A movie like Anaconda should have been a disaster. It should have been the type of bad movie a studio makes that bombs so spectacularly executives who greenlit it come to work the Monday after only to find their parking spots painted over. Yet, it didn’t. For a cheesy B-movie like movie released in the spring of 1997, it became a huge success earning over $135 million at the box office, nearly four times its budget of $45 million.
Still, that’s a huge price for a movie like this that has the look and feel of an American International Pictures movies that would’ve been filmed in the swamps of Florida, Georgia or Louisiana back in the 1970s. For all we know, the writing duo of Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr., probably wrote this thing back during the horror grindhouse days and it was gathering dust for a couple of decades in a desk drawer.
Set on and around the Amazon River, it’s focuses on a documentary film crew is doing a movie on the Shirishamas, a lost Amazon tribe. Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez) is the director with her cameraman and friend, Danny Rich (Ice Cube.) With them are Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde) as the narrator and Dr. Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz), an anthropologist. The production manager is Denise Kalbert (Kari Wuhrer) and her boyfriend, Gary Dixon (Owen Wilson) as an assistant. There’s also the boat skipper, Mateo (Vincent Castellanos). As the line from Jaws goes, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Things are running smoothly for the crew until the find a huge snake. No, it’s not the huge slimy reptile. But a Paraguayan snake hunter, Paul Serone (Jon Voight), mugging and sleazing it up. He looks like the type who shouldn’t be within 1,500 of a school or park. There’s a old-man who does porn during retirement sleaze to Voight’s performance. Serone’s been stranded and takes refuge on the boat initially saying how grateful he is. But there’s something about Serone that seems a little off. He claims he can lead the film crew to find the Shirishamas, but him and Cale argue.
Cale has to go underneath the boat when the boat’s rudders get tangled in some rope. He gets stung in the throat by a wasp. Serone performs a cricothyrotomy, cutting a hole and using the hollow exterior of a pen for Cale to breathe, but the crew realizes if they backtrack it’ll take longer to go to a hospital. Serone shows them a spot on the map where he tells them there’s a hospital. But Serone is just leading them more down river to lure the anacondas out.
And one by one, they kill the crew members. Since Mateo is being played by the least famous of the cast, he goes first with everyone acting like he just quit his job. No one bothers to go look after him taking Serone’s word that he’s probably dead. But they still don’t trust Serone and things go from bad to worse when he produces a handgun and more or less holds them hostage. Gary seems to side with Serone about hunting the sanke and saying they could get that on the film instead of the Shirishamas. So, you know he’s the next one to go.
Basically, the movie follows the same plot as many other “When Nature Attacks” thrillers. But that doesn’t mean it’s not well made in its cheesiness by Luis Llosa (who holds the recognition of filming Sandra Bullock in her most explicit sex scene) doesn’t care that the animatronic snake looks cheap and is probable a couple of crew members off camera moving a snake head around on electronics. The CGI looks good for the era. But there’s that one awful shot of the waterfall moving in the opposite direction. Why film the boat backing up when you can just run the footage backwards? Who’s to know? Maybe in that area, the water does flow the other water. It does in toilet bowls.
And that’s the joy of this movie. It relishes how bad it is. Stoltz has never really been an A-lister but it’s at least a more respected B-lister after roles in Oscar-winning movies like Pulp Fiction and Jerry Maguire (even though they were mostly supporting roles), but he’s appeared in many memorable roles in his lifetime. Yet, Cale spents most of the second and third act of the movie lying in bed asleep. Lopez and Cube carry the movie as the main characters as they deal with Voight’s Serone.
And casting the Oscar-winning actor in this role is just perfect. It’s one of the best and worst of his career. With a ponytail hair and clothes that look like they smell like swamp water, mold and week old body funk, Voight does his sleazy best trying to make us believe his Paraguayan accent is authentic. I don’t even know what a Paraguayan accent sounds like and neither does Voight nor Llosa. It could be it’s all an act by Serone and his real name is Paul Stephens or something. There’s even a scene where Serone adds a wink that is worth the price of admission. I won’t give it away to people who haven’t seen it, but you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Yes, the main characters are Lopez and Cube, very unusal for a 1997 movie, especially since Lopez was still a rising celebrity following Selena. Cube does his usual Cube thing even sneaking it a line from one of his most famous songs when he says, “It’s a good day.” There’s also a small role by Danny Trejo who also appeared in Con Air released two months later. Both movies have a feel that they’re making fun of more serious movies in their respective genres.
While audiences loved the movie at the box office, critics weren’t so happy. Many of them dismissed the movie. Surprisingly, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both found it enjoyable and recommended it on their show, giving it two thumbs up. This might have encouraged some theater goers to just relax and escape for an hour and a half. If anything else, it’s to see Voight give a performance that is all about overacting and hamming it up.
The movie’s success encouraged Columbia Pictures and their parent company, Sony, to produce four sequels, none of them as successful nor as memorable. Sometimes, it’s best to quit while you’re ahead. Maybe the bigger snakes aren’t the anacondas or Serone but movie executives who see big bucks.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 