Venom (Force) (1982)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Menu Animation & Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1982
Running Time	88:39 (Case: 92)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Morison Film Group Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Klaus Kinski Oliver Reed Sarah Miles Sterling Hayden
Case	Amaray-Opaque
RPI	$19.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Venom is a movie I had never heard of until this copy was sent to me for review. I have been a big movie fan for about twenty years now, which happens to be how old this film is, so I was intrigued when this DVD arrived as to how I had never come across this movie anywhere before, not even at the local video shop. Well, now I understand how I let this one slip through my weekly viewing habit - quite simply it is just a badly-made movie.

    Venom was shot in London, England in 1982 and is a movie that really does not explain itself properly. First off, we are introduced to Phillip, the young man of the house who has a strange assortment of pets caged up in his bedroom. Secondly, we are introduced to the hired help, the chauffeur and the nanny of the house, who have devised a plan to kidnap the young boy for money (I presume), although their true intentions are never fully explained - we are basically left to guess for ourselves. Lastly, we are introduced to the deadly black mamba snake which the young boy was incorrectly given at the pet shop instead of his pet carpet snake. Make sense? Well, it certainly did not to me. The story is badly written and full of holes. How does a snake escape from its box and manage to kill off the bad guys one by one without inflicting damage on anyone else in the house? It must have an extra special sense to be able to tell the good people from the bad ones... Anyway, for anyone interested, this film stars Oliver Reed, Sarah Miles, Klaus Kinski and Sterling Hayden.

Video

    The video transfer of this movie is average. The picture is wanting in clarity and detail and is very soft. As a consequence, it looks very dated by today's standards.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The sharpness of this transfer as stated before is poor, with a very soft looking picture. Shadow detail, surprisingly, is very good. Dark portions of the film are detailed quite well. Low level noise was noticed in only a few scenes and this aspect of the transfer held up quite well considering the age of the film.

    The colours were highly saturated and as a result looked unnatural. Skin tones looked oversaturated with the actors' faces looking as if they had spent a few too many hours in the solarium.

    There were a couple of MPEG artefacts noticed but nothing to be overly critical of. The worst artefacts I noticed throughout the movie were film to video artefacts which raised their head on a few occasions but never often enough to really distract.

    This disc was only single layered, and therefore there was no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio on this disc was not of good quality. The sound is harsh and strident and at times quite fatiguing when played at reference level. The soundtrack is very bright even with equalization engaged, making this not a pleasant movie to listen to. The sole audio track on this DVD is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

    The dialogue quality was average. For most of the movie, it was not a problem. Only on a few occasions when there was music in the background did it become a little difficult to understand the actors. Audio sync was not a problem.

    The musical score played throughout the movie was extremely bright and annoying.

    The surround channel use was limited to only an odd piece of music or sound effect but basically the surrounds went unnoticed for most of the movie.

    There was no subwoofer use in this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Nothing, not even a trailer.

    At this time, it appears that this movie is not currently available in Region 1.

    I really have trouble in recommending this disc to anyone. The movie is bad, the quality of the disc is below average and there are no extras. Give this one a miss.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall