Before there were Snakes On A Plane, there was one snake, in a house...with a f*cking vendetta against Klaus Kinski and his gang of kidnappers.This is basically a film about a hostage situation gone horribly wrong...because, as usual, Oliver Reed is a f*cking psychopath.Kinski and his gang plan to kidnap the child of a wealthy family- his minions having infiltrated their house, as the help.But from the very beginning, things go awry. The boy leaves on his own to pick up a pet snake, right as they are about to put their plan into action.They give him the wrong snake. A black mamba, instead of an African house snake.When they open it, it bites the maid in the face, killing her.Now it's on the loose in the house.This causes Oliver Reed to panic, and he shoots a cop.Now, they are stuck in the house, with a dead cop, and a killer snake on the loose inside.They do a good job of managing the hostage situation at first...taking a doctor prisoner, in the process.But as soon as the cops try and break in...sh*t hits the fan...and everyone runs terrified from the snake.Except Reed...who gets bit in the dick (insert trouser snake joke here).As you might have guessed, it all comes down to a one on one showdown between Kinski and the snake...resulting in humorous consequences.There is something hilariously satisfying about watching Kinski roll around on the ground like he's being killed by a black mamba.Classic Kinski! And a pretty decent film too.6.5 out of 10.

Bad story, bad actors, bad soundtrack. Not much good about this - except the poor snake which had to endure typecasting of being a bad snake for the rest of it's film career.The snake was the only character that held any interest, but it wasn't in the movie long enough to be given top billing.Anybody else in this POS made horrible decisions to remain in the movie once they received notice of it.What has to be some of the stupidest police ever with absolutely no negotiating skills or sharpshooting skills and horrible police procedure.If the box cover enticed you like it did me...then you already lost. They won, you lost. Don't! Don't let them get you. It's not worth your time - even the final poorly developed shootout or what was of it was so poorly executed.The only good part about this entire thing is the credits rolling at the end to signify that the entire thing is over. Good!

