Tom and Ann now drive out into the desert in an awesome Ford Bronco (to have one today means maxed-out social credit for rich frat boys, double points if you blowtorch the top off). While Tom wanders around looking for snakes, Ann randomly photographs different nondescript patches of scrub brush and sand (why?). Ann was said to be in Vietnam for two years, so she knows her way around the backcountry (or in this case, five feet off a gravel road). While her role in this movie is completely pointless, Ann does look cute in those jeans.

Ford Bronco.
After looking at a map, Tom and Ann then go to Fort Walton, which is a fake name, but all internal refs point to Fort Irwin, an old US Army training base out in the desert. This is said to be a small, little-used post in the middle of nowhere, a perfect place for mysterious happenings. Here they meet the Colonel, the base's commanding officer, a middle-aged man who looks like Lou Grant.

The Colonel.
They then meet the base's Doctor, a tall portly man who is a raging lush (oh yes, like Hawkeye Pierce). He's also a sexist pig (in a way, also like Hawkeye Pierce) and we watch him slobber all over Ann. Confusingly, for being a ardent feminist, Ann doesn't seem to mind, and even seems to bask in the attention of this tipsy lothario with a khaki shirt. In between innuendo and alcohol, the Doctor tells them of a dead soldier, bitten by zillions of snakes recently.

The Doctor (Tom's on the phone a lot).
Tom is given a helo and a duty pilot to fly out and check out the area. We see them flying along at about a hundred feet off the ground at a pretty steady clip, making me really wonder just what Tom thinks he's going to be able to see from the air. Is he looking for snakes? Not going to see a four-foot long earthtone snake (naturally camouflaged, afterall) from a fast-moving, high-flying helicopter, doubtful even a mass of them. For that matter, as a (supposedly) high-dollar herpetologist, Tom should know that rattlesnakes are principally nocturnal, so he seems to be wasting a lot of gasoline looking for something that he knows he can't find. However, the pilot is a talkative sort, and lets slip to Tom that recently the Colonel had him chopper out into the desert some big unmarked leaking container of "something". He dropped it where ordered, in an open mine shaft, and flew back to base, no questions asked, but heard later that they sealed the mine shaft with a concrete plug. Tom is intrigued.

Nice looking Bell 47G helo.
Meanwhile Ann goes out in the bush alone to photograph the area where that soldier died a while back. Again, she's just shooting randomly at the ground for no particular reason, I just don't see what the point of that is. I'm not sure how much money she's getting paid for this job, but based on her total body of work here, she's ripping them off in epic style. On the way back, she gets the willies as she thinks she sees a snake in the back seat of her truck and has to be talked down off the ledge. This slight nod to the psychological effects of snako-slithero-phobia is maybe the most interesting thing in this film, if that means anything.

Wandering Ann.
Tom returns to the base and asks the Colonel about that buried container. The Colonel tells him that it's none of his business and to get lost, and it's clear that it's a Top Secret sort of thing. We are supposed to go "boo-hiss" to the Colonel here, but in reality, do you want your military going around giving away potential state secrets to every dashing young herpetologist who walks in with a chip on his shoulder and a compressed pound of Aquanet in his hair? There is a separation between the military and civilians for a reason, duh.

Tom confronts the Colonel.
Off now to an aforementioned perimeter patrol at night, as two soldiers in a jeep cruise around smoking and drinking on duty (gasp, dereliction!). In one of the stupider bits in all of cinema, their jeep tire is punctured by a killer snake, while they were bouncing along a dirt road at 30 miles per hour, no less. Somehow in the dark, Corporal X-Ray Eyes is able to see two tiny teeth holes in the black-wall tire and make the connection that a snake bit it. Sadly, this budding genius and his inebriated partner are swarmed under by a wave of snakes in a few seconds and killed. Watch as one of them holds a snake in his hands, its hissing fangs just inches from his face, straining like the snake has the strength of an elephant.

Snake attacks a fake leg with a boot! The horror!
Next day Tom and Ann are called in by the Doctor to see the two dead soldiers and their uncounted snake bites. I should note here that we never actually see a dead body with bites, here or anywhere, just people looking at lumps behind sheets. It makes me wonder how big the budget was that they couldn't afford to cake some make-up on a few extras and tell them to lie really still. A soldier takes Tom and Ann out to where the attack was, though they only find circumstantial evidence of a mass snake attack.

