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Synopsis: On the
Amazon, a poacher (Danny Trejo) shoots himself rather than fall victim to something
that has invaded his boat…. In a riverside motel in Brazil, aspiring
film-maker Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez) meets with anthropologist
Professor Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz), who has hired her to shoot a
documentary on a mysterious tribe, the Shimishama – and with whom she
was once involved. The next morning, as Terri talks excitedly with her
friend and cameraman, Danny Rich (Ice Cube), Cale consults with Mateo
(Vincent Castellanos), a local hired to pilot the film crew’s boat, over
the route they should take. The film’s onscreen narrator, Warren
Westridge (Jonathan Hyde), comes on board, and immediately alienates sound
technician Gary Dixon (Owen Wilson) and production manager Denise Karlberg
(Kari Wuhner) with his arrogant attitude. The expedition gets underway.
Later that day, as a violent storm breaks, the crew hears someone calling
for help, and finds a man stranded on a broken-down boat. They take him on
board, and Cale warns him that they cannot turn back. The man, Paul Sarone
(Jon Voight), assures the others that he is happy to be set down along the
river, amongst a tribe from whom he can get help. Unseen by the others,
Sarone exchanges significant looks with Mateo. Under questioning, Sarone
admits that he catches snakes for a living, but denies being a poacher.
Hearing the goals of the expedition, Sarone claims that he has seen the
tribespeople the film-makers are looking for, and agrees to guide them.
Along the river, the boat passes a snake totem, which Sarone insists is
Shimishama. The river forks, and although Sarone tries to convince Cale to
turn into a tributary, he persists in taking the main branch. That night,
Gary and Denise go ashore to do some sound recording, and Sarone saves
their lives by shooting an attacking wild boar. Cale orders that in
future, everyone will stay on board. The next day, the boat comes to an
abrupt halt as a rope gets tangled around the propeller. Cale dons a
wetsuit and scuba gear and dives in to fix the problem, but suddenly has a
strange attack. Danny and Gary drag him into the boat. To their horror,
they find a wasp in Cale’s mouth. It has stung him, and he has stopped
breathing. Sarone saves Cale’s life by performing an emergency
tracheotomy. He then warns Terri that they must get Cale to a hospital,
insisting that the quickest way is down the tributary – where he had
wanted to go in the first place. Terri reluctantly agrees. Soon, however,
the boat’s way is blocked by a man-made wall across the river. Sarone
produces dynamite from amongst his gear, and convinces the others to let
him blow the wall up. As the resultant debris showers down, the boat ends
up covered by baby snakes. The shock of the blast also frees the drums of
fuel, which were strapped to the deck; all but one are lost. Further
along, the crew sees another boat, and stop in the hope of finding more
fuel. Sarone and Mateo wade across, and Danny goes to film them. The boat
is deserted, but Sarone finds a metal trunk, which he appropriates. As
Sarone and Danny are carrying the trunk back to the crew’s boat, Mateo
manages to fall into the river. Suddenly, he is attacked by a gigantic
snake….
Comments: Many films
manage to piss me off. It is a rare film, however, that can manage to do
so within so brief a space as the three sentences of its opening crawl. Anaconda
is one such film.
Film critics, whether
professional or amateur, like to think of themselves as objective; that
they praise or condemn a film on its merits alone, and not because of
moods, prejudices, physical attractions, or any other of a myriad of
possible influences. In reality, of course, critics are just as subject to
external conditions as anyone else; and this is particularly likely to
come into play, I believe, in the case of a production like Anaconda,
which is the kind of film that leaves a potential reviewer teetering
between “It’s so dumb it should be kicked to death” and “It’s so
dumb it’s not even worth the effort of kicking”. In the end, it may
simply come down to the reviewer’s state of mind, and whether s/he
happens to be having a good day or a bad day when the review is
written.
So here I sit about to write my review, at the end of a two-week period
during which I have suffered through the most debilitating case of the flu
I’ve ever contracted, the lovely little wattle tree outside my study
window got uprooted during an incredible windstorm, three senior staff
members of my department resigned for various reasons, leaving a wholly
unwelcome number of extra duties on my shoulders – but no extra pay to
go along with them – and I made the unpleasant discovery that my ISP
offered no kind of technical assistance whatsoever, leaving me with a home
e-mail system fouled up beyond all possibility of recovery.
Which I guess is just bad luck for the cast and crew of Anaconda.
Now, while I confess to
approaching this film in an irritable (to say the least) frame of mind, I
deny that that alone was what made my hackles rise while I was reading its
opening crawl. I’ve reproduced that crawl below. Take a look at it, and
see if you can spot the subtle pieces of misinformation contained within
it:
Tales of monstrous, man-eating Anacondas have been recounted for centuries
by tribespeople of the Amazon Basin, some of whom are said to worship
these giant snakes.
Anacondas are among the most
ferocious – and enormous – creatures on earth, growing, in certain
areas, as long as 40 feet. Unique amongst snakes, they are not satisfied
after eating a victim. They will regurgitate their prey in order to kill
and eat again.
