King Cobra

King Cobra is a 1999 Trimark Pictures direct to video horror/sci-fi film about an escaped genetically engineered hybrid of an Asian King Cobra and an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake. The film was written and directed by David Hillenbrand and Scott Hillenbrand, and featured special effects byThe Chiodo Brothers.

A genetics laboratory run by Dr. Irwin Burns (Joseph Ruskin) to research aggressive behavior has an accident, resulting in a chemical fire andexplosion, and the escape of a thirty foot long hybrid snake with traits of both the Asian King Cobra (in the film, it is referred to as the African King Cobra, even though the King Cobra species doesn't inhabit the African Subcontinent) and the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake. Loose in the countryside and filled with the experimental aggressiveness drug, the snake, nicknamed "Seth", eventually outgrows his woodland prey, it begins hunting the residents of the small brewery town of Filmore. Doc Kragen (Scott Hillenbrand) conducts an autopsy on a recently found body and determines that the death was caused by a huge snake. He and Police Chief Jo Biddle (Casey Fallo) go to the Mayor (Hoyt Axton) and demand he cancel an upcoming town lager festival. The Mayor refuses, but after more deaths, the town eventually brings in snake expert and hunter Nick Hashimoto (Pat Morita).