A small town deals with an invasion of rattlesnakes.
In 1979, a delivery truck makes its way up a lonely southern California
highway in a storm, bound for the San Diego Zoo with a deadly tropical
rattlesnake as cargo. When the truck suffers a blowout, the driver loses
control and hits a tree, shattering the snake's aquarium in the back
and the window separating the snake from the driver. The snake slithers
into the front of the truck, kills the driver with its bite and then
moves off into the forest. Flash forward to 1999. The small southern
California town of San Vicente has grown from 6,000 to 30,000, and the
rattler, which escaped nearby years ago, has bred. There are now 25,000
of these hybrid rattlesnakes, and they are slowly making their way
downhill into the town, attracted by the movement of the blasting as the
town paves its way toward progress. Progress, in this case, brings
terror, in this tale originally penned by John Carpenter.
This film uses every single cliche from countless other horror
movies which have "nature vs. the greedy interests of capitalism" as a
them. Not bad for a tele-movie, with capable performances and well conceived
sub plots. It's not the worst film ever but everything here has been done to death. Even in this film everything is done over. All the kills and deaths are repetitive. Snake bites a dummy and dummy dies.
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| The hunt is on. You're the Prey. |
It was directed by Noel Nosseck. 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. 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.
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| Let me suck that poison out baby. |
For silent predators these snakes sure make a lot of noise. Oh yeah, they're fucking rattlesnakes...the nosiest snakes ever. If you can catch this movie on TV and have time to kill you can give it a watch. Otherwise there is no need to go out of your way to find it.
Trivia:
This was based on "Fangs", a script John Carpenter
did back in the 1970s when he wrote as a gun for hire. In the original,
according to Carpenter himself, there were scares and jumps all over
the place. One scene included a man who hears a rattle, thinks it's his
infant, and finds a rattlesnake in the crib.
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| Let's drive off set and never come back. |
