but I just saw Silent Preds today and it's as fine a TV film as there is. Good camera work, nice production, solid acting and a realistic dialog, for a TV movie budget Silent Preds hits an easy 6. I personally wouldn't put it in the genre of B movie either, it doesn't have the feel or themes of a B movie, for a start Silent Preds uses real snake shots, not overly obvious rubber nasties flopping around as a muscle bound wanna be hero 'fights' them. This is no Ed Wood production and I found myself looking out for snakes where I'd seen them in this film. Watch, enjoy, creep yourself out!
... View MoreWhen I first saw this movie, I only caught the first half hour of it, but it was enough. I had seen enough of these formulaic, made-for-TV movies to know how it was going to end. Two months later, the curiosity of the accuracy of my predictions got the best of me, so I rented the movie and finished it this time. And I can say that with my guesstimation abilities, movie companies should hire me to write formulaic, made-for-TV movies. Everything happened that I anticipated: the progression of the plot, the introduction and killing off of characters, the role each character plays in the movie, it all was there.If you've seen one of these movies, you've seen them all. Movies like this one, Marabunta, The Fury Within, Nightscream, Burial of the Rats, they are all the same. Watch one movie, replace the aggressive animal with a different animal, and enjoy.Scott says: For a movie of silent rattlesnakes, the snakes sure broke script a lot.
... View MoreI wish as we looked through the new releases that I'd known this was the bad made for tv movie that I saw on USA network (cable). Had I known this wasnt' your typical cheesy snake flick, I wouldn't have rented it. while part of the acting is fine, and the snakes are semi believable (not outragiously huge) the speed with which the victims die is too exagerated, and it is almost identical to the old movie "Rattler" that is now makign the rounds of network tv movie filler during reruns seasons.
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