Dead body under there (allegedly).
And for some inexplicable reason, our film decides that it needs to stop being a Rampaging Monster Movie and instead become a Romantic Comedy! Off to Las Vegas (Vegas, huh?) now as Tom casts off his inhibitions and gets down to the business of giving Ann the business end of his...uh, business. What the holy hell is the point of this ten minute interlude? Did the focus group who test audience'd this film (ha!) say they needed more kissy-kissy and less hissy-hissy? Were the producers worried that the housewives in the audience (of Rattlers!?) needed something to swoon about, casting wistful looks at their husbands next to them, wishing that they would be as romantic as Tom, and secretly wishing that they looked as good in pastel blouses as Ann? Who knows, but we don't even get to see Ann naked, so it's a total washout. [Editor Pam: Ann's not that pretty, but at least she retains some credibility as a feminist by not wearing obvious makeup. And her hair is significantly less styled than Tom's.]

Vegas love, oh yeah.
After they return to the Southern California desert, we see them sleeping in a tent out on the Army base. Yes, it's as if that entire sequence with them in Vegas humping and eating prawns was added in after filming wrapped. Before it, they were roughing it in the desert, and then they suddenly warp off to Vegas, and then bam, they are right back in the desert. Anyway, they are sleeping peacefully when a horde of snakes starts to swarm the tent. Ok, flag, why the holy hell would they continue to camp outside in an area where there have been at least half a dozen deadly snake attacks? How stupid are they? Tom and Ann try and fight them off with a camp shovel and harsh words, but Ann gets bit and it looks like they are gonners. Just then a patrol of soldiers arrive and scare off the snakes with gunfire (huh, before the snakes didn't flinch at gunfire, and now two guys with guns can drive off a hundreds-thick swarm of them?) Watch as one soldier comes into the tent and shoots off a bunch of obvious blanks with his prop M-16. Ann is sent to a hospital for the rest of movie.

The soldiers save Tom and Ann.
The jig is up and the Colonel starts to cover his tracks (explanation later). We see him in his office burning papers in a trash can, sure that this will remove any evidence of his role in this disaster. Ah, much simpler pre-computer times, when you could just burn a folder full of papers and be done with it, and not have to worry about erasing harddrives, running magnets over CD-RWs, smashing flash drives, taking down websites, and all that. Running secret guv'mint projects was a whole lot easier back in 1976. The Colonel then shoots the Doctor dead when he tries to rat him out and runs off.

Burning papers.
Tom arrives at the base to meet the local police and a General, who has flown in to see what all the hubbub is about. The General decides on the spot that Tom, a man who he just met eleven seconds ago, and the sheriff, who he just met eight minutes ago, have the security clearance needed to be totally briefed on Top Secret US Army chemical weapons programs. He tells them of the dreaded "CT-3", a failed experiment to create a chemical agent that would drive a targeted population of Rooskies mad with bloodlust, causing them to kill each other off in fits of rage, allowing the American military to just walk in and take over without firing a shot. The Colonel was in charge of it when the program was active, but when it was cancelled he just decided to continue the research on his own in secret on this out-of-the-way base. He recruited the recently-deceased Doctor as he was a lush with a record as well as an experienced biochemist. Of course, it defies all logic that the General would allow knowledge of this incident, and the resulting public relations firestorm, to be passed to civilians, even ones with herpetology degrees and awesome haircuts. [Editor Pam: Um, if the project was cancelled, the funding would be, too. How was the Colonel paying the people doing the research, and how was he keeping them from knowing the project had been cancelled? This sort of project sounds as though it would involve some high-powered researchers, ones who would have enough connections to find out more than what the Colonel chose to tell them, with enough experience to spot something fishy going on, and with professional reputations they wouldn't want to jeopardize by working for some obscure Army officer doing unauthorized research. Even if the Colonel had been able to find scientists who agreed that the importance of the project outweighed all other considerations to the point where they were willing to work for free, or was doing all the research himself [both REALLY unlikely], how was he paying for the equipment and supplies he needed? And I would think that "a lush with a record" who had enough brains to graduate from medical school would be able to figure out that he could gain a lot more Brownie points by ratting the Colonel out than he could by assisting with some off-the-wall research. And if I were looking for somebody to do a good job of research and development plus keep it secret, a drunk is the last person I'd pick.]

Talking with the General. Hey, why is the local police department here on an Army base? Isn't this what the MPs are for? The Army has its own internal investigators and judicial system, and since this is a closed military facility, I can't imagine the civilian sheriff would have any jurisdiction.

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