You kind of have to admire people who can cram that many outright lies
into such a short piece of writing, don’t you? Obviously, the
tribespeople of the Amazon Basin aren’t the only ones who like to
recount “tales” about anacondas.
As I have confessed before, I love snakes. It is completely mystifying to
me why some people should be so terrified of them, but nevertheless I
accept that this is the case. I have no problem with a film making snakes
the bad guys. Nor do I really have a problem with a film being,
inevitably, about The Biggest Snake In The Whole Wide World – even
though, in point of fact, no anaconda longer than twenty-eight feet long
has ever been solidly documented. (There was once a report of a specimen
that was thirty-seven and a half feet long, but the pesky critter took
itself off before any independent confirmation was possible.) No, what
kicked off my slow burn were the implications of the final sentence of
that remarkable opening spiel.
“Unique amongst snakes”? Such behaviour, believe me, would make the
anaconda unique full stop. Anacondas often do get into difficulties while
feeding. Sometimes they take on prey too big even for them, and sometimes
they injure themselves trying to swallow horns or shells. And sometimes,
given the size of the animals they can devour, the prey starts to
decompose in the gut before anaconda can digest it. If this occurs, the
snake will indeed regurgitate its prey. In other words, far from being “unique”,
they’re just like the rest of us: they eat something bad, they throw up.
However, they certainly do not vomit up perfectly good – and often
hard-won – prey in order to kill and swallow something else.
So why would the film-makers kick off their film with such a bizarre lie?
Clearly, in spite of all the ophidiophobes out there, the fact that Anaconda
is about The Biggest Snake In The Whole Wide World simply wasn’t
considered scary or compelling enough. Instead, Luis Llosa and his writers
felt they had to resort to promises of pathetic gross-out scenes (“Uhhuhhuhhuh
– they said regurgitate!”) in order to try and keep their viewers in
their seats. Nothing like having faith in the premise of your motion
picture, hey?
Of course, these shameless lies about the anaconda aren’t the only ones
to be found in the film. You ought to see what they try to palm off on the
audience as a documentary crew.
Anaconda opens, however, with one of modern filmdom’s more
perpetual victims, Danny Trejo, doing what he does best. We watch his
houseboat/barge being attacked by a rampaging POV shot (an attack which
invokes one of my least favourite effects, the floorboards that explode
from underneath), before Danny climbs his own mast in an effort to avoid
his pursuer. This masterly tactic fails, however, and Danny shoots himself
in the head rather than fall victim to – Whatever It Is. We’re not
granted a glimpse of the owner of the POV at this point, but here’s a
clue: the film’s called Anaconda.
Then we meet the characters [sic.] who, by and large, will soon be snake
chow. First of all we are introduced to Terri Flores, a rookie film-maker
hired to make a documentary about a mysterious Amazonian tribe (yes, a
lost tribe – in 1997) called the Shimishama. We are soon reassured that,
despite her amateur standing, Terri has been hired purely on the basis of
her talent. Well – that, and she used to sleep with the film’s
producer. When we first see Terri, she is clad only in a slip. There is a
knock on her motel room door, and as she rises to answer it, we discover
that people get sweaty in Brazil; very sweaty indeed. Terri crosses the
room, and as she does so, the camera gives us a good look at two of the
four reasons why Jennifer Lopez was cast in this film.
At the door is Professor Steven Cale. He and Terri greet each other
mock-formally as “Ms Flores” and “Professor Cale”, just to let us
know that if they haven’t been knocking boots in the past, they will be
in the not-too-distant future. Cale tells Terri that he’s been talking
to some locals, and thinks that there is sufficient reason to believe that
their “lost tribe” is indeed out there – “Or at least,” Cale
adds with a smirk, “that’s what I told the grant people!” Of course,
presumably Cale also told the unfortunate grant people that Terri and her
friends were competent film-makers, so perhaps we shouldn’t put too much
faith in his assurances.
And then we cut to the next morning, and meet the rest of this highly
skilled crew. First up is Danny Rich, Terri’s cameraman, who not too
subtly slips in a little exposition about his “home girl from S.C.”
and “her first documentary”. Next we meet Warren Westridge, the
documentary’s onscreen presenter. (This role feels very much as if it
were written for – and scornfully rejected by – Alan Rickman.) Now, if
you watch a lot of documentaries, as I do, you might be tempted to
question why Westridge is there at all. After all, unless a presenter is
someone like [genuflect] Sir David Attenborough or [broad guilty grin]
Nigel Marvin, do they normally get on camera at all? Considering the
amateur status of Terri and her team, I would have thought that a
post-production voiceover was the more likely – and cost-effective –
option. Ahhh….but then Westridge opens his mouth, and it all becomes
clear: half a dozen “bloody”-s later, we realise that we are in the
company of the film’s Odious Comic Relief. Because, you know, English
people are funny. Westridge’s first actions are to insult Terri’s
credentials (hard to argue, really) and to order around Gary Dixon, who is
the crew’s sound recordist, and Denise Karlberg, who--- Well, frankly, I’m
not sure who the heck she is. She calls herself the “production manager”,
but as far as I can see, her sole contribution to proceedings is to make
sure that Gary doesn’t end up having to, uh, handle his own equipment,
if you get my drift. The final member of this doomed expedition is Mateo,
a local hired by Cale to pilot the boat. I can only assume that Cale went
down to the local employment agency and asked them to send over the single
most suspicious-looking individual they could find. Certainly, Mateo doesn’t
seem to have any other qualifications.
