Rattlers - Plot

Plot

When two young boys are savagely attacked and killed by a legion of rattlesnakes in a small California desert town, the local sheriff (Tony Ballen) calls upon herpetologist Dr. Tom Parkinson (Sam Chew), a Los Angeles college professor, to discover why the snakes are displaying abnormal aggression and swarming behavior. The sheriff teams Parkinson with war photographer Ann Bradley (Elisabeth Chauvet).

As more people in the desert town are killed by the vicious rattlesnakes, Parkinson's and Bradley's investigation leads them to a nearby army base, where the commanding officer, Colonel Stroud (Dan Priest), seems strangely reluctant to help them. Parkinson and Bradley are, however, assisted by the base's chief medical officer, Captain Delaney (Ron Gold).

Shortly afterward, Palmer (Darwin Joston) and Woodley (Gary Van Ormand), two soldiers on night patrol, stop to change a flat tire on their jeep and are killed by a horde of rattlesnakes. Delaney then summons Parkinson and Bradley back to the base, without Stroud's knowledge, so they can investigate the soldiers' strange deaths.

Eventually, Parkinson discovers that the colonel ordered, and then covered up, the illegal disposal of an experimental nerve gas called "CT3" in one of the local desert caves. The exposure of the snakes to the nerve gas had made them unusually aggressive. When Delaney drunkenly confronts Stroud and threatens to expose his crime, Stroud kills him. Stroud then engages the local sheriff's department in a gun battle and is killed.