Customer Reviews

Fire Serpent

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

From the bad cover art and the story description I was not expecting a whole lot from this film but the reality was better than the packaging.

Two firefighters have their paths cross after an accident at a forest fire site. The older firefighter is a fugitive and been declared nuts. He has ideas about living fire that can think and plan. The younger firefighter doesn't believe a word of it. Then the government gets involved as they have been following the older firefighter for years. Reasonable characters, hidden agendas, and religious zeal abound in this tale.

This story is mor complex than the packaging suggests. Occasionally a solar flare will through off a fire creature and sometimes they land on Earth. This has been going on for a long time. This film is about tracking the creatures while keeping their existence secret from the public and other Government entities. All in all the story was quite enjoyable with a decent cast supporting it. If you like monsters and conspiracy theories you might get a kick out of this one. Check it out.

Like most Syfy movies where the name of the monster is the title of the movie, Fire Serpent involves some kind of snake like creature on fire. It's actually got a dragon-like head made of flames and two flaming tendrils. It also has the ability to possess people, forcing them to shuffle about in zombie-like fashion with glowing red eyes. The effect went out of style back in the 70s, so your perspective on Fire Serpent is likely predicated on your opinion of glowing red eyes.

Taking a turn as a villain, our beloved Chakotay (Robert Beltran as Cook) is a government agent turned cultist. It turns out he's a believer in carrying "the fire" from biblical times and that the alien he's hunting, the titular fire serpent, is his key to bringing about the end of the world. Opposing the serpent and Cook is Jake Relm (Nicholas Brendon), a firefighter and investigative journalist Christina Andrews (tasty Sandrine Holt). There's also a grizzled old firefighter named Dutch Fallon (Randolph Mantooth) who has a grudge against this particular invader. He's also part of the organization hunting the aliens, or he was before Cook got all biblical.

I'll give creator William Shanter this much - he never lacks for ideas. What would normally be a standard monster movie is filled with all sorts of interesting twists and turns. This is as much a "don't trust government" tale as it is "don't trust fundamentalists" tale.

The CG is competently rendered, with a few audio effects repeated. The fact that the serpent can possess people keeps it from becoming a one-note Godzilla-style movie. The acting isn't particularly good, but then this movie ain't named Fire Shakespeare.

There's lots of dodgy logic as to how to defeat the fire serpent, including some dubious theories about how to put out a fire that I'm not planning to put into practice any time soon. There also is some kind of super HALON-cartridge weapon, continuing the Syfy tradition that all these monster movies must feature a high-tech weapon. And yes, there's a Fire Serpent cam.

But that said, this is actually an entertaining monster flick. It's hardly high art, but it's enough to keep you warm for a few hours.

This movie plays like a episode of outer limits or the twilight zone.
I even think William Shatner had some direction in this film.
Anyway, the film is interesting, the acting is pretty good in most cases,
and the film will keep you interested to the end.
The movie could have earned a 3.5 stars if they would have worked on the
creature's sound effects more. The creature sounds like a monster from
a 1970 cartoon. Not scary and could have been improved a lot to give
you a bit of the chills when hearing it through your 5.1 system...
Worth a view ...

FIRE SERPENT

William Shatner actually created and produced this Sci-Fi channel film and it is surprisingly not that bad for a b movie with a far out there concept. This was a movie I happened to catch on the Sci-Fi Channel and thought "I think I will buy that when it comes out", used of course. The fact that it was created by Shatner and was a Sci-Fi flick I could not resist it I had to have it. I have always been a sucker for films such as this; thank the Sci-Fi Channel for keeping hope alive for bad b movies.

This far out there movie is all about balls of fire that some times make their way to earth that just happen to be giant snakes made of............. well fire. Of course the government tries their best to cover this up and apparently for years they have until two very different fire fighters from different generations come together after one of these things makes its way into one of their towns. It is here that a chance meeting between the two develops into the two coming together to take this thing on as well as the government. And speaking of the government naturally there is a loyal yet self thinking agent who is torn between falling in line and following her own judgment. I am absolutely sure you can guess what will happen with her; of course other people come into play to keep things lively [or help with a body count]. This is actually a pretty good movie, better then decent in my mind. In fact it could be one of the better movies put out by the Sci-Fi folks out there in TV land. Sure this movie has a low budget and a far out there idea but that only lends to its charm. Most of the acting is pretty good and the film actually takes its time to build up the characters and the story. The only real problem I have with this movie is the ending, while not a horrible one it still is hard to believe even for this.

All the performances were believable enough and every one really seemed to enjoy what they were doing and believed in the film. Of course being a low budget Sci-fi Channel related release no one on here are ever going to be up for awards at the Oscars, but every one for the most part delivered well enough to please this reviewer. I wouldn't say that this is the best film ever by any means but it may be one of the better and most enjoyable movies I have seen from Sci-Fi.

When I first read the description, I thought the movie would mainly consist of a large flame creature burning a city while a bunch of firemen and FBI guys frantically tried to come up with different ways to stop it. It didn't sound like the grestest movie idea I'd heard but I was buying a few other creature feature flicks and thought I may as well order something more unusual.

Thankfully, this movie is much better than I expected. The plot had a lot more going on than just having a creature killing a bunch of people. The central characters were a lot deeper than I expected. It had decent atmosphere when it was needed.

On another note, this is the only work of William Shatner I've ever seen. I can see why people respect him.

Finally, cover art of the title picture is kind of inaccurate. the creature is a lot more visually impressive, but the creature in the movie would have been pretty hard to illustrate.

This movie isn't bad but isn't good either. I kind of liked it, but it could use some improvments such as better stories, weapons and equipments, computer graphic for the creatures just to name a few.

I enjoyed this movie Fire Serpent and or course it also starred Randolph Mantooth in it. He played in Emergency also.This movie was awsome and would recommend this movie to anyone.A friend of mine love it too.

Just look at that cover...a giant serpent, like a flaming comet with a demon's face. Soliders firing their weapons, desperate to stop the beast. Ah, if only there was a scene in this movie half as exciting.
And that is the rub: this movie is just flat-out boring. I wasn't expecting anything great here; I knew the acting would be spotty at best, the effects weak, the story silly or down right stupid. I have watched plenty of those types of movies in my time - what I'm looking for is to be entertained, and this movie fails to even come close.
I would love to break down the plot for you, but I can't. Because, although I have tried to watch it several times now, I have never finished it. My attention always seems to wander somewhere else. I can tell you this, however - the fire serpent spends 90% of its time "hidden" inside of charaters, possesing them, forcing them to do evil. The rest of the time it sits on top of houses and buildings, looking sort of like a flaming silhouette of a dragon, although it's hard to tell. There are a couple of half-way cool moments, like when the serpent grabs a firefighter before blowing up a lunch truck, or when one character (a cop if I remember right) lifts up a car with a flame, but that is all I seem to remember about the movie.
Even though it can be had for only a couple of bucks used, it still isn't worth the price. Skip this one unless you need help getting to sleep.

This movie is pretty good. I think the whole fire snake thing is a really cool idea for a creature movie. The creature doesn't always look that good but sometimes it looks really cool. The other special effects aren't too bad either. The acting is good and overall I think this movie is worth a view.