And then our merry crew sets off, and we are given a good look at what
these experts think they do and do not need on a trip down the Amazon. Do
not: sensible clothing, insect repellent, rain gear, long-life food
stuffs, drinking water, trained mechanical assistance; do: ghettoblasters,
make-up, golf clubs, a wine cellar, lettuce, fine china and glassware,
pewter goblets. (Granted, most of these things belong to Westridge –
because, you know, it’s funny.) They also seem to think it’s a good
idea to keep their round metal drums of extra fuel lying on their sides
and stacked on top of each other and tied in place with a single
rope.
Sigh.
The first bend of the river has barely been rounded when, through a
torrential downpour, a voice is heard calling for help. Enter Jon Voight
as Paul Sarone, a leering, sneering, outrageously accented,
trainee-priest-turned-snake-poacher. (I think there’s meant to be some
kind of Eden/snake/temptation thing going on in there somewhere, but it
hurts my brain to think about it.) It’s hard to know what to make of
Voight’s performance in Anaconda. If it was meant to be a way of
expressing his contempt with the entire production, one can only applaud
(and sympathise). If, on the other hand, we were in any way, shape, or
form meant to take it seriously, well…. Sarone’s first act on board is
to exchange a series of significant looks with Mateo. Astonishingly, none
of the trained observers in the vicinity of this interaction
notices.
The rain clears, and soon Sarone is busy with a hand-made spear, quickly
serving up “Feeesh….reeever style!” “We’re going to have to get
that on film next time,” remarks master film-maker Terri. Jeez, ya
think? As Sarone chops up the feeesh (and “production manager” Denise
prepares a nice salad), he casually announces that he can lead the way to
the Shimishama, an announcement greeted with scorn by Westridge, who
opines that any river-rat would say the same after five whiskies. “Five
wheeeskeees?” responds our own particular reeever-rat, overhearing. “That’s
breakfast on theee reeever!” That night, the fireflies are out in
force. Being an anthropologist, Cale immediately launches into a
recitation of the mating habits of the insect, a speech that segues into
some lame sexual innuendo between himself and Terri. Meanwhile, out in the
jungle, our titular beastie finally puts in a brief appearance, attacking
and killing a panther in an effort to convince us all how big and scary it
is. Unfortunately, all we come away convinced of is that the film is not
going to be redeemed by the quality of its special effects, since the
panther makes the castle-dwelling animals of El Conde Dracula look lively
by comparison.
And then we get a classic
example of what passes in this movie for rapier wit. Westridge and Danny
fall out over the latter’s taste for loud rap music (music which just
happens to be by---well, gosh, who’d’ve thunk it? Ice Cube!!), setting
up following sparkling repartee:
Westridge: “You know, I could cheerfully hire someone to kill you! One
of the local tribesmen, perhaps. $50 ought to cover it!”
Danny: “I
could just kill you for free right now!”
Westridge: “Oh, really? You
and whose army?
Danny: “Your momma’s!”
You can see why this
thing needed three screenwriters, can’t you?
Around another bend, the team
happens upon a snake totem that Sarone insists is Shimishama. He further
trots out a legend of the reeever, which Cale recognises as emanating from
another tribe altogether. The two wrangle as the ship drifts past the
totem, and at the last possible moment it dawns on our director (Terri
Flores, that is, not Luis Llosa) that they might want to, you know, film
something. However, Sarone barges into shot to re-express his opinions of
the Shimishama, and instead of stopping the boat and re-filming, Terri
just shrugs and lets the totem go. Man, this is going to be one
fascinating documentary.
The boat then reaches the
spot where, according to Sarone, the Shimishama should have been found.
However, the water levels are high, and it is agreed that the tribe would
have moved away. Sarone, in his usual subtle and understated manner, tries
to convince Cale that they should head up a reeever tributary instead of
following the main flow, on the somewhat irrelevant grounds that, “I
trap snakes for a living.” Cale, in perhaps the first and only logical
act of the film, finds this insufficient reason for changing course.
Thwarted, Sarone goes back to exchanging google-eyes with Mateo.
