Runtime: 93 minutes
Directed by: Piers Haggard
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Oliver Reed, Sterling Hayden, Nicol Williamson, Sarah Miles, Lance Holcomb
From: Venom Productions Limited
Oh, to be a fly on the wall during shooting…
Venom was one of the many movies I’ve known of for years yet waited to pull the trigger on. As much as I liked Venom, the off-screen antics had to be better. Oliver Reed and Klaus Kinski in the same film seemed like a risky idea full-stop. The latter is a madman w/ a volcanic personality and the former’s love of alcohol is still legendary; of course they didn’t get along and got into hellacious rows, according to hearsay. Then again, perhaps it’s a stroke of genius… they were two of the villains and their characters were supposed to hate each other. Well, the hatred they had for each other was obvious in the film-little acting had to be done by either performer.
Even wilder, Venom was yet another movie that Tobe Hooper began but did not complete, due to either his personal demons, “a nervous breakdown,” “creative differences,” or Kinski and some others drove him out… all scenarios were read via a Google search. Could you imagine all three on set together?! In addition, Sterling Hayden and Nicol Williamson were known for wild behavior—child actor Lance Holcomb could have grown up really fast surrounded by all those crazy people. Veteran Piers Haggard replaced Hooper; the finished product turned out well considering the production drama. The plot (based on a novel by Alan Scholefield) is wild: Reed, Kinski (yes, the two share many scenes together) and Susan George kidnap/hold hostage a young boy w/ asthma; his rich grandfather is a bearded Hayden.
Problem is… little boy Philip has a menagerie of animals at home; the kidnapping occurs as he just picked up a purported African house snake; in the mother of all F-ups, he did not receive a common serpent pet due to its harmless nature… instead, it was a black mamba! A few minor quibbles could be made concerning Venom; that’d make the review more negative than desired for a film that was surprisingly pretty good. Several tense/terror scenes well-executed in the London setting went a long way, along w/ a cast full of famous faces. Arguably the highlight performances came from Williamson’s sardonic cop, the doctor played by Sarah Miles, Reed & Kinski. There’s a nice Michael Kamen score, also.
The movie managed to juggle many different balls between the decent-sized cast & the snake threat better than you might expect. While more a thriller than a horror movie and the mamba is usually a background threat, that was irrelevant when the human drama was so compelling. Some people may prefer the off-screen lore to what was filmed—such as Kinski famously turning down Raiders of the Lost Ark because he hated that script and Venom gave him a bigger paycheck. Personally, it’s now one of many films that should have been tackled much sooner.
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