It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Twenty years ago there was a car accident one night in a small southern California town San Catalano where a crate of tropical rattlesnakes escaped into the area. Now the area is experiencing a boom in housing development, and this has disrupted the nest of these deadly predators. Vic Rondell the new fire chief has just arrived, and when one snake attack after another occurs. He goes about trying to discover why the sudden attacks, but the greedy property developer Max Farrington doesn't want to start a panic and tries his best to get Rondell on the wrong side of the community. So it's left up to a tainted Vic and Farrington's business associate Mandy Stratford to put a stop to it.Routine, repetitive and lame creatures run amok TV b-feature. Not that I think it's the complete pits, but everything that happens here has been done to death. Even in the film itself! It's always the same actions occurring over and over again. Not helping out is that it's not bad enough to be hilarious, of course stupidity fills nearly every moment and everything about it is clumsy. However it doesn't have that schlock presence or any sense of fun. The low-rent script (supposedly written by John Carpenter in the 70s) throws a bit of everything into the contrived premise, but in the long run it's a poisonous venture that's witless and incredibly textbook stuff. Director Noel Nosseck does a real nothing job with it, and makes sure you're in for something of extreme blandness, poor pacing and tired false jumps. While the deaths are mostly random there's no suspense, nor thrills. Nothing is sustained or delivered, because they are poorly staged and too goofy to have any sort of effect. While the obnoxious score gets in the way. A special mention though, at least they didn't succumb to digital effects for the snakes. We even get some snake vision, using a red filter. Strange the title actually makes no sense, since we're talking about rattlesnakes here. The no-frills performances are your standard mould found in these features and so are their stock characters. A dopey looking Harry Hamlin is here to save the day! Dominic Purcell and an animal loving Patty McCormack also feature in minor parts.Formulaic and unexciting is what it ends up being.

Silent Predators starts on a dark night somewhere on a lonely road in Southern Califonia where a flat bed truck is driving along carrying a wooden crate with the words 'Venomous Reptile - Handle With Extreme Care' stencilled on it in big red lettering (!). The driver (Dominic Purcell) stops & gives a lift to a stranded motorist (Paul Tessone), the motorist ask's what's in the crate & the driver says it's a huge snake. Shortly after a tyre on the truck blows & causes the truck to crash, after killing the two men the venomous snake escapes... Jump '20 Years Later' & the to the small American town of San Catalano & the new fire chief Vic Rondelli (Harry Hamlin) has just arrived to take over from his retiring counterpart George (Beau Billingslea). The town is holding some sort of fête so Vic takes the opportunity to introduce himself to the locals, while Vic talks lovers Lacey (Nathalie Roy) & Jake (Daniel Murphy) disappear into the nearby forest where Jake is bitten by an aggressive rattlesnake & dies almost instantly. More people fall victim to the deadly snakes that have been disturbed by housing construction as Vic & PR executive Mandy Stratford (Shannon Sturges) try to alert the town, however greedy property developer Max Farrington (Jack Scalia) & Mayor Parker (David Spielberg) want everything hush-hush to avoid bad publicity...Directed by Noel Nosseck I thought Silent Predators was average at best. The script by John Carpenter (if you can believe that), William S. Gilmore & Matt Dorff is as clichéd, predictable & strictly by-the-numbers as is possible. The character's for instance, the selfish businessman who wants to keep everything quiet because of his investment, the Mayor who fears for the towns economy, the unflappable hero with personal problems who nobody takes seriously at first, the blonde female who falls for the hero & just tags along for no apparent reason other than to be put in mortal danger so the hero can save & 'get the girl' at the end, the disposable character's who are there to keep the body count going but add nothing else whatsoever to the story, the scientist expert who happens to be a personal mate of the hero & knows everything about the creature/monster (depending upon film) & the central threat itself, in this case snakes, that pop up occasionally to kill someone. They're all here, present & correct. Everything you would expect to happen does, the nest being disturbed, a few deaths, the hero figuring it out, the female getting into trouble & the hero saving the day. Silent Predators doesn't have an original bone in it's body, having said that I found it sort of watchable on a really dumb level.Director Nosseck doesn't do anything special with the film, it has no real style or flair to it although it does look a little better than it's low budget made-for-TV origins would suggest. There is no gore, decent scares, excitement & the thing is rather flat. The film never uses the snakes to their full potential either, there is no tension during the infrequent attacks & they aren't scary. For some reason Silent Predators was shot in Australia even though it was an American produced & financed film supposedly set in America? Figure that out.With a budget that probably didn't amount to a hill of beans Silent Predators best asset is it's nice Australian locations, the photography is above average for a TV film & I suppose it's generally well made if extremely lifeless & flat. The acting isn't of a very high standard which should come as no surprise.Silent Predators doesn't do anything wrong in itself, it's just that it's so unoriginal & clichéd that you will have probably seen every part of this film or character somewhere else. Only worth bothering with if your absolutely desperate or can see it on TV (where it firmly belongs very late at night) for free. Oh, & one more thing why is this called Silent Predators when it features rattlesnakes? I mean rattlesnakes are probably the noisiest snakes ever, right?

Living and working in Tokyo has some advantages, one of them being the fact that Channel 12 runs movies every afternoon -13:30-15:30- Monday to Thursday; some of course boarder on the inane but I just saw Silent Preds today and it's as fine a TV film as there is. Good camera work, nice production, solid acting and a realistic dialog, for a TV movie budget Silent Preds hits an easy 6. I personally wouldn't put it in the genre of B movie either, it doesn't have the feel or themes of a B movie, for a start Silent Preds uses real snake shots, not overly obvious rubber nasties flopping around as a muscle bound wanna be hero 'fights' them. This is no Ed Wood production and I found myself looking out for snakes where I'd seen them in this film. Watch, enjoy, creep yourself out!

I wish as we looked through the new releases that I'd known this was the bad made for tv movie that I saw on USA network (cable). Had I known this wasnt' your typical cheesy snake flick, I wouldn't have rented it. while part of the acting is fine, and the snakes are semi believable (not outragiously huge) the speed with which the victims die is too exagerated, and it is almost identical to the old movie "Rattler" that is now makign the rounds of network tv movie filler during reruns seasons.