That night, Gary and Denise go onshore to record some “wild sounds”,
nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Sure enough, five seconds later, the two of them
are swapping spit. You know, in many ways Anaconda is a very old-fashioned
movie, and we get further proof of that here, as, honest to God, Denise
breaks off the make-out session with the immortal line, “Wait! I think I
hear something!” Actually, what she hears is silence. Next moment,
something is charging through the jungle. Gary and Denise sprint for the
boat, and suddenly Sarone looms out of the darkness, firing a rifle. And,
surprise, it all turns out to be a false (or at least, misleading) scare,
as Sarone drags the body of a wild boar on board the ship. Remarkably,
rigor mortis seems to have set in almost instantly. Sarone enlightens Gary
and Denise as to what a close call they’ve just had (“They attack wiz
ze tusks….zay go for ze eyezz!”), then sensibly observes that the boar
will be a good source of food. Hilariously, we then see Danny recoiling
with a nauseated expression, as he repeats blankly, “Food!?” You can
tell this guy’s got a bright future in world adventuring before him, can’t
you?
The next morning, as Westridge is practicing his golf while he listens to
opera (no, really), things finally start to happen. The boat turns out to
be trailing a rope for no apparent reason, and that rope gets snagged
around the propeller, bringing the boat to an abrupt stop. Cale announces
that he’s going into the river to fix things, setting up one of the film’s
“defining” moments, as Sarone announces, “This reeever can keeel you
in a thouzand ways!” Unperturbed (except by the thought of a certain
little catfish that likes to take up residence in an unfortunate part of
the human body), Cale dons a wetsuit and scuba gear and submerges himself.
While this is going on, Terri starts messing with her hair and generally
striking a series of cheesecake shots (and showing off the other two
reasons that Jennifer Lopez was cast in this film), and we get the moment,
giant snakes be damned, that everyone remembers from this film: Jon Voight
re-defining the word “leer”. (Check out the bottom of this review to
see what I mean.) Amazingly, not only has Sarone’s behaviour to this
point not been enough to warn his companions that he’s up to
something,
but this little incident isn’t even enough to convince Terri to put on a
button-up shirt.
Meanwhile, as he works on the propeller, Cale is suddenly stricken with
some kind of fit. Gary and Danny drag him out of the water as the girls go
into hysterics, and to the revulsion of everyone, it is found that Cale
has, not a death’s-head in his throat, but a wasp in his mouth (!!). He’s
also stopped breathing. We then learn that amongst all the other things
this team of experts didn’t see any reason to bring with them was
someone with some medical or first aid training. Heck, yeah – why would
you need that up the Amazon? Anyway, it’s Sarone to the rescue once
again, as he performs a rough and ready tracheotomy and sticks a
breathing-tube into Cale’s neck. He then warns Terri that Cale needs to
get to hospital, and that the quickest way is up that very tributary that
he’d wanted to take in the first place. Imagine that. And just to put
the icing on the cake, the one radio on board the boat isn’t working any
more. Where do they get their ideas?
Now, I’m going to take a little break here and see if I can make it
clear to you what I think is going on. Not that the film itself is ever
clear about it. As far as I can tell, in his quest to capture a giant
anaconda, Sarone has concocted the following plan: he’s gotten his
partner, Mateo, hired by the film crew; he’s sabotaged his own boat, in
order to be taken onto the crew’s boat; he has tried to talk Cale into
taking the branch of the river he wants to take and, failing in that, he
has found an alternative way of forcing the crew to do what he wants –
namely, sabotaging the boat’s propeller and concealing a wasp in Cale’s
scuba gear. All in all, the most cogent and foolproof cinematic plan since
Ben Willis plonked a dummy out in the middle of a road somewhere between
North Carolina and Massachusetts.
Amusingly – and understandably – it seems that this particularly plot
twist was the final straw for Eric Stoltz, since from this point onwards
his character lapses into a coma and stays that way (one five second
interlude aside) for the rest of the film! (“I’m not having anything
else to do with this stupid movie! Now, I’m just going to lie here and
rest a while, okay? Fine, call my agent! See if I care!”)
Anyway, Sarone gets his own way and the boat heads up the tributary –
which at least means we must be getting closer to seeing a snake or two.
Sure enough, the boat chugs around another bend and comes up against a
wooden wall. Sarone immediately produces dynamite from his duffle-bag. The
others cry out against this proposed demolition, Terri on the rather
peculiar grounds that, “I’m worried about upsetting the ecological
balance of the river!” Apparently she thinks that wall evolved into
existence. Sarone, however, points out that coma-boy can’t afford them
to waste time doubling back, and the others reluctantly give in. Sarone
and Gary then climb into “the little boat” (where did that come from?)
and plant the dynamite around the wall. For a brief, shining moment, we
cut to a POV shot, and it seems that we might finally be about to get some
snake action; but alas, Sarone pulls Gary out of the water before anything
remotely exciting can happen. It then turns out that Sarone was a bit
optimistic with the setting of the charges, since the dynamite goes off
when both boats are ridiculously close to the wall. Debris rains down,
sinking “the little boat” (goodbye, gallant little boat! I’ll never
forget you!), while the jolt of the blast makes all but one of those drums
of extra fuel, tied up oh so carefully on the deck of the main, break free
and roll into the river, where they sink.
