Folks seem fascinated with these slithery things. Don’t know why…but here’s a post about a cheesy, fun flick that I first wrote about in 2012.
Wait, what? Hey Mike, didn’t you write about this one already? Nope, this one is Anacondas, plural. This 2004 film has a whole lot more of the slithering creatures than the first one did. (Anaconda had two, so technically it could’ve been called Anacondas, but…oh, who gives a crap!)
So why write about Anacondas when I’d just written about Anaconda? It’s because about a gazillion people—over-exaggeratedly speaking—have done word searches on this gigantic snake and/or the movie and wound up checking out my post. That many people care about anacondas? Who knew? So despite recalling that the second movie was nowhere near as good as the first, I decided to check it out again, since I hadn’t seen it in years. Yes, it’s definitely one of those cheesy flicks that you’ll probably feel guilty about watching, but ya know, it wasn’t half bad.
“Uh, folks, I don’t think you want to be walking there…”
Anacondas is not a sequel to Anaconda. None of the cast members that survived the first movie appear in the next one, although one brief reference is made to it. The first took place in South America, the second in Borneo. And speaking of the cast members, the continuing allure of Anaconda is in great part because it starred Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, and Owen Wilson. Anacondas gives us Hollywood luminaries such as Johnny Messner, KaDee Strickland, Matthew Marsden, and Morris Chestnut. (Yeah, I know you’re hastening to IMDb biographies as we speak.)
That said, these actors did a competent job in a relatively low-budget ($25 million) film that grossed over $70 million worldwide. Subtitled The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, the story has to do with a rare plant in the wilds of Borneo, the properties of which can slow aging, cure cancer, create world peace, nip acne and toenail fungus in the bud—you get the picture. The problem is, this orchid only blooms for a couple of weeks, and it happens about as often as Halley’s Comet returns. So this scientific team, funded by a mega-pharmaceutical company, has to get to Borneo and hire someone dumb enough to take them up (or down) river during monsoon season, because that brief window is now. They find just the right guy (everyone has a price), a grizzled captain whose boat makes the African Queen look like the Queen Mary.
Before long the raging river deposits this scow over a waterfall. The boat is turned into wood chips, but no one is hurt. Go figure. Now they trek across nasty swampland and jungle in a desperate race to harvest these orchids. Yes, Corporate America trumps all. As they wade through a particularly deep marsh and realize that something is swimming around them, one of the smartasses starts humming the Jaws theme. He is promptly pulled under and devoured. (Guess the snake didn’t like the movie.)
Now, everyone is aware of the presence of these snakes (plural). Why are there so many? “It’s mating season,” the captain says. “What, you’re telling me there’s some snake orgy going on in the jungle?” one of the researchers asks. “Yeah, something like that,” the captain replies.
At this point everyone wants to get out of Dodge and head for the nearest Hilton. Ya think? But there’s gotta be a villain, and in this case it’s the head researcher, who is obsessed with obtaining these flowers, to the point of taking out some of his team by himself—the ones that the snakes miss. All of this comes to a head when they discover that the blood orchids and the snake pit are in the same place, and the reptilian mating orgy is at its height. The villain, asshole that he is, has no choice but to make some of the team members risk the seriously slithering pit at gunpoint to harvest his stupid flowers. The ensuing scene alone is worth the price of admission, and I won’t say much more about it—except that if you like to see evil jerks get their just rewards, you’ll love this climax.
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid runs for a little over an hour and a half, and what the heck, it was a fun diversion. Did it make me want to run out and buy the DVDs for numbers three and four? (Yeah, they made more.) Uh, no. Maybe later. But I’m glad I gave it a second chance.