# Vipers (film)

Vipers is a 2008 American television film directed by Bill Corcoran and starring Tara Reid and Jonathan Scarfe. It premiered on the Sci Fi Channel on September 21, 2008, and was released on DVD on September 23, 2008. The name of the film was inspired by the Co/Ed softball team of the same name, playing games in the summer months throughout the Capital Region. It is the twelfth film in the Maneater film series.

## Plot

Universal Bio Tech Research Facility secretly works on enhancing horned viper snakes with poison C12 for their venom to cure disease. The enhanced venom cures a woman of breast cancer. The snakes, however, eventually murder four people. Aided by his own men, a man named Jon Staffin subdues the staff to steal the snakes. In the ensuing struggle, the snakes get released and kill everybody except Staffin, who escapes. The snakes then rapidly repopulate.
On the island of Eden Cove, a couple is murdered on a beach. Meanwhile, a man named Cal Taylor comes to Eden to see Doc Jim Silverton. Sheriff Tom Hendricks eventually calls Doc, saying that teenager Maggie broke into a store and smoked marihuana. When Doc and Cal get to the store's garden, owner Nicky, Maggie and Maggie's parents (a man named Jack and his stranged wife Ellie) are arguing.
Outside, a snakes bites Jake, a child. Nicky rushes Cal and Jake to the clinic. There, Cal injects Jake with antivenom, stabilizing him. Doc then takes Jake to a hospital, and Nicky is imprisoned for growing marihuana. Meanwhile, Dr. Vera Collins, who works at Universal Bio Tech but only recently learned that the snakes were enhanced, tells Burton, the CEO, that she needs to examine Jake's bite to determine if it comes from one of their vipers. Burton then introduces Staffin as his security chief and sends his team out with her.
At the inn Jack owns, he and a woman named Georgie have sex. The vipers later kill Georgie. Cal meanwhile examines Nicky, still in prison. Cal later leaves without his tools, which Nicky uses to escape and go to the inn. There, Cal saves Nicky from a viper.
Tom learns of a lake full of half devoured fish carcasses. After finding more vipers, he tells everyone to run for the hotel, however Maggie runs the wrong way. The snakes intrude the lobby, but Cal scares them off with a fire extinguisher. Ellie leaves to look for Maggie and finds her, but they soon get surrounded. Tom then saves Maggie, who cannot walk, and locks her in the safe room at the sheriff's office. The snakes kill Tom, and Jack saves Ellie. They get cornered outside the office, but Cal and Nicky again use the extinguisher to deter the snakes while they all hide in a non-functioning van. Cal eventually gets bitten. They enter a café, but Ellie gets killed, and the rest barricades themselves into the building using ice, inferring that the snakes do not like the cold. Meanwhile, Doc, Staffin and Vera reach the island and find snakes eating corpses. En route to the inn, they use grenades of C12 to subdue the snakes, which eventually manage to kill one of the men. Jack, who is alive, takes Maggie, Nicky and Cal to the inn.
Everyone meets up there, but rescue is not coming until morning. The townspeople try to leave using the boat Bio Tech arrived on. This leads to a fight in which Jack gets killed. The townspeople leave the inn. Many are attacked while attemptting to reach the boats. The remainder retreat back to the inn, where the snakes try to get in. They kill one, while trying to barricade the doors. One of Staffin's men, Lewison, eventually tells the truth, that they were not there to rescue people, they were sent to capture vipers, and that aircraft were coming in the morning to gas Eden, killing everyone left by then.
Maggie guides everyone to where Jack stored a truck, and they attach heat sources to it. Lewison drives the truck while Cal, Staffin, Nicky, Vera and Brownie attract the snakes off the boat with heat and guide them to the greenhouse, where Cal plans to trap and kill them. Doc guides the rest of the townspeople to the boat. Maggie takes off but Doc cannot chase after her and departs with the boat. Lewison is bitten, and Maggie uses C12 to temporarily subdue the snakes, saving Cal. Staffin gets bitten and, when he dies, they realize that he had a radio on him the entire time. He was planning to escape by himself and leave everyone else to die. Via Radio, Vera demands Burton to call the attack off, to no avail. The snakes kill Brownie.
Nicky and Vera use flares and propane tanks to ignite the greenhouse, causing an explosion. The aircraft arrives, but Doc gets through to them, and they do not gas the island. Burton is arrested, as Cal recorded his walkie talkie conversation with Vera admitting his plan to kill everyone. Burton is later out on bail, but is then killed by a snake hiding in his car.

## Cast

* Tara Reid as Nicky Swift
* Jonathan Scarfe as Cal Taylor
* Corbin Bernsen as Burton
* Genevieve Buechner as Maggie Martin
* Aaron Pearl as Jack Martin
* Mercedes McNab as Georgie
* Claire Rankin as Ellie Martin
* Michael Kopsa as John Staffen
* Jessica Steen as Dr. Collins
* Don S. Davis as Dr. Silverton
* Mark Humphrey as Sheriff Hendricks
* Ellen Mcgillveray as Body On Bridge

## Reception

Dread Central said, "Vipers is the sort of nature gone amok movie that if it had been made 20-30 years ago, we’d be looking back on it today saying it may not have been a very good movie but we enjoyed it anyway."