Rattlers, Snakes Get Vicious

So what do we hunger for when we have a film about a horde of deadly snakes converging on civilization?  Yep.  The proverbial nude and lathery babe in the bathtub scene.  You know the scene.  The babe has her eyes shut and a warm cloth over her face.  Mr. Bubble hides her private parts.  Then out of the drain comes a slithery killer.  So much metaphor in a babe and snake scene.  Kudos to Celia Kaye!  The babe actress gives us this performance in today's film, 1976's "Rattlers," directed by John McCauley.  Incidentally...what happens to a nubile actress after doing s gratuitous bath scene?  Right again!  A bigwig Hollywood moviemaker marries her.  Celia Kaye would become Celia Milius as John Milius ("Red Dawn") would marry her after the film...at least for a short time. 

Okay...in the Mojave Desert, rattlesnakes turn uber aggressive.  Two children are feasted upon by the toothy things.  More attacks.  The snakes seem to go out of their way to kill.  This is apparently uncharacteristic of these venomous beasts.  Enter Dr. Tom (Sam Chew, Jr.), a snake expert from the university.  The local sheriff calls him in to consult.  Tom is kind of a dweeb, and nothing about him indicates he has any brains, Still, he'll be matched up with a grouchy babe, Ann (Elisabeth Chauvet). Tom needs a photographer, don't ask why, and Ann the Grouch seems to be the best one around. She's a babe but the women's libber is quite annoying.  All you divorced guys will pray she gets bitten...by snakes. The two enter the Mojave in search of the nest.  The idiots won't find it.

More attacks.  The aforementioned babe in the tub gets it...as does a farm family. Tom and Ann happen across a little, but covert, army base run by the insane Colonel Stroud (Dan Priest). At first the army will be helpful.  Then it turns out that Stroud oversaw the burying of cannisters of a deadly nerve gas. The gas was Stroud's invention, a bio-weapon intended to be used on the Vietcong.  Tom and Ann will fall in love, which is kind of yucky.  This film needed one of those intimacy coordinators the new films have now. The snakes get more aggressive.  Stroud gets more insane. Well, that's enough for now.

Will the grouchy Ann get what all you divorced guys hope she'll get?  Will Tom develop a dose of manhood and give Ann a good...well, never mind that.  Will the snakes defeat the U.S. Army and move into Vegas just like the Raiders and Athletics did?  If you don't like slithery snakes you won't like this movie.  For nubile babes in much danger (in the tub), see "Rattlers," and perhaps see what did in the Women's Liberation movement.