Jamie
Terri Flores is a documentary film director searching for a mysterious Amazon tribe. Her and her film crew take a boat down the river only to pick up a mysterious stranger who immediately leads them astray. Can they survive his maniacal obsession with capturing a giant and dangerous anaconda and get back to safety before it’s too late? Find out in… Anaconda.
How?! The title and concept of the film would lead you to believe that a giant (perhaps mutant) anaconda is in fact the main foe at the center of this film. Alas you would be wrong. After a film crew (complete with nerdy professor and pompous British host) hire a boat to take them into the Amazon in search of a mysterious tribe called the Shirishamas, they stumble upon Serone, a Paraguayan snake hunter. He is obviously quite evil and is in actuality their main foe. He starts to murder, maim, and manipulate all the dumb dumbs on the boat to get it to go exactly where he wants to go: to face off against a giant anaconda mano a… uuuhhhh…. not mano. You see, the snake is not mutant or different at all. In fact it’s not even just one snake. They are clearly stumbling upon multiple giant anacondas. If they had stayed out of its lair everyone would have been just fine. But alas, Serone has different ideas. Once Serone has subdued the main scientist via a wasp in his scuba equipment (classic Serone) he gets them to go down a tributary that has been blocked off (presumably because there are giant snakes there). There he begins to hunt the snakes and the snakes begin to hunt them. By the end we get a climactic scene of Serone attempting to use Flores as bait in a snake trap. This backfires and Serone is eaten by the anaconda only to be thrown up to wink at the camera one last time. Flores and her cameraman then lay a trap for the anaconda and they blow it up. As they find their way out of the jungle they get a final shot of the Shirishamas which will win them an Oscar (although given how much they were able to shoot they’ll probably have to move the submission from documentary feature to the short subject category). THE END.
Why?! The crew just wants some sweet shots of that missing tribe. Serone just wants to bag a giant anaconda and will stop at nothing to attain this goal. The weird thing is to try to figure out Serone’s plan. Him and the riverboat captain are already in cahoots before the film starts. So in reality they could have taken the boat and hunted anacondas wheneva. But perhaps they needed the documentary crew’s funding to do so… then why trick them into allowing Serone onto the boat in the first place? Just have him be part of the riverboat crew. Also, why not just dump the crew when they get far enough up river? Seems like a terrible idea to keep all these people around who could sabotage Serone’s ultimate aim. Anyway, this leads me to conclude that secretly Serone wanted to be famous. He wanted to board the ship with the documentary crew on there, woo then with his knowledge and screen presence, and eventually shift the focus of the documentary to Serone: Anaconda Hunter. It’s the only logical conclusion.
What?! I don’t recall any product placements of significance. The anaconda is definitely Serone’s MacGuffin, but no one else wants to find that guy. Really the Shirishamas are closer to a MacGuffin as the audience is told that they are somehow important and mysterious, but little else is known about them. They are just an object of great interest to our characters because…
Who?! Uh… JLo? Ice Cube? Evah heard of them? I’ve been interested in finding some examples of a double musician-turned-actor film in anticipation of watching Edison Force starring LLCoolJ and Justin Timberlake, but totally forgot that we were literally watching one of those very films this week.
Where?! Brazil babbbbyyyyyyyyy. We get an intertitle and a map scene and the whole thing. Also anacondas are only found in South America and primarily in the Amazon, so pretty strictly has to be set in Brazil. I mean it would be totally ridiculous to set a film elsewhere and imply that there are anacondas there *slowly looks towards the DVD copy of Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid*. I’m leaning towards A-.
When?! Serone has no concept of time. There is only the time before he catches the giant snake and the time after he catches the giant snake (during which he is planning how to trick people into helping him find another giant snake). What I’m saying is that I don’t know when this takes place. F.
This film is actually a lot more fun than almost anything else we watch. Yeah the plot doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. Yeah the anaconda looks like garbage most of the time. But it’s kind of like a home invasion film where the main character keeps doing super dumb stuff and you just want to yell “don’t do that! He’s evil!” and it’s fun enough to go along with. It may not win any Smaddies Baddies in the end, but I found the whole experience satisfactory. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! What happens when you very intensely watch a film you’ve not only seen before, but you’ve seen multiple times and was one of the first “horror” films you ever watched in your life (in theaters no less)? Come into my mind and find out, let’s go!
The Good – I actually genuinely (hey, why are you laughing? I’m serious) liked this film in a weird way. Sure Voight is a bit over the top at (all) times, but the ensemble cast all seem pretty ready to fake interact with fake snakes and the scenery is amazing. With a strong willingness to just lazily float down the anaconda filled amazon tributary with our heroes I don’t see why you can’t have fun with this film.
P’s View on the Preview – Obviously I was here for one thing and one thing only from a bad movie perspective: Jon Voight. His performance is kind of legendary. From the weird accent, to him mugging for the camera, to the final regurgitated wink, the entire thing was a beautiful symphony. Fun fact: As the moment approached I started to convince myself that I had imagined the wink Jon Voight’s corpse performs after being regurgitated by the Anaconda … I did not, and, appropriately, I burst out laughing when it happened.
The Bad – Owen Wilson and Kari Wuhrer were probably the weakest in the cast, mostly there to betray everyone (in Wilson’s case), cry (in Wuhrer’s case), then die (both of them). The snake looks like complete crap I want to say … 90% of the time. They kill off by far the best character (the British dandy of a host who ends up becoming a one-with-the-jungle badass). And … well, I think it is time for a rant.
Get Yo Rant On – Seriously though … what the hell are creature features supposed to be? This movie isn’t scary, so is it really a “horror” film? There isn’t really a single moment that is scary at all, and it is hard to tell whether they are even trying to make it scary. So are they thrillers? Action films? The classic creature features are things like Frankenstein. The quintessential one is Jaws. People thought Jaws was scary at the time, but it isn’t really now … so are people merely mimicking that feeling of tension? It is a confusing genre, especially with things like Godzilla and King Kong really going all out with the action version, and things like Meg which is the (new very popular) action-comedy I think. I just don’t know how to feel about it in the end. End rant.
The BMT – It certainly is a new twist on BMT. I don’t think Anaconda will go down in history, but I think this could be on the first examples of us rewatching a film. It … wasn’t wholly successful I don’t think. My previous watches definitely left me slightly less interested than I often am. But we have a few more coming up, so we’ll see how it goes. It is also just a little too good to be a classic. But I would watch it if someone offered, and we’d laugh heartily at it. So that is a win.
Welcome to Earf – Weirdly an easy one: Owen Wilson is in I Spy with Eddie Murphy, who was in Norbit with Terry Crews, who was in Blended with Adam Sandler, who was in Jack and Jill with Al Pacino, who was in 88 Minutes with Leelee Sobieski, who was in Here on Earth Welcome to Earf!
StreetCreditReport.com – Not surprisingly it doesn’t get any play from what I can tell. But this was kind of before worst of lists became popular. Funny enough it is mentioned as one of Ebert’s worst reviews. Honestly, this is exactly the type of movie Ebert would be a huge apologist for. Goofy fun which was never really intended to be taken seriously. I disagree with the attitude in general, but I respect the consistency with which Ebert went about his argument for it.
No homework because we were ballers and watched both Anacondas. Go check out what I thought about the completely pointless (spoilees!) sequel!
Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 