Gruesome B-movie horror (Anaconda (DVD))

Member Name: GroundZero

Product:	Anaconda (DVD)
Date:	14/04/01 (100 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great fun, very entertaining, wildly OTT performance from Voigt

Disadvantages: Not the most believable....

First, a confession: I have always been a fan of B-movie monster horror films like Alligator and Piranha. The sort of film where you find yourself cheering on the creature(s) as they kill off the dumb humans.

Anaconda brings this genre bang up to date, with some impressively gruesome special effects. The anaconda in question is a 40foot long giant snake with a penchant for eating humans. Alive.

In one of her earliest big screen roles, Jennifer Lopez plays Terri Flores, a documentary maker who ventures into the Amazon rainforest with her film crew in search of the mythical Shere Shaman tribe. In the midst of a torrential rainstorm, they come across Paul Sarone (a gloriously hammy performance by Jon Voigt), a snake hunter who claims to be in need of assistance.

Things start to take a turn for the worse when Flores’ fiance (Eric Stolz) is mysteriously stung in the throat by an insect and nearly dies. Saved by Sarone, he lapses into a coma and plays little part in the remainder of the film.

Before too long Voigt’s character forcibly assumes control, leading the expedition in a hunt for a giant man eating snake. The hunter soon becomes the hunted, with the snake polishing off the film crew in a series of gruesome episodes.

The special effects team must have had great fun producing this film, with some wonderful set-pieces involving the snake. As with so many horror films, the snake won’t take the hint, no matter how many times it is stabbed, shot at, blown up or torched. In fact, you can clearly see one of the snake’s eyes being blown off by Lopez character when shot, but the eye mysteriously reappears later in the film (no jokes about one eyed snakes here…).

The film is a bit on the short side, although this is probably because the premise couldn’t really sustain too much more. As with most Hollywood films, you need to disengage your brain prior to watching. The actions o
f the snake are completely unbelievable, and at times unrealistic (Hollywood isn’t too good with the laws of physics), but you can excuse much when the film is as entertaining as this. It’s not in the slightest challenging, and won’t tax your attention too much, but is worth a watch if you like tongue-in-cheek horror films.

Summary: