Customer Reviews

Silent Predators [VHS]

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

 

 

I believe this was originally a tv movie aired on WTBS but it is well acted and staged. Harry Hamlin takes on the role of a fire chief in a small but growing Southern California town. A massive housing development has disturbed the territory of a lethal new hybrid of Rattle Snakes with dire consequences for the new residents. Hamlin takes charge of the campaign to save the town. It seems in films it always falls to the fire department to handle animal attacks. I suppose that's why they call it Fire & Rescue. It has a suspenseful ending that makes this a notch above most films of this type. It borrows much of its premise from 'JAWS' but I suppose there are only so many different ways an outbreak of animal hostility can be displayed. The science is fuzzy in the film, as outrageous circumstances are needed to keep up the action.

The snakes in SILENT PREDATORS are some nasty critters, to say the least. We first meet them twenty years earlier, when a truck carrying this genetically bred rattlesnake wrecks, and the snake kills its two passengers. Fast forward 20 years and we meet Harry Hamlin as the new fire chief in a small town. Jack Scalia and Shannon Sturges portray the greedy land developer and his assistant who refuse to stop their bombing in spite of unleashing thousands of this newly bred snake. Suffice to say, the snakes do get loose, Scalia usurps Hamlin's power by bringing up a shady past, and veteranarian and Oscar-nominee Patty McCormack spouts out the balance of nature speech. A tense ending in a deserted mine shaft has sufficient chills and overall the cast and crew perform yeomanly. An above average TV movie.

This movie was great it scared the pants off of me. It has a great plot it is about a tropical rattle snake a made up deadly one what got loose in the United States a few years ago and began breeding with the western diamondback species of rattle snake. Then someone does some blasting were the cross bread rattle snakes live and it causes them to haunt the town were all the people live and there are tons of them that come. Varry scarry film one of the scarriest I have seen.

When anyone sits down to watch this movie many movies will come to your head while watching Silent Predators because it is a movie that copied off of many classic movies like Poltergiest and Jaws and many others. The plot is very simple but the writers I think could have been a little more creative like the new development is just like Poltergiest and instead of bodys under the house there are snakes under the house there is a real estate agent guy just like that guy in Poltergiest trying to cover up everything, and is sort of like Jaws also, and of course a corny love story also falls into the pie with some egotistical guy who saves the day and falls crazy for some chick. Same old Same old nothing new.

THE ITEM I ORDERED SHOWED UP DAMAGED. THE CASE WAS CRACKED AT THE TOP THE MOVIE WAS SLIDING AROUND IN THE CASE. IT STILL PLAYED BUT WAS ALL SCRATCHED UP.

I first saw this movie on Fox a few years ago.It was great!It is probably one of the most suspenceful movies you'll ever see.When a truck carrying a deadly snake crashes,the snake is set free on a small town.It begins to breed with the common rattle snakes in the area resulting in thousands of poisonous snakes!Can the local authorities and nature specialists stop the snakes before it's too late?I give it an A+!

This movie was probably the best snake movie I have ever seen but the title didn't match with rattlesnakes though. I mean rattlesnakes aren't really silent their rattles give you a warning to stay back but in this movie the boy who got attacked by the snake in the beginning didn't care about the rattle. The movie all in all was good. It had good acting and best of all the rattlesnakes atleast looked real because in some movies like Anaconada and Python the snakes look so computer made but Silent Predators made the rattlesnakes look real. The other thing about the movie is that mainly most of the snake movies happen on some remote island in the middle of an ocean but this movie takes place in a normal town in California. The only other thing wrong with the movie was that more people could have gotten attacked and thats whats wrong with many dangerous animal movies like JAWS, Lake Placid and Anaconda only a few people get attacked and the other thing is lot's of the people who get attacked survive. Besides that problem the movie was good

Give it a go, Silent Preditors is not a bad movie.
When this movie was shot over here in Australia I was in it, I played Lance Parker a young boy who trips into a pit of snakes.
I am sick of hearing all the time that it is a bad movie, I would like to see any of you reviews get off your fat slobby butts and make a better one!
Give it a go, that's all I ask.
Michael

Luckily for this revewier the plot is so simple I can dispense with it quickly and then concentrate on the derisive parts of the movie. Guy's breaking up dirt for a housing development. Disturbs rattlesnakes, understandably. The connexion with this and the rattlesnakes becoming mutants, an impossibility is never explained.Now follow closely. These mutants, again for some unknown reason, start attacking humans, killing a bunch of'em. Enter the herpetologist who obviously knows nothing about snakes, ut gives the viewer a sense of the SCIENTIST. As a balance to the VILLAIN , we have the ECOLOGIST, who makes sage remarks. The good guys cant get the stupid guys to realise ow dangerous this is until a few more people are killed. Eventually, the snakes are cornered in a mineshaft and blown uo, ironically just what the VILLAIN was trying to do.

Being an amateru hesrpetologist, when these movies are played seriously I want to scream a the director, "Did you ever see Hitchcock's BIRDS -- he did the same thing but put large dollops of fun in it. This movie has no humor AT ALL! You can play this kind of movie straight.

Just a few examples. There are no tropical rattlesnakes. It would be impossible for one of these snakes to become instantneously mutant; this takes place over thousands of years, and snakes have never been, nor will they ever become mutant. The genetic structure of a gene does not allow it.

The snakes they showed were usually Texasrat snakes , harmless, or computer-simulate western diamond-backs. None of the snakes showed any proclivity to be a mutant. Snakes, even "mutant" ones do not maleovently ones go on search and destroy operations for people. King snakes, and other constrictors, rarely fool with rattlesnakes; this is rare. And when they do, the outcome is by no means a sure thing for the king snake.

The stereotypical woman trapped in her car surrounded by EVIL MUTANT SNAKES, screaming her head off was annoying. It must have been a fun role for this actress, though.

Finally, EVERYONE leaving town because there are a few MUTANTS aaround was laughable. This would hardly happen in desert country where people are almost as armed as in Mississippi.

Had the movie not taken itself so seriously and injected a few quirky characters, like the old prospector warning everyone in the town hall that he had seen all theis before, ettc. that would have been good.Mel Gibson, if you're readding this, do one of you wonderful saties on these mutant animals gone crazy movies.