What's a sure sign you've stumbled onto a movie made for the Sci-Fi Channel? Well, let's see: does the movie contain some form of monster? Is there at least one character actor or familiar television actor in the cast? Does boredom peek its head out at you more than once during your viewing? Are there way too many weak CGI effects on display? If you happened to answer "yes" to these questions, then chances are you're watching yet another of their mediocre productions.

As one of the more recent of this batch, Fire Serpent actually manages to be more enjoyable than most of them are and probably joins Mosquito Man as one I made it through without constantly glancing at the running time. Plus it actually has a nugget of an idea behind it that I found more interesting than it had any right to be. But what's with that "Created by William Shatner" title in the credits? It's unclear as to whether he came up with the concept, wrote the original story, or just sat around on set making suggestions. He's written before with his Tek-War novels and series but his credit on this movie just seems odd.

It's 1966 and after a meteor has entered the Earth's atmosphere from the sun it ends-up setting a massive forest fire. The crew of people who've been fighting it seem to have it under control and Dutch and his girlfriend decide to have a little bit of time alone amongst the ashes. However, she spies a stray ember and when she goes to put it out she ends-up being possessed as it turns out the meteor was carrying an alien being that's in the form of a flame.

Flash forward to modern day where firefighter Jake (Nicholas Brendon) and his co-workers have just finished extinguishing a forest blaze. However it seems our pesky alien creature's been hanging around the area all this time and after blowing up the food cart at their base camp (and pulling Jake's friend into the flames at the same time which gives us our first glance at the weak CG title "fire serpent") our alien being escapes in search of a fuel source to gain power.

At the same time Government agent Cook (Robert Beltran) has recruited National Fire Agency worker Christina (Sandrine Holt) to help him investigate these series of fires and help him question a much older Dutch (Randolph Mantooth) who's trying to convince Jake that all of these incidents aren't just a coincidence and are being caused by a living being.

Also on hand in Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens' script are scenes of various lesser cast members being possessed (Lisa Langlois' reporter character is taken over and cuts her camerawoman in half with her fiery eye beams), some ridiculously stereotyped FBI agents trying to eliminate Jake by doing such things as tossing a grenade into his truck, and a low-scale finale that lets a bunch of extras unconvincingly play "Army" while Jake and Christina come up with what has to be the lamest plan to beat our title creature (which, even more lamely, works).

In the end, Fire Serpent may just be another passable Sci-Fi Channel original but it's shot competently enough by actor-turned-director John Terlesky (he played the title character in the second Deathstalker movie and was in Chopping Mall), has okay performances by the cast, and has enough body-switching silliness within to make-up for the bland effects and uneven script that oddly contains a lot of Bible references. It's nothing special but it made for an adequate timewaster. (Chris Hartley, 9/18/07)

Directed By: John Terlesky.
Written By: Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens.

Starring: Nicholas Brendon, Sandrine Holt, Randolph Mantooth, Robert Beltran.