Anaconda(1997)

Jon Voight in 'Anaconda' wins it for me. The wink at the end seals it.

The CGI snakes weren't very good, but the practical effect ones were pretty damn confincing.

ANACONDA all day!

This movie is pure B-ness. You had J-Lo, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Danny Trejo - an Academy Award classic that nobody saw coming. I need to watch this again.

"Dere snakes out dere dis big?!"

I remember this being pretty awful, although Voight was hamming it up like a champ through gritted teeth. What do I know though, I haven't seen it since it first came out on video.

Much love for this large enjoyable hunk of Velveeta.

Voight is so awesome in this. Doesn't he snap Kari Wuhrer's neck with just his legs? If not, he should have.

As a side note, J-Lo is smoking hot and sweaty in this. She and Ice Cube actually made a good team. I'd watch a monster-franchise with those two as a sort of ethnic Mulder and Scully traveling 'round the world fighting off giant creatures.

Forget the snake. This is the Paul Sarone show through and through.

I remember Voight's gimpy face and a particularly clingy sheer nightie worn to eye-catching effect by a pre-annoying Ms. Lopez, but that's about it. I never quite understood the semi-cult that's developed around the film, it just never worked for me.

I'll never forget the money shot in the trailer that had Voight quickly climbing up a ladder with the huge ass snake circling up behind him then biting him in his shoulder.

It's a great b-movie and easily as good as , say, Jaws 3.

Anaconda 2? Huge step down, and let's not start on parts 3 and 4...

I saw this twice when it came out in 1997: Once on opening night and again on the first Friday night it played at a local dollar theater. Both times it played perfectly to the (large) crowds I was with. Excellent B-movie and quintessentially a B-movie in that, honestly, not a whole lot happens with actual anacondas. Mostly wonderfully cheesy dialogue from (at the time) B actors and a few snake effects here and there.

I remember that nightie... mmmm...

Wow, yeah, Lopez was at the peak of her powers at that point.

I love that Ice Cube calls the snake "Bitch".

Rewatched this today.

Jon Voight sure is a mean cook. Chopping up fish and boars by the riverside.

Voight chews up the scenary in every scene he's in. Lopez is real terrible though.

I love Owen Wilson's AND Voight's death scenes! Great, gross stuff! I've always felt a bit of a big "Boo Hiss" (no pun intended) at how Eric Stoltz is barely in it, but other than that, it's great cheese!

I love every inch of this flick: Voight's up-to-11 performance and his sublime exit (there's no way that wasn't meant to be hilarious), the surprisingly adept animatronic snakes, the much less adept CGI snake (I can't be the only one who loves the hilarious shot where the snake zooms down the waterfall and comes back up to chomp Jonathan Hyde), the ubiquitous Frank Welker as the "voice" of the anaconda, a supporting cast that somehow includes both the aforementioned Hyde and Owen Wilson, and oodles of other fun stuff that made my dad and I laugh our asses off when we watched it together. God help me, I love it all.

I was always fascinated by the idea of giant snakes, ever since learning about that 50 foot snake in Africa on ARTHUR C CLARKE'S MYSTERIOUS WORLD. When I overheard that a film about Anacondas was coming out, I knew it was something I had to see*. My dad took me (after much begging, my mom wasn't happy about the idea of the movie) to see this movie when I was in fourth grade. I remember my mom reading the review to me before I went more than I remember anything from the actual movie. The idea of a snake vomiting someone back out only to eat them again was alot worse in my mind than it turned out to be on screen.

I must go back and rewatch this. The idea of a River movie with a killer giant snake is hard to pass up.

*My taste was not too good back then though, I also made my Dad take me to CASPER and LOST IN SPACE

Jon Voight + Giant Snake = Good Stuff
I really like this movie,Voight chews through the scenery like goddamn Jaws.

Ok, so, I just rewatched this for the first time since fourth grade!

I'm going to offer up some quick impressions. I'll break my remarks down into three separate categories.

The Cast: Jon Voight is fantastic. He performance is delightful and a bunch of fun to watch. I do have a question though. Is he really supposed to be south American? Because he looks like a white guy. A very very white guy. He says he's from Paraguay and Eric Stoltz scoffs at that. Is that supposed to imply he is not really from Paraguay? His accent is hilarious. "Eet wraps eetz COILS around yooo... .TIGHTAH zan anny luvvah. ". The last movie I saw him in was "PRIDE AND GLORY" where he basically appeared hung over the whole film and had no life in his performance

Owen Wilson is under used but he has a great line when he asks (paraphrasing) "Do you know how to survive this shit out here? Do you? I don't! But I know who does.... that guy!" And the camera cuts to a totally psyco looking Voight

The Effects: It's weird. In almost every shot, CGI- or ANAMATRONIC, the snake looks completely fake. I think it has to do with the colors they went with. The yellow and green just look rubbery and false. But at the end of the movie when the super anaconda shows up, the red and black one, it looks suddenly almost photo real in places and would stand up against some of todays FX work. Odd


The plot: Ok, so, two quick plot questions: If Mateo and Voight were in league all along, and the "chance" discovery of Voight's crashed ship was pre-planned..... why does that make sense? If Mateo owned the boat, why did he need an elaborate ruse to pick up his pal Voight and go 'conda hunting? Didn't the entire film crew throw a giant wrench into their gears?

And what on earth was that abandoned factory at the end? It was not in the legend that was recounted, and how could those mysterious indians be so mysterious if they had a giant factory right at their home base?


Yum!

Blech!


PS: I love the wink! It freaked out my fourth grade self quite a bit at the time. It's almost like he is more concerned with weirding out Ms Lopez than he is with the fact he has just been half digested

PPS: The scene with the pen in the neck also gave me a life long fear of neck injuries

PPPS: Oh! Almost forgot the shot from inside the snake as he gets swallowed, with the pink fleshy inside of the snake. So weird!

PPPPS: Oh, and one of the scariest shots in the film I neglected to mention earlier is the under water shot of Owen Wilson inside the snake, with his face looking out. God that's creepy!

The AV Club reviews Anaconda.

I always loved Danny Trejo's cameo in the beginning. He had a hilarious dubbed voice.

The ex-boyfriend of one my housemates loved this movie - in particular Voight - so much that he got a big poster of Voight's leering face printed for our wall. I do really like it - complete guilty pleasure, and I'd agree that the bee in the scuba tank is probably scarier than anything to do with the giant rubbery snakes.
 

I also have Anaconda 3 - I think the Hasselhoff one? - on DVD. It's truly appalling.