Anaconda

Is this The Nightman Cometh?

"When You Can't Breathe You Can't Scream"

Hello everyone, it is that time again! Welcome back to more from The Tagline, where terrible movies I saw that one time are king! Recently (last Thursday actually) there was a live Rifftrax presentation of the fantastically not good snake movie Anaconda. This reminded me that Anaconda was a movie that happened, for better or worse. So today I figured I'd share that recollection with you, and review ANACONDA, the least scary movie involving snakes ever made. Starring Jennifer Lopez as a documentary maker named Terri Florez who is attempting to locate the elusive Shirishamas tribe in the Amazon. This is also a region of the world where enormous, 70 mile long snakes who are all powerfule burst through boats and try to kill Danny Trejo (not before he shoots himself though!). For those wondering, the longest verified Anacondas range around the 25 ft marker, but firsthand reports have reached such outlandish numbers as 145 ft. This movie capitalizes on that absurdity, and so JLo ventures out into the jungle, along with Ice Cube, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer (the queen of B-horror T&A) and that foppish british guy from The Mummy. Oh also there's some other guy but he gets stung by a deadly wasp and is basically not in most of the movie. This crew of mostly incompetents ventures into the Amazon aboard a ship captain by the second most obviously untrustworthy person in this film. After a short trip down the amazon into a massive rainstorm, the group meets the FIRST most untrustworthy person in the movie, Jon Voight's character Paul Serone, a man who is perpetually saying vaguely threatening things and leering at everyone. He may as well be wearing a high collared cape and be cackling while he ties maidens to train tracks. I assume the movie taking place in the jungle is the only reason he was NOT tying people to train tracks.

Fantastic am I right?

So with the snake hunter Serone joining their expedition, things immediately take turn for the worse, as it becomes increasingly clear that everyone is going to be either a willing or unwilling accomplice on the snake hunt. As you might guess, the mostly witless crew proves less than a match for the fearsome, ever present and weirdly intelligent snakes, That stalk the crew of the boat with slasher level commitment and also make a hideous shrieking sound like a velociraptor. It is also only vaguely effected by massive doses of tranquilizers. Basically the snake is an invincible killing machine that is also enormous and hyper smart. I guess really a snake outsmarting JLo and Owen Wilson shouldn't really be all that surprising, but it still stretches credulity. I know that I shouldn't even bring up stuff like that in a movie like this... but I really feel compelled to. Naturally the movie also adheres to all the fine horror tropes, like dramatic scary music at all the right times, people being stupid and doing sex things in the jungle at night (also Owen Wilson so yuck) and a host of other stupid or improbable shit. For a group of people ostensibly trying to AVOID giant water snakes, they all seem to jump into the river whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Okay here's the shot you really wanted to see.

Aside from being incredibly dumb, this movie is also not remotely frightening. I mean maybe if I was scared of CGI and I lived in the middle of the Amazonian jungle I would be really afraid, but thankfully I am neither of those things. The snakes looked dumb back then, and they look even dumber now. I learned that so long as I don't venture into the depths of the Amazon with a crew of stupid or evil people, I will probably not be eaten by a snake. Also if a strange man starts saying suspicious stuff and constantly making evil leering faces at me, I know to like... not hang out with that guy. I just really have to wonder why they even felt compelled to make this movie (rather I think they made four of them, though two were direct to video), was there a big demand for scary snake movies? This movie is also full of small scale movie stupidity, just in case the large scale stuff wasn't cutting it. FOR INSTANCE my favorite one was the amazing bolt-action rifle that no one ever had to cycle the bolt on! Also it had no magazine but no one ever reloaded it. This thing was just a magic bullet hose with a funny knob on the side with a mysterious purpose that was not ejecting the single bullet that the thing could contain.

Looks legit to me.

Also the group makes use of gas for their boat that comes out of ancient drums in an abandoned factory they stumble across, that looks to have abandoned for... ever. I'm not an expert in chemistry but I'm pretty sure that shit wouldn't have gotten them anywhere. Really though these are minor gripes when a 70 foot long snake monster is eating people and spitting them back up so that they can wink at you one last time (no I'm not kidding this is for real). I feel like I'm really dropping the ball here not making a joke about anacondas and JLo's booty but I just don't think I have it in me right now. You get the idea. I can recommend this movie because it is absolutely terrible. Watch it with friends and make fun of it.

That's it for today! Join me next week when I will avoid Interstellar.