My review was written in May 1988 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.
"Viper" is a genuine sleeper, a well-crafted, riveting action drama which gets the job one efficiently and entertainingly. Newcomer indie Fries Distribution has the challenge of getting the word out on this one.
Pi is a companion piece to filmmaker Peter Maris' previous actioner "Terror Squad", which dealt with a group of Libyan terrorists who invade America via Indiana (!) and hold a classroom of kids hostage. In "Viper", it is a special U. S. military unit that pretends to be Middle Eastern terrorists and takes over a building at a university in Indiana, in order to fake an incident that will allow our government to launch a reprisal mission.
The plan goes awry quickly when a soldier (David M. Sterling) kills a hostage during a scuffle, resulting in the evil mission commander Col. Tanner (James Tolkan) ordering our hero Jim McCalla (Chris Robinson) to execute all the hostages as part of a coverup. He refuses, but they're murdered anyway.
McCalla steals Tanzer's top-secret file on the project in order to go public, but is killed ruthlessly by a car bomb. This leaves his mousy wife Laura (Linda Purl, very well cast) as a target for the heavies who want the file back and no traces, as the government is going ahead with the invasion reprisal.
Film becomes a tightly paced, familiar saga at this point, with Purl as the innocent who must take matters in her own hands and develop survival smarts in a hurry, not unlike Amy Madigan did in the similar "Nowhere to Hide" saga. The difference is that Maris has learned many of the tricks of The Master, Alfred Hitchcock, and rather than aping him with tiresome homages, he puts the knowledge to use. There is classical daylit horror during Purl's extended chase, a real feeling of danger, and exploitation of sinister aspects of commonplace objects, locales and situations. A simple scene in a diner when Purl finally gets to read the classified file (code name: Viper) illustrates the film's ability to generate sleek suspense.
Ultimately, she's given a backbone and taught how to fight back (with hand grenades and automatic weaponry) by her husband's army buddy Trueblood (Ken Foree). Maris develops a fascinating relationship between these two opposite types and scores a thrilling surprise in the clevely structured scene where Foree is ambushed. Ke plot twist involving Purl and a newspaper reporter (Jeff Kober) who's not what he appears to be works effectively.
Helping put "Viper" over is a topgrade cast, with Purl utterly believable and mucho sympathetic as the every-woman heroine, Tolkan the epitome of a no-nonsense, brute force military nut (acting in the name of "national security") and Foree offering one of the most shade, interesting maho figures in some time. In smaller roles, Kober, Robinson and Sterling are on target.
Vivid chase scenes and tech credits are fine, except for a couple of insert shots that aren't color-corrected.
