You'd feel this way, too, if you're on a plane full of snakes. An airline passenger reacts to the slithery critters in the horror-comedy flick Snakes On A Plane.

Snakes On A Plane is the fabulous phenom that fizzled.

Now the filmmakers, and the New Line Cinema studio executives who backed SNOP, are hoping that the DVD will soar and save their asses from the venom of failure.

The widescreen-only DVD, part of the New Line Platinum Series, arrived this week. It was slipped into pebbled cardboard sleeves that feel like a snake's smooth scales. It comes in either burnt orange or black. The contents are the same. The discs are fully loaded with bonus materials.

David Ellis' movie, which stars Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent trying to save a plane-load of passengers from a slithering mass of hyperactive poisonous snakes on a flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles, combines genres.

It is part disaster flick. Think Airport and its clones. It is part snake horror-comedy. Combine Anaconda and Airplane!. And it is part pure terror.

Conjure A Nightmare On Elm Street, with fangs instead of Freddy's fingers to haunt your dreams and rip your flesh.

"A lot of people don't like flying," Jackson deadpans in the DVD documentary, Pure Venom: The Making Of Snakes On A Plane. "Most people don't like snakes. ... Have a nice flight!"

Snakes On A Plane became a phenomenon because of organic Internet buzz. Free of machinations by the studio, Internet geekboys and geekgirls seized hold of the title and its basic premise and started the buzz.

This frenzy generated loopy comic strips, homemade video clips, blogging threads, snakes-on-something picture postings and mock alternate movies. Those included Raccoons On A Space Shuttle, Cows On A Popemobile, Hedgehogs On A Hummer and Sheep On A Skateboard.

In the comic strip, Jackson's now-famous piece of mothereffing dialogue was introduced. So was the notion the movie should be gory, sexually transgressive and rudely funny.

"We get this sense that the moviemakers are willing to interact with us and work with us to make their film the film we want to see," fanboy Michael Ryan says on the DVD.

Sure enough, in the movie, Jackson declares: "Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherf-----g snakes on this motherf-----g plane! Everybody strap in."

But the theatrical release was a bitter disappointment, considering the hype. It generated a modest $15 million on opening weekend, far less than expected, considering the now-empty prediction that Snakes On A Plane would revolutionize Hollywood marketing. In total, it earned just $34 million in North America, $59 worldwide, with a $33 million production budget. That is lousy.

New Line made a critical mistake. Executives refused to pre-screen SNOP for critics in the U.S. and forced the Canadian distributor, Alliance Atlantis, to do the same here.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Especially because SNOP actually generated gung-ho reviews once critics got at it (including the Toronto Sun's own Jim Slotek). And those that didn't "get it" as camp comedy were easily dismissed.

Seems that New Line still makes marketing mistakes: You can't tell from the snake sleeve on the DVDs that they come fully loaded. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Especially because the contents are good.

The doc Meet The Reptiles is a 13-minute intro to those gorgeous real reptiles used on set. The chief snake handler is Jules Sylvester, who started with Born Free in 1964.

Among his associates on SNOP is Canadian Brad McDonald, who lovingly introduces us to a rare Boelens python and a 350-pound Burmese python, among other creatures.

DVD director Katy Leigh has other showpieces. There is a group commentary led by Ellis and Jackson, 12 minutes of deleted/extended scenes (among them a deflated alternative ending), the 18-minute making-of doc Pure Venom and the five-minute special effects featurette.

There is something else, something unique. New Line smartly offers Snakes On A Blog, a 10-minute takeout on the bloggers.

They are shown in action at home and then at the SNOP premiere at Mann's Chinese in L.A. They demonstrate how new media changes public tastes.

Now all that has to happen is for that Internet buzz they created to finally pay off for SNOP on DVD.