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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….
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Anaconda? Visit
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