Have you heard of Venom? No, not the comic book movie starring Tom Hardy; this one doesn’t have anything to do with Marvel. It’s a voodoo-infused supernatural slasher from the team behind I Know What You Did Last Summer… and like that film, it was meant to be the start of a franchise. Instead, it was released directly into obscurity. And that’s how it became the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
The Original Idea
The idea for Venom started with writers Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten. Dille had written for classic ’80s cartoons like Transformers and G.I. Joe, and in the ’90s, he shifted into video games, many based on established characters like James Bond, Batman, Superman, Riddick, and Ghostbusters. He even returned to the Transformers universe for the 2007 movie’s tie-in game. For several of these games, he collaborated with Platten.
In the early 2000s, the duo conceived an original horror game called Backwater. It would follow players being stalked through the Louisiana swamps by an evil tow truck driver named Jangles, named for the keychain that jingled as he moved. Players could kill Jangles in every level, but he would always return, forcing them to escape to the next stage.
Dille and Platten created a detailed 20–30 page game proposal and brought it to Dimension Films, a major horror studio at the time. Dimension bought the film rights with plans for a simultaneous movie and game release.
Kevin Williamson Enters the Picture
Dimension had enjoyed major success with screenwriter/producer Kevin Williamson through Scream, Halloween H20, and The Faculty. Although Teaching Mrs. Tingle underperformed, the studio still brought Williamson onboard as producer for the Backwater film. Along the way, the title changed from Backwater to The Reaper to Venom.
Williamson met director Jim Gillespie when they were going to do a movie called Big Bugs together for Fox. After Big Bugs fell apart, Gillespie signed on to direct the Williamson-scripted I Know What You Did Last Summer for Columbia Pictures. And since that had been a hit, Dimension sought to replicate that success by getting Williamson and Gillespie to collaborate on Venom.
Scripting Challenges
Williamson didn’t write the first draft. That job went to Brandon Boyce (writer of the Stephen King adaptation Apt Pupil). But Dimension wasn’t satisfied. As Williamson explained to Fangoria, the Boyce script was basically “people trying not to get eaten while running through a swamp for ninety minutes,” which was faithful to the game, but not filmable.
Dimension insisted on an origin story, asking “How does somebody get to become Jangles?”
Although the Writers Guild denied him credit, Williamson crafted the backstory of tow truck driver Ray Sawyer, a lonely, scarred local misfit. As Williamson put it, “Every town has a Ray Sawyer.” And what happens if that man becomes possessed? The answer is: a lot of murder and mayhem.
The story begins with a voodoo priestess digging up a mysterious suitcase, retrieving it from an old Creole burial ground that will soon be disturbed by the construction of a new mill. When the woman gets in a car accident, her vehicle plunges into the swamp – with Ray Sawyer, who was trying to help her, inside. The suitcase busts open, releasing CGI snakes that enter Ray’s body, possessing him. The voodoo priestess has died, but thankfully she has a granddaughter who can explain all of this. The woman saved souls, milking evil out of murderers and sadists, transferring that evil into the bodies of snakes. Now Ray’s body is inhabited by the evil of countless souls, turning him into an undead slasher who starts killing everyone who crosses his path.
The Cast
You shouldn’t go into Venom expecting to like or care about any of the characters, but the cast is solid.
Rick Cramer was cast as Ray Sawyer, and had to endure three hours in the makeup chair to become the undead version of the character. Deborah Duke plays the voodoo priestess Miss Emmie. There’s Agnes Bruckner as our final girl Eden Sinclair. Coincidentally, that’s the same name of the heroine in Neil Marshall’s action film Doomsday, which was released three years later.
Eden will be heading off to med school in New York while her boyfriend Eric, played by Jonathan Jackson, stays in Louisiana. This allows for some relationship drama between death scenes. Laura Ramsey is Eden’s friend Rachel. Pawel Szajda is Ricky, a character who doesn’t have much going on. Bijou Phillips and Davetta Sherwood play Tammy and Patty, who would be party girls if there were any parties to be had around here. Instead, they sit outside a diner and get drunk, and Tammy entertains herself by flashing her bra at local weirdo Ray Sawyer. Rapper Method Man plays a police officer. D.J. Cotrona’s character Sean is actually Ray Sawyer’s son, but they never had much contact with each other, and his parentage doesn’t mean a damn thing to the possessed Ray. Meagan Good plays the voodoo priestess’s granddaughter Cece, who has to deliver a lot of exposition.
Dimension had big dreams for Venom from the start. A new horror movie from the I Know What You Did Last Summer team, with a tie-in video game. This was a ready-made franchise. Everyone involved expected the unkillable slasher at the heart of the story to come back for multiple follow-ups. Talking to a Fangoria reporter on the set, Williamson mentioned that the evil tow truck driver isn’t referred to as Jangles in this movie, but “they can call him that in the sequels.” As if the production of sequels was a foregone conclusion.