The explosion also results in a shower of baby snakes landing on the boat,
leading to what is one of the contenders for stupidest scene in the whole
film – cinematically and dramatically.
First up, a hint for prospective special effects users: if you’re going
to give your viewers long, uninterrupted views of animatronic and CGI
animals, do not precede your effects with equally clear views of the real
thing. These beautiful baby snakes, sleek, gleaming, and
well-proportioned, moving naturally, only serve to highlight just how
pathetic the fake snakes in this film really are.
Second – have I mentioned recently how much I admire this team of
documentary makers? You can just see that they’re made for a life of
roughing it in the wild – particularly when they react to the presence
of the baby snakes by going, en masse, into shrieking hysterics.
Okay, okay, I know some people are scared of snakes. But for heaven’s
sake! – we’re talking about baby boas, people! You could hardly find
any snakes less intimidating. But nevertheless, our brave band of
adventurers finds itself unable to cope with the, uh, threat, wailing
helplessly, “What do we do? What do we do?” Once again it’s Sarone
to the rescue, as he – wow, I never would have thought of this! –
casually picks the snakes up and tosses them into the water. Also, Mateo
starts hosing down the deck. Incredibly, Luis Llosa persists in trying to
make this sequence seem “scary”. One baby snake is washed towards
Denise’s foot, and we get a big impressive music sting to let us know
that, um, there’s a baby snake near her foot. And then it turns out that
one of the babies has wrapped itself around Westridge’s hand. Amazingly,
he doesn’t notice it’s there until it latches onto his finger and
tries to swallow it. Sarone detaches the creature, muttering, “Zo young….yet
zo lethal!”, while Westridge stammers and splutters and says “bloody”
a lot. Because, you know, it’s funny.
“You knew there were snakes here!” Terri throws at Sarone, as if it
had never occurred to her that such things might be found up the Amazon.
This futile line of debate is cut off when the fuel situation is
discovered. Much is made of the fact that there is only enough fuel left
for a certain distance – not that this ever actually interferes with the
travellers’ progress; it just introduces a MacGuffinish excuse for
things to happen. Sarone takes command of the boat, and finally we get
where we’ve obviously been heading since he first came on board: the
boat from the opening scene. Sarone suggests that “there might be fuel”,
so they stop, and he and Mateo wade over to investigate. Danny (not Terri,
mind you) suggests going along with a camera, while Terri and Gary agree
that sound recording won’t be necessary (because two extra people would
be inconvenient). The three climb into the boat, and some time and effort
is expended on trying to make this sequence seem scary and suspenseful. It
isn’t. The camera pans over a newspaper clipping showing Sarone with
Mateo, the suicidal poacher, and a snake, and Sarone quickly conceals it
from Danny. Then we finally get to the point of this whole protracted
enterprise, as Sarone helps himself to a metal trunk. He and Danny carry
it back to the boat, while Mateo, that old reeever-rat, somehow manages to
slip and fall off the poacher’s boat into the river. He stands there for
a bit, muttering to himself, and then finally, finally – a giant
anaconda attacks! ABOUT TIME!! Oh, excuse me. I mean, ABOUT BLOODY
TIME!!
Alas, I really wish I could say it had been worth the wait. Unfortunately,
the effects in this film are, not to put too fine a point on the matter,
crap. The anacondas are realised through a combination of animatronics and
CGI, each form of effect worse than the other. The animatronics are
slightly preferable. At least they get the snakes’ colour and
proportions more or less right. But as usual, the animals have that dead,
dull, glassy appearance around the face, which simply screams “Fake!”
The CGI snakes, however, are just awful. Wrong colour, wrong shape, and as
always, no sense of weight. See, this is the thing about anacondas and
that “Biggest Snake In The Whole Wide World” business: the word “biggest”
is rather ambiguous. Anacondas may or may not be the longest snakes in the
world (the reticulated python is a more likely candidate for that title),
but they are without question the heaviest. An anaconda only half the
length of a reticulated python would nevertheless weigh more than it. That
twenty-eight foot python I mentioned earlier was almost four feet around.
These supposedly forty-foot snakes would be proportionately thick, and
proportionately heavy. Real anacondas, particularly the females, which are
the really big ones, spend a lot of time in the water for a very simple
reason: it helps support their weight. Often, although they are
constrictors, anacondas will kill their prey not by suffocation, but
simply by dragging it into the water and holding it until it drowns. On
land, although they can still strike quite quickly, they cannot move their
entire bodies quickly – unlike the snakes we see here, which seem out to
break any land-speed record you might care to name. And that, we soon
learn, is only one of their amazing abilities. They can also defy gravity,
and move without leverage. And they kill purely for kicks. Oh, yeah….and
then there’s that whole “regurgitation” thing….
