Description
Reclusive millionaire philanthropist Jason Kincaid lost his brother to a massive taipan serpent during a hunting trip in Micronesia. The snake also bit him, but rather than dying from the venom he survived and seemingly developed a telepathic link with the creature, caused by the venom mutating the brain cells responsible for extrasensory perception. Haunted by visions of the snake's continued killings, Kincaid pays to have a poacher capture it and deliver it to his mansion outside San Diego. He hires psychiatrist and ESP researcher Tom Brasilian in the hopes that he can help him rid of the unwanted psychic link once and for all. In exchange, Kincaid offers to underwrite all of Brasilian's on-going research.
However, a Satanic cult also has its eyes on the snake. As it is worshiped by the indigenous natives as the guardian of their underworld, they believe that it is, in fact, a demon and hopes to acquire it for worship. The cult hires ex-CIA agent Warren Crowley to steal the snake. Crowley bribes a sailor on the ship transporting it to the United States to help secure it, but the mole is killed when he attempts to look inside the snake's container and is bitten. The venom causes his blood vessels and visceral tissues to rapidly swell and he dies by falling overboard.
As Brasilian insists on keeping the snake at his university laboratory until Kincaid's private lab is constructed, he oversees its transportation there, unknowingly being tailed by Crowley and his minder Deacon Tyrone. Kincaid's niece Suzanne, believing that his psychic link is actually a delusion brought on by the trauma of her father's death, attempts to kill the snake by secretly increasing the temperature of its container to a lethal 150 degrees. That night, Crowley and Tyrone break into the lab. Tyrone, realizing that the snake is overheated, opens the container. The snake promptly breaks loose and kills Tyrone and the lab director before escaping outside. Brasilian and Suzanne are summoned to the site by police, while Kincaid senses that the snake has broken loose.
Brasilian surmises that the snake must go to a temperate environment, and searches a nearby greenhouse with Suzanne. The snake attacks them, and Brasilian barely manages to fend it off with a fire extinguisher. Police arrive, but Kincaid manages to ward them off by convincing them of the danger the creature poses. All three are taken into custody, and police are skeptical of Kincaid's claims and threaten to charge him with manslaughter for illicitly importing such a deadly animal. Meanwhile, the snake attacks a nearby sorority house and kills its inhabitants, an act Kincaid witnesses through his mental link.
Crowley is threatened by the cult for his failure to secure the snake. He bribes the location of Kincaid's residence and travels there by van, believing the snake will eventually travel there at which point he can capture it. Meanwhile, Brasilian determines that Kincaid's psychic link can be used to track down the snake before it strikes again. He hooks him up to a brain-pattern monitoring device, and Kincaid begins having a telepathic episode, seeing the snake arrive at his house and kill Crowley. Kincaid can only shout out a few cryptic words before the connection is lost, and disappears before he can be questioned any further. Suzanne realizes that he was referring to their house, and she and Brasilian race to intercept him.
Kincaid arrives at the house, where the snake has already killed a groundskeeper. Picking up an assault rifle, he searches the grounds but is repeatedly struck by more and more intense visions of the snake's previous kills, losing his gun in the process. Finally, he confronts the creature in the backyard, where the psychic energy causes spontaneous explosions around the two. He attacks it with a knife, but it quickly gains the upper hand and kills him. Brasilian and Suzanne arrive, and Brasilian picks up Kincaid's gun and shoots the snake to death. He and Suzanne leave as the snake's remains burn side-by-side with Kincaid.