A notoriously troubled production, firstly because of the number of volatile actors involved (especially Klaus Kinski and Oliver Reed) but also because original director Tobe Hooper quit after the first week of shooting (which footage, according to replacement Haggard, was subsequently scrapped)!As I have often said, I am terrified of snakes: the last time I saw one was in my own backyard when my usually quiet but large (and much missed) dog grappled with and killed a garden reptile! Consequently, uneasy as I was about watching the film, I opted to view it on an even-smaller-than-normal-sized TV screen rather than on my choice 40" monitor! Thankfully, though the snake was certainly utilized throughout, it occupied much less screen-time than I had feared! Anyway, the film is enjoyable simply for its marvelous cast which, apart from the two legendary hellraisers already mentioned, also featured Sterling Hayden (in his last theatrical role), Nicol Williamson, Sarah Miles, Susan George and Michael Gough (whose recent passing is the reason I got to check out film now in the first place) – a heady brew, sure enough, and it was an added treat seeing them try to upstage one another and, let us not forget, the black mamba itself!The plot presents a surefire suspense scenario as the already tense situation of an asthmatic child kidnapping is exacerbated by the shooting of a policeman (which obviously brings the law upon them) and even more so when a harmless pet snake gets exchanged with a specimen of the deadliest species which naturally goes on the rampage before long! The gang comprises chauffeur Reed, maid George (who gets to parade in her underwear early on!) and her foreigner boyfriend Kinski, a wanted criminal; Hayden is the boy's elderly but larger-than-life grandfather, a former safari guide; Miles is an authority on snakes (to whom the mamba was originally destined), while Gough is the zoo handler brought in to re-capture it (though, of course, he never does and his part is, in any case, quite brief); Williamson, working around his essential immobility by overdoing his natural accent(!), is the cop negotiating with the gang – still, he sets his colleagues the task of procuring maps of the area to see from where his forces can infiltrate the building concerned.George is the snake's first victim and her convulsions are quite convincing, after which the reptile slithers away first foraging for food (the boy's other animals falling prey to it) and then moving about through the ducts in the house – in perhaps the film's biggest shock, it is found halfway inside a drinking cabinet from which the atypically distraught Reed goes to 'pick himself up'. Later on, when he takes Hayden and the boy down to the cellar, it emerges from the top of a rack just as Williamson (dressed up as a motorcycle cop to dupe the kidnappers!) breaks through the wall of an adjacent house and manages to shoot down Reed. One thing that I thought let the film down, however, was the clean nature of its progression: with this I mean that it seems the snake was on the side of the heroes, since it only turns up to menace and kill the assailants – similarly, much is made out of the necessity of applying Miles' anti-venom instantly to avert a horrible death but it is never administered (even her character's supposed mutilation at the hands of the villains is not really carried through): now if, say, the boy had been bitten...Incidentally, all three death scenes are quite outrageous: George's by way of the sheer number of bites she receives, Reed's because of where he gets his (no prize for guessing!), and Kinski's due to the melodramatic fashion in which it happens…not to mention that he takes the creature with him by shooting its head off!; the finale, then, presents a twist which has since been done to death. The film also benefits from a pretty good Michael Kamen score that is evidently superior to the pulpy material it is accompanying. I have to say, however, that the poster on the Blue Underground DVD is misleading not only because of the size of the snake but even the color is nothing like what we are dealt on-screen!The disc includes an Audio Commentary in which the director chronicles the woes that befell the project early on, how he was brought in to salvage it as best he could but also that, consequently, it proved an impersonal film for him (since he had to work with a ready-made – and, admittedly, unsubtle – script, sets, cast, and crew). He does recount a bit of trivia such as how the enmity shown by the characters of Kinski and Reed was merely an extension of the two actors' – most amusingly, their biggest brawl occurred when the Guinness family, the film's financiers (whereas the distribution company was George Harrison's Handmade Films), happened to visit the set! We are also told here that Kinski turned down RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) – ironically, another film to feature snakes prominently – in order to make this, since the paycheck accorded him was bigger!Another film I remember watching in which this type of snake had a central role was a latter-day "Euro-Cult" offering from Italy simply called MAMBA (1988) which, similarly to this one, it was let loose in an apartment where it menaced the one person inside, a girl played by Trudie Styler (Mrs. Sting). By the way, Oliver Reed would shortly after VENOM appear in another snake-related picture, the even more maligned SPASMS (1983), which I also own but have yet to check out. Finally, I should mention that I have watched (and own) another British horror film by the same title, made in 1971 and directed by Peter Sykes: concerning the arachnid brand of poison, it also emerges as the superior effort of the two (if the lesser known).

In the same year he managed to haul a steamboat over a mountain ridge, Klaus Kinski also had a bit of bother in a posh area of London with a snake, which gave him infinitely more trouble. His evil plan to kidnap the son of a rich owner of a string of hotels is doomed to failure when his accomplice Susan George utters the fatal words "Nothing will go wrong".As Kinski and his cohort Oliver Reed become besieged by the police, it becomes apparent something unpleasant is slithering through the ventilation ducts. This calls for much snake-POV camera work, however when the snake is actually seen the footage is rather convincing for such a low key film - only at the end does Kinski appear to be battling a treacherous hosepipe. In fact, the snake is very much a sideline for much of the film - a lot of the time it is just a bog standard hostage thriller, however the surprisingly A-list cast does a terrific job. Sterling Hayden gives a likable "grandpa knows best" performance, in what turned out to be his final film role, and Reed is gritty as always as the paranoid accomplice. Kinski on the other hand is clearly sleepwalking - however his sleepwalking acting is better than most peoples best.The idea is a reasonably unique one although it is hardly pushed to its limits - if Tobe Hooper hadn't cleared off it would certainly have been much, much better. The snake's appearances may be few and far between but when it does rear its slithery head there are a few jumps to be had - although the majority of the "thrills" come from the hostage set-up and not the snake. The cast is probably the primary reason to watch "Venom", however on the whole it is surprisingly enjoyable given its reputation of "the rubbish horror film Kinski did instead of Raiders."