Anyway, back to Mateo, locked in the coils of our CGI heroine. The snake
shows off yet another of its remarkable abilities here, taking Mateo’s
head in its jaws and deliberately breaking his neck. After some more
gross-out bone-breaking sounds, the snake opens its jaws and prepares to
have a snack. And of course, regurgitation aside, if a real anaconda had a
meal that big, it would then crawl off and hibernate while it was
digesting it, perhaps for months. Not in this world, however.
On the boat, Mateo’s absence is finally noticed. Danny wades back over
to look for him, accompanied by a few threatening POV shots, but only
finds his torch. As the others start to panic, Sarone opens the poacher’s
trunk, and unfurls an enormous snakeskin, this being his way of breaking
the news of Mateo’s fate. Terri, suddenly an expert, insists nervously
that, “Snakes don’t eat people.” “Oh, zey don’t?” responds
Sarone, pointing to the scar down the side of his face, and reciting that
idiotic speech quoted above. Terri insists on waiting for Mateo until
morning. As the night passes, Sarone starts to work on Gary, intimating
that an anaconda of that size might be worth as much as “a meeellion
dollars!” Actually, I’m not sure even that’s true. I suppose having
The Biggest Snake In The Whole Wide World would carry a certain cachet,
but the fact is a lot of zoos find anacondas to be more trouble than they’re
worth. They’re big, they’re hard to handle, they’re dangerously
aggressive, and they really, really stink. Anyhoo, Gary lends an ear to
Sarone’s eeevil words, and thus signs his own death warrant. Poor Gary!
If only he’d watched more movies like this one! Then he’d have known
that contemplating m-o-n-e-y is tantamount to cutting your own throat –
even in a case like this, where the capture of a giant snake is suggested
as a way of trying salvage something from this disaster of an expedition.
Of course, the others reject this idea indignantly – hey, it’s not
their money at stake, right? Anyway, I’m sure that “the grant people”
will find the minute and a half of footage that Danny has shot to be
totally worth their investment.
The next day – Mateo not having reappeared – Sarone starts preparing
reptile tranquilliser darts, and horrifies his hard-bitten companions by
shooting a monkey to use as bait. This brings matters to a head, with Gary
dooming himself by taking sides with Sarone, and Sarone quelling an
attempted rebellion by Danny by pulling a handgun. Sarone then starts “fishing”
for snakes, trailing the dead monkey through the water. Sure enough, he
gets a bite, and a wrestling match starts between Sarone and his quarry,
during which we learn another interesting “fact” about anacondas: they
scream! Anyway, long story short, the anaconda manages to break free, and
in one of the highlights of the film (sadly, I’m not being sarcastic),
it rears up at Westridge and projectile vomits the dead monkey at him. The
snake then pursues Terri through the boat (oh, right, like it’s gunna
eat her), and knocks Denise into the water. Gary, not having read the
script, dives in after her, and in a totally shocking plot twist that
no-one saw coming, becomes victim number two. This particular killing is
topped off by an underwater shot of the snake, with an unmistakable
outline of Owen Wilson showing through its distended belly. By the way,
unless another of these snakes’ heretofore-unsuspected talents is
instantaneous digestion, we’re left to assume that this isn’t the
snake that ate Mateo.
Up on deck, Denise is in hysterics, accusing Sarone of, “Bringing the
devil!” “Everyone haz ze devil inzide!” responds Sarone. (Hmm….you
know, I think there’s an Owen Wilson joke there somewhere….) He then
waves his gun around a lot and intimidates all the others into submission.
Some time later, however, we see Terri putting on lipstick, which she
naturally brought along on her wild adventure up the Amazon. (I guess she
brought a razor, too, now that I look at her.) Terri slinks up to Sarone
and starts vamping him, under the guise of buying into that “salvaging
the expedition” scheme. Pardon me while I digress a moment. It is often
a matter of some astonishment to me that certain actors simply do not seem
to recognise that there are lines of dialogue that should never be spoken
onscreen. Ms Lopez seems to suffer from this problem more than most, if we
are to judge from her well-documented willingness to utter the “Come on
and get me, critics!” line, “It’s turkey time!”, in Gigli. In Anaconda, we learn that Ms Lopez’s affliction is of no recent date, as
she utters this beauty, in summation of her character’s situation:
“This film was supposed to be my big break, but it’s turned out to be
a disaster.”
Anyway, in an “Ewwww!!” moment that outdoes any of
the snake gross-out scenes in this film, Sarone and Terri end up locking
lips. However, being eeevil, Sarone refrains from closing his eyes during
this tender moment, and thus sees a reflection of Danny, who is sneaking
up behind him. Sarone swings around, gun in hand, bellowing, “You zink I
em ztupid, hey?” He gets his answer the next moment, as Westridge swings
a golf club through a window and pounds him into unconsciousness. Of
course, when we next see him, he’s tied up in a way that I could suspect
even I could wiggle out of, if I really had to. Moreover, his legs are
free, and they didn’t even gag him, which personally I would have made a
priority. The reason for this becomes clear when Sarone and Terri start
exchanging “tough” dialogue, during which Sarone more or less
confesses to that whole idiotic plot I outlined above, including “the
wasp!” – although he never does tell us why he and Mateo didn’t just
go after the snakes on their own in the first place. Would have been
simpler, wouldn’t it? Anyway, the outraged Terri then clocks Sarone one,
which doesn’t seem to hurt either one of them.
