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Rattlers
(1976) |
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Two mop topped tots go off wandering into the Mojave Desert looking for skeletons – suddenly they are confronted by a pit full of very irate rattle snakes that proceed to snare the hapless lads in their snapping jaws and proceed to bite them to the swollen pulpy mess they end up as. Reverberations of the savage attack jolt the sleepy desert community and ace reptile expert Tom, a dashing professor at the local college's zoology department is sounded out and encouraged to take up the post advertised by an increasingly desperate sheriff.
Meanwhile at school, Tom's pet cobra goes for an evening prowl and nearly fangs a fellow teacher to an early grave until the snakes owner arrives in the nick of time to reason with the cobra…”easy baby, easy” and get it to return to the cage. A close shave! Grim faced Tom enrols at the sheriff's office as the death toll mounts in the locality with a family mutt Duke found mysteriously dead by his kennel and a chicken too has been struck down. Then a crabby housewife and her entire clan are beset by the nasty rattlers who appear to be prowling the area as a mass of slithering psychotic death. Their next target is a frumpy bored divorcee who is savaged in her bathtub while her hired hand is dealt a deathblow as he tries to work on the water supply. A glider pilot survives to tell his grim tale but all around the death toll soars as the rattlers turn unusually bloodthirsty. Tom approaches the military authorities searching for clues and finds that Colonel Saunders is oddly secretive, clearly something is amiss. However amidst the deluge of corpses love still has time to blossom as Tom grows to appreciate his photo assistant and as the towns population is whittled down to single figures there is still time for the lovebirds to share a romantic frolic or two in Vegas where they hold hands and kiss by a fountain with unrestrained passion. Later Tom's worst suspicions turn out to be well founded and Colonel Saunders turns out to be even more dastardly than his more illustrious chicken mutating namesake. Rattlers sadly has no bite and a is pathetically fangless, lame and horribly acted piece of drivel from famed Schlockmeister Harry Novak that despite its numerous shortcomings manages to saunter along at a merry pace and if anything at least avoids boredom setting in. There is a distinct lack of gore, unsurprising considering the films PG rating. None of the deaths are clearly visible or convincing and the most horrifying scene is one where the glider pilot recalls his near fatal tryst with the feisty rattlers in graphic detail recalling Quint's famous eulogy about a doomed Navy crew in Jaws. Rattlers fails to satisfy any bloodlust nor provide the slightest chills or scares along the way to its utterly predictable conclusion. Certainly one of Harry Novak's more forgettable efforts with not even the pretensions to be “so bad that it's good” as it just doesn't have the any spark whichever way you look at it.
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