In 1979, a delivery truck makes its way up a lonely southern California highway in a storm, bound for the San Diego Zoo with a deadly tropical rattlesnake as cargo. When the truck suffers a blowout, the driver loses control and hits a tree, shattering the snake’s aquarium in the back and the window separating the snake from the driver. The snake slithers into the front of the truck, kills the driver with its bite and then moves off into the forest. Flash forward to 1999. The small southern California town of San Vicente has grown from 6,000 to 30,000, and the rattler, which escaped nearby years ago, has bred. There are now 25,000 of these hybrid rattlesnakes, and they are slowly making their way downhill into the town, attracted by the movement of the blasting as the town paves its way toward progress. Progress, in this case, brings terror, in this tale originally penned by John Carpenter.

A spaceship with an all female crew runs into a meteor field because of a navigational mistake. They lose a lot of their fuel and realise they cant get home on what they’ve got. They are forced to land on a planet which has been reformed into one of the most dangerous penal colonies in the universe in order to refuel. Once there they realise only two men are left on the planet and they are engaged in hand to hand combat. The women cant figure out which one of the men is the officer and which one has systematically slaughtered the rest of the inmates. One by one each of the women is killed. Just who is Convict 762?