I knew very little about Venom before watching it last night, so I was pleased to read Oliver Reed's name in the opening credits, and then I laughed when I read that it was also starring Klaus Kinski, I had to ask: How in the world did they manage to contain both of their egos on one movie set? In the same city? Is this why Tobe Hooper left production halfway through??

Sure, the movie drags at times when it's more focused on hostage negotiations and lab tests, but watching Reed & Kinski vie for the attention of the camera/scene, I was eagerly lapping it up, in one tense moment I heard Reed aggressively whisper to Kinski "this is the LAST…

Sure, there’s a deadly snake but really, this is “Klaus Kinski vs. Oliver Reed”, and isn’t that reason enough to give it a watch?

The setup is actually pretty fun. An attempted kidnapping goes horribly wrong (seriously, it doesn’t get more unexpectedly botched than this) and a group of people find themselves trapped in a house with a venomous black mamba. It’s quite tense fun even if it could have used more snake action. Still, the snake scenes we do get are ACES.

The cast, obviously, is also a huge draw. You have Kinski and Reed chewing every single available piece of scenery and serving up some serious ham and cheese sandwiches...and, frankly, they’re delicious. I wish there was an…

In the Month of Madness - The Others

Obviously I haven't seen the Tom Hardy Venom but also obviously I don't need to see it to know that the Klaus Kinski / Oliver Reed Venom is perhaps as much as 173 times better.

This is the one that Tobe Hooper reportedly was supposed to make and was replaced by Piers Haggard. I'm not a massive fan of Hooper so I'm actually quite glad of that. Haggard was far from a particularly good director but he makes this a lot of fun and embraces just how stupid the premise is. That being of a hostage situation being complicated by an angry black mamba getting loose in a London house. Clearly it's…

Hooptober VII: The New Blood #98

Can you think of anything scarier than a very mean, very angry Black Mamba running round your house?

No? Well I can, how about an unstable (goes without saying) Oliver Reed with a loaded shotgun?

Still not scary enough? What about Klaus Kinski? I think we have a winner, folks. He doesn't need a gun of any sort, or fangs loaded with deadly neurotoxins to be intimidating, he just needs to be his Kinskiness.

Any one of these three in your house would be enough, but as a trio, they're pretty formidable, particularly when two of them are intending to kidnap the son of an international hotelier.

In this company Sterling Hayden as the…

You know when you do your food shopping online and the wrong type egg arrives or you go clothes shopping in a rush and buy a medium t shirt instead of a large? Well imagine going to buy a pet snake only to get a black mamba by mistake...you are going to have a bad time. 

VENOM is in some ways the ultimate reptile movie, it’s central plot is a kidnapping gone wrong which leads to the kidnappers locked in the house with a black mamba. The fact there is the intensity of the kidnapping alongside the threat of the snake makes for a beautiful double edged sword. It keeps a high pace of controlling your investment and let’s both…

☘️Daily Horror Hunt #21 – March 2020☘️
19. Snakes are creepy, at least Indiana Jones thinks so. Let's watch a movie with a snake.

Oliver Reed + Klaus Kinski + A Black Mamba... and somehow the snake is the least venomous of the three! You can just see and feel the tension when Reed and Kinski share the screen (which is often), and reading about the behind the scenes stuff, they absolutely hated each other... no surprise there. Even Tobe Hooper had to call it quits on this one before eventually succumbing to a nervous breakdown! (though seeing Hooper's version of this would've been amazing!)

The movie itself is a fun little hostage taking, cop drama, Dog Day Afternoon kinda…

Oliver Reed vs. Klaus Kinski vs. a BLACK MAMBA (and everyone vs. Tobe Hooper, KO’d in the first round and replaced by Piers Haggard)

A wonderfully contrived high-concept kidnap thriller in which Reed and Kinski can barely restrain their urge to murder each other (on and off the screen) like a pair of rabid honey badgers while a BLACK MAMBA slithers on the loose, Bruce Willis-ing through the ducts of the house and popping out to menace the (excellent) cast whenever things threaten to become too boring.

The script is strictly formula, but gets the job done. You know how people like to say that the book is always better than the movie? Bullshit. This is Exhibit #2127 – a…

Venom (1981)

Oh you didn't think there was just 1 Oliver Reed vs snakes movie did you? Because there are 2. 2 Oliver Reed vs snakes movies, yep.

Classic simple mix-ups often populate the comedy genre setting off a chain of absurd events, someone gets mistaken for someone else or someone grabs the wrong luggage at an airport, etc. Sometimes they're even used in rom-coms to set up a playful "meet-cute", forcing the otherwise strangers to interact and jumpstart a burgeoning romance.

In Venom the "simple mix-up" is probably more of a "colossal fuck-up" as the state toxicology lab receives a young boy's pet garter snake and the boy unfortunately receives the labs highly venomous Black Mamba. Also complicating things…

I just finished considering "Silent Rage," a film that runs Chuck Norris, a Western, "Animal House," mad scientists, and a madman killer made indestructible through a cinematic blender.

Thus, I feel safe in saying that "Silent Rage" prepared me for "Venom," a British horror film that has a distinguished multinational cast, kidnapping and hostage negotiation, and only the world's deadliest snake, the dreaded Black mamba from sub-Saharan Africa. The mamba gets a few closeups, more than Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard" and Daffy Duck in "Duck Amuck," and its own POV. Yeah, we'll call it the Black Mamba Cam.

That distinguished cast includes kidnappers Klaus Kinski and Oliver Reed, Scotland Yard commander and lead negotiator Nicol Williamson, snake expert Sarah…

Don't let the title make you think this just another snake movie. Piers Haggard has directed one of the better "stand-off" movies of the 80's.
Headed by a mostly British cast and tightly edited and paced like a Hitchcock movie with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing for the whole hour and a half, this film doesn.t drag in the least.
The main story line is a kidnapping of a ten-year-old boy and his grandfather (Sterling Hayden, in one of his last films before passing away) that goes awry when a pet shop mistakingly sends the boy home with his new addition to his reptile collection that turns out to be deadly, highly poisonous Black Mamba snake.
Klaus…