The film had a $15 million budget and a 41-day shoot. Production went smoothly despite snake- and insect-infested locations and aggressive mosquitos. Wranglers removed alligators before filming scenes. Rumors of creepy, possibly supernatural occurrences on set seem to have come from the imagination of Williamson. But then something went wrong when it came time to send Venom out into the world.
Where It All Crumbled
The video game was never made, so the property lost that multi-media franchise element immediately. Dimension scheduled the movie for a theatrical release on September 16, 2005, which doesn’t sound like a bad date, since it’s close enough to the Halloween season. The competition included Scott Derrickson’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Jeff Wadlow’s Cry Wolf, and Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. But Venom didn’t turn out to be much of a competitor. September 2005 was a time of transition for Dimension. Their parent company Miramax was being taken over by Buena Vista, and Dimension was moving over to the newly launched Weinstein Company on October 1st. This is probably why the movie’s release was treated like an afterthought. It played in less than five hundred theatres, with minimal marketing. And there was real-world tragedy in the mix, as Louisiana had just been devastated by Hurricane Katrina at the end of August. That made the idea of watching a Louisiana-set horror movie less appealing at the time. So Venom
made just under $882,000 at the box office. It didn’t even crack the one million mark.
Critical Response
Critics were largely negative. Venom holds a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, several reviews acknowledged that it worked as a straightforward slasher:
- Los Angeles Times: stylish, energetic, darkly amusing
- New York Times: “perfectly palatable” within its genre
- Dread Central: over-the-top but “a pretty decent slasher”
- DVD Talk: familiar and blandly written, but “worthy of a rental”
A surprising accolade: Vegan Voorhees ranked it #61 on their list of the 100 best slasher movies.
Stalk ‘n Slash
Kevin Williamson has created some great characters over the years (Scream heroine Sidney Prescott is one of the most beloved final girls in horror history), but he and Brandon Boyce weren’t able to make the characters in Venom shine. It’s not for lack of tracking. They have Eden and Eric dealing with teenage relationship problems, Sean struggling to come to terms with who his father was, Cece trying to clean up the mess her grandmother accidentally made. But none of it feels like it matters very much. We’re here to watch a possessed tow truck driver stalk, chase, and kill people… and in that area, Venom delivers quite nicely.
The movie has plenty of stalking, chasing, and killing during its short and sweet run time. It’s only 87 minutes, and the end credits start rolling at the 80 minute point. In those 80 minutes, the death count reaches the double digits. Ray (or you can calling him Jangles if you want to) never goes too long without taking a life… And you can tell that not even the writers felt much compassion for the characters, because they were relentless when it comes to offing them. They didn’t care about sparing anybody. If you think someone’s circumstances might give them some plot armor, no, think again. All of these people are fair game and can be taken out at any moment.
And in between the kill scenes, we get plenty of tension-building moments of characters making their way around creepy locations.
- The morgue
- Ray’s auto shop
- Cece’s voodoo-protected safe house
- A swamp-side cemetery
There are some great locations in this movie, which makes sense for something that was inspired by a video game idea. All of these places would have made for cool maps in a game.
Highlights
Jim Gillespie described this as a monster movie. He had already brought the “slasher chasing teenagers” scenario to the screen with I Know What You Did Last Summer and wanted this to be different – darker, scarier, more disturbing. The cinematography is definitely darker. There was an attempt to make kill scenes more unnerving by filming them with a hand-cranked camera and doing some flashy editing, but that doesn’t really work. It just looks like the same sort of editing tricks you can see in a lot of Dimension films of the era. Really, Venom is another “slasher chasing teenagers” movie, and that’s not a bad thing. If you’re a big slasher fan, chances are you’ll get some enjoyment out of watching this. And given the fact that the opening shot of Venom is very similar to the opening shot of I Know What You Did Last Summer, with the camera moving over water, it almost feels like Gillespie was acknowledging, “Yeah, Kevin Williamson and I are doing the same thing all over again.”
The kills and the cat and mouse chase scenes are the most entertaining part of the movie. A standout moment comes when the remaining teens are holed up at Cece’s place. The possessed Ray can’t enter the house, as the entrances are protected against evil. So he hooks his tow truck up to the outside of the house and uses it to tear a room out of the place. A chunk of the house is dragged across the yard, with two of the teens still in it. And since Ray has made his own, unprotected entrance, he can now go inside the rest of the house as well. That’s a badass move, the sort of thing that could have helped Ray, or Jangles, become a minor genre icon… if only anyone had seen Venom, so he could have a chance to come back for sequels.
The fact that he drives around in a tow truck even allows for a fun vehicular chase where Eden and Ray play tug-of-war with Rachel while speeding down the road.
This film isn’t on the level of the ones Kevin Williamson is best known for, but if you’re a slasher fan, it’s worth checking out. The stalk and slash set pieces make for a good viewing experience. He didn’t become as popular as Ghostface or The Fisherman, but Ray Sawyer can stalk and kill people real well, too. Jangles deserves more recognition! So take a trip into the Louisiana swamp and see what he can do. The franchise dreams were set aside a long time ago, but Venom is still a fun way to kill 80 minutes or so.
A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
