Rattlers (1976)

Two mop-topped tots wander the Mojave Desert, looking for skeletons. Suddenly, they are confronted by a pit full of angry rattlesnakes that snare the hapless lads in their snapping jaws and bite them to the swollen pulpy mess. 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 snake’s owner arrives in the nick of time to reason with the cobra…” easy baby, easy” and gets 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 stalking 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 death blow as he tries to work on the water supply.

A glider pilot survives to tell his grim tale, but 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. Something is amiss. However, amidst the deluge of corpses, love still has time to blossom as Tom grows to appreciate his photo assistant. As the town’s population is whittled down to single figures, there is still time for the lovebirds to share a romantic romp 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 is a pathetically fangless, lame and horribly acted piece of nonsense 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 film’s PG rating. None of the deaths are visible or convincing. The most horrifying scene is when 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 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 doesn’t have any spark, whichever way you look.