Meanwhile, Westridge and Danny are working out how to run the boat, and
patching up their differences – which means one or both of them are
about to die. Guess which? The boat approaches a waterfall, and observant
viewers might like to amuse themselves by noticing just how completely the
“Amazonian” vegetation changes character from this point onwards, as
the L.A. Arboretum begins to stand in for the “Brazilian jungle”.
Westridge goes out to admire the view, and Danny very cleverly manages to
run the boat onto a sandbank. The two men and Terri realise that they will
have to winch the boat free, and so enter the water, Terri and Danny going
one way, Westridge the other. On board, Denise (who has been in psycho
mode since Gary’s demise) approaches Sarone with a knife in her hand. Of
course, she wanders rather too close to Sarone’s legs, helpfully left
untied, and he kicks her over and strangles her between – ewww!! – his
thighs. He pushes Denise’s body overboard, then manages to snabble her
knife and cut himself free. Hey, way to go Denise! You sure were a big
help!
Out in the water, one or other (or another) of the giant anacondas
suddenly appears. Having shown themselves able to move like lightning on
land, this snake suddenly can’t move fast enough in the water to catch
Terri and Danny (!!). Westridge then has an inexplicable – and of
course, fatal – moment of heroism, as he splashes around deliberately
attracting the snake’s attention and allowing his companions to make it
back to the boat. Trying to evade his pursuer, Westridge begins climbing
the waterfall (??).
On the boat, Terri grabs Sarone’s rifle, and in one of the more amusing
sequences in the film, demonstrates about forty-seven different ways you
can not fire a gun. In the midst of this, Sarone attacks, slamming the
knife into Danny’s thigh, and inflicting an injury that will cause him
to – limp slightly for the rest of the film. As the two wrestle, Terri
finds a few more ways not to fire a gun. Meanwhile, poor old Westridge is
about to get a practical demonstration of just how remarkable these snakes
really are. As he cowers behind a curtain of water, one of them (the same
one? another one? who knows?) pokes its head through. Westridge tries
jumping to safety – whereupon this snake, which turns out to be coiled
around a tree branch at the top of the waterfall, strikes down at him
faster than gravity, catches him in mid-air and, instead of being
immediately dragged to the ground by the momentum, coils itself back up
towards the branch!! (The Stomp Tokyo guys rightly dubbed this ludicrous
bit of business the Amazing Yo-Yo Snake Action©.) Anyway, the tree to
which the anaconda is clinging falls under the snake’s weight (yeah, you’d
think!). Both Terri and Danny are knocked into the water by the impact,
although she quickly manages to clamber back on board. She tries to help
Danny back, too, but just at that moment, Denise’s body re-surfaces. And
then the snake attacks Danny. Phew! It’s just one thing after another,
isn’t it?
Luckily for Danny, however, he’s carrying a Hero’s Death Battle
Exemption© card, so not only is he not killed, or indeed even injured, by
the snake, despite being thoroughly constricted, but Terri finally figures
out how to fire than darn rifle, and puts three bullets through the
anaconda’s head. Danny climbs back on board, and then – and not a
moment before – Sarone reappears. He grabs the rifle off Terri (who
responds by biting his thigh – hope his shots are up to date) and seems
about to wipe out Our Heroes, when---
Hey, it’s Eric Stoltz!! Remember him??
Yup, it’s good old Steven Cale, who comes out of his coma just in time
to stab Sarone in the back with a reptile tranquilliser dart. And having
done so, he immediately lapses back into his coma. Well, thanks for
coming.
Sarone, meanwhile, has fallen into the reeever and sunk. And just in case
any of us are foolish enough to think he’s actually dead (on the first
attempt, and with eighteen minutes to go!), Danny saying, “Damn! The
dart fell out of his back!” is dubbed in.
Now, you might remember that the boat was supposed to be stuck on a
sandbank. Well, it turns out that the best way to get a boat off a
sandbank is to have a tree and a giant anaconda fall on it. Anyway, this
boat is now free – something signified, in a simply marvellous piece of
quality film-making, by the footage of the boat getting stuck in the first
place being run in reverse – complete with shots of the waterfall
flowing up!! Oh, well – I guess after that Amazing Yo-Yo Snake Action©,
anything’s possible.
Terri and Danny chug on down the reeever, and come across a broken-down
and deserted old riverfront house, where – “There might be fuel!”
(Guys, just give it up, will you?) They wander in, inspecting the damage
and solemnly agreeing that they don’t want to know what happened there.
(Oh, gee, I wonder - ? Could it be - ?) And what do you know? There is
fuel in there! And a gigantic snakeskin! Oh – and Sarone, who somehow
managed to get downriver before the motor-powered boat. Surprise! And one
blow of a rifle butt later, both Terri and Danny are trussed up back to
back. (In a beautifully tacky arrangement, Terri’s bonds are directly
below her breasts, and as she struggles during the following scenes, they
begin to act like a push-up bra!) Sarone, meanwhile, has killed and bled
out another monkey, which leads to yet another of the film’s technical
highlights. If you get the chance to see this film on DVD, do watch this
scene frame by frame. Doing so will reveal that not only are Terri and
Danny covered with blood before Sarone throws it over them, the blood that
he throws doesn’t actually touch them. Almost as if it were nothing more
than a crappy animation effect.
Sure enough, this “bait” lures in another anaconda, which hangs down
from a wooden ceiling that must be a hell of a lot stronger than it looks.
It’s about to devour Our Heroes when Sarone springs a net trap, hauling
both snake and humans up into the air. However, he also chooses to tether
his trap to a pipe that’s clearly not as strong as the wooden ceiling.
The snake gets free, and for some reason Sarone hesitates to use the
tranquilliser. He ends up trying to escape by climbing up a ladder, but
the gravity-defying critter shoots straight up after him and drags him
down. The ladder collapses, and Sarone is temporarily free; but Danny
manages to pull on the net ropes with his feet, which blocks Sarone’s
exit. (So – it’s okay to make sure someone is eaten by a giant snake,
but it’s not all right to just whack them in the first place?
Interesting morality.) And Sarone finally gets the comeuppance we’ve all
been waiting for, as he gets the privilege of hearing his bones break
before his veins explode. And then, in one of the weirder shots I’ve
ever scene, we watch Sarone being swallowed – from inside the snake!?
Meanwhile, Terri and Danny have managed to cut themselves free. The snake
(despite just having eaten) immediately starts chasing them around, but
Terri somehow out-runs it, even though it’s moving like a giant mutated
sidewinder. Finally, Terri stumbles into a snake nest, giving us another
chance to compare some gorgeously patterned and coloured real snakes with
the godawful computer effect that’s chasing Terri around. W-R-O-N-G!!
Anyway, as Terri recoils in terror from the harmless nestlings, the
animatronic head shoots through a nearby window – and then we get the
film’s crowning gross-out moment, as the animal barfs up Sarone.
(Frankly, given Jon Voight’s performance, you can’t really blame it.)
And just in case there’s anyone out there whose suspension of disbelief
hasn’t already been pummelled into complete submission, Sarone somehow
manages (i) to still be alive in the first place; and (ii) to tip Terri a
cheeky wink before collapsing. I hope you enjoyed that scene, people,
since it’s the reason that idiotic lie about the eating habits of
anacondas was told in the first place.
The snake then kindly gives Terri and Danny time to plot its demise before
attacking again. Terri runs to a smokestack and begins to climb the
ladder, while Danny sneaks up behind the pursuing animal and pins it to
the ground with a blow from a pick-axe. He then pours fuel all over it –
that precious fuel they need to get home, remember? Some suspense is
milked out of Terri being unable to get the cover of the smokestack up
before the snake breaks free, but she manages it, of course, and ends up
dangling on a rope down the outside of the smokestack. Danny set off his
fire-trap a little prematurely, it seems, and Terri is forced to jump to
safety before the whole place goes up in flames. Luckily for Terri,
however, she too has a Hero’s Death Battle Exemption© card, so even
though we clearly see her dangling directly over a wooden platform, when
she falls she lands in the water a good fifteen feet to the left. Phew!
Then the smokestack explodes, and we see the snake, completely on fire,
sail through the air and land in the water, screaming all the while. And
although it is on fire, it still manages one more shot at Terri. An
unavailing one, naturally. Danny (how did he get out?) drags Terri out of
the water, and they watch the anaconda’s death throes.
And then, just when everyone was most expecting it, another snake slams
through the wooden walkway on which Our Heroes are standing. Terri can
only cower helplessly, but Danny slams that handy pick-axe into the animal’s
head. “Bitch,” he comments charmingly as it dies.
Back on the boat (I guess enough of that fuel survived the fireball), good
old Steven Cale finally wakes up, exchanging a hug with Terri. Awww. Some
time later, when Cale is up and around (and picking at his neck wound –
tsk!), a small flotilla of native canoes suddenly appears. Yup, it’s the
Shimishama. Sadly, contrary to what numerous Italians would have us
believe, the members of this long-lost tribe do not immediately evince
cannibalistic tendencies. But still, there’s no reason to despair just
yet. Just wait until the Shimishama find out how many of their snake gods
Our Heroes have managed to kill….
Want a second opinion? Visit Stomp Tokyo
( http://www.stomptokyo.com/movies/a/anaconda.html
)
"Uhhuhhuhhuh....I can
see Jennifer Lopez's talents from here!"
Image
stolen from The Agony Booth (http://www.agonybooth.com
)
|
Director: Luis
Llosa