HubrisWeen 2015, Day 2: Blood Surf (2000)

Obviously, if you've been reading this blog at all you know by now that I can be a glutton for punishment. You also know that films about killer crocodilians are 95% awful and if you've heard of this film, I'm sure you haven't heard anything positive.

Well, there's a reason for that. However, that doesn't give you the whole story.

Oh, this film is very much not good. Don't get me wrong. However, that does not mean it is without merit. For one thing, it has John Carl Buechler on effects and we know how oddly fond of his work I am. For another, I always like seeing a monster movie that doesn't just take the lazy route of blowing up its menace.

That doesn't mean the rest of the film deserves any special credit, of course.

We open with a flashback / dream sequence as a man perched on the bow of a sinking boat watches as everyone else who all somehow ended up in the water are pulled under and replaced by spouts of blood. It's a very choppy sequence, full of quick cuts and an extreme close-up on an eye. It doesn't exactly endear one to the film to start off like this.

After the credits roll over tropical footage, a small sea plane flies in for a landing. Inside are Cecily Herrold (Kate Fischer!), Bog Hall (Dax Miller), Jeremy NoLastName (Joel West), and Zack Jardine (Matt Borlenghi). Bog and Jeremy are X-treme surfers, and Cecily and Zack are documentary filmmakers who are looking to film them doing something called "blood surfing." Apparently it involves surfing in heavily shark-populated waters while bleeding.

Two things pop out as interesting. First, Cecily and Zack are a couple but she's sitting next to Bog and talking flirtatiously with him, including Bog implying this whole dumb stunt was her idea. Also, despite the less ridiculous name, Jeremy is the typical surfer dude with blonde spiky hair, a space cadet attitude, and who has to reminded of what the title of Jaws is.

Upon landing, Cecily and Zack take the boat taxi and Zack tells Bog and Jeremy to wait for them to send the boat back, even though I see no reason they can't all fit in the boat. It's really just to set up a dick-measuring contest between Bog and Zack, though, since Bog clearly wants Cecily for himself. see, Bog and Jeremy decide to surf to shore and despite Zack's attempt to race them, they arrive first. Sure, Cecily notices a shadow in the water and we see a POV shot looking up at Bog's board from under the water, but it barely qualifies as a false scare because nothing comes of it.

Once ashore, Zack finds to his frustration that none of the local charter boats have ever been to the island they want to go, Lilo Kay, on account it being surrounded by sharks and dangerous reefs. However, there is one man who knows the island. That night at a local dive bar, while Cecily tries to fend off the advances of Bog and Jeremy spaces out, Zack tries to hire the services of one John Dirks (Duncan Regehr). Dirks is reluctant to go to the island, because he feels he'd be an accessory to murder. His much younger girlfriend, Arti (Taryn Reif)--whose relationship with him just constantly feels icky--is eager for them to take on the charter, however. When Dirks declines the offer, Arti objects that she'd like one night out occasionally, with a meal that isn't fish they had to catch and clean. This seems an odd objection to be raising when they're clearly already out.

Zack comes back to the group's table, defeated, but Arti decides to change Dirks' mind...by putting on music and dancing seductively. This gets the lascivious attention of every man in the bar, including Zack--to Cecily's great disgust. Look, I don't mean to disparage Taryn Reif in any way, but I have a hard time buying that a man dating a woman who looks like Kate Fischer would find her so much more enticing. I realize this is just one more way to show us that Zack is a self-interested creep, but seriously now--has he seen Sirens?! At any rate, Arti's sexy dancing somehow convinces Dirks to take the charter. Arti then goes and flirts with Bog, who flirts back but manages to completely whiff it when confronted by a woman who actually shows interest in him.

"Yes, honey, you're incredibly gorgeous and all that--but she's dancing! To a boombox!"

Later, a drunk Bog and Jeremy stumble down the docks to their boat, but Jeremy falls and passes out on the jetty. Bog then notices Dirks and Arti having sex on their boat. Now, what we see of the sex culminates in Dirks bending Arti over the edge of the boat and preparing to go at her from behind--while she locks eyes with Bog. This causes Bog to laugh at the intensity of her...lust for him, I guess? Then he also passes out. However, to me that was a look of pleading from someone trapped in a relationship they fear to leave. I have no idea if the movie realized how creepy that scene was, but I kind of doubt it,

The next morning, Jeremy is rudely awakened in a hammock on the deck of a boat by someone slapping him the face with a wet mop. The mop belongs to Lemmya Lofranco (Maureen Larrazabal), who quickly begins to mutually flirt with Jeremy. Well, there's no accounting for taste. As it turns out, the group didn't actually hire Dirks to take them to Lilo Kay, he just told them how to get there and they went with their original charter, who are Lemmya's parents, Sonny (Cris Vertido) and Melba (Susan Africa).

Precious Cinnamon Roll, Too Good for This World: Destined to be Eaten by Crocodile.

Bog, Cecily, and Zack return to the boat bearing containers of chum, and the group is on their way. The boat heads to Lilo Kay, passing Dirk's dingy old boat--where Arti is alternately sunbathing topless and swimming topless. Of course, Dirks can't enjoy his girlfriend's inability to keep a shirt on because he's too busy being plagued by more of those opening flashbacks since we now see that he was the captain of the boat who got to safety while he had to watch everyone else get nommed.

Jeremy awkwardly flirts with Lemmya some more, and then they arrive at Lilo Kay. Melba leads a prayer circle, then Lemmya gives Jeremy a pendant she promises will protect him from anything. Well, except her father's stern gaze, of course. Then Cecily dons her chain mail diving suit as Bog dishes out chum. And before you know it, stock footage sharks are swarming in. Cecily hops into the water while Bog and Jeremy cut the tops of their feet. Bog has to psych Jeremy up, but they quickly get in the water.

"Okay, now let's find out if you're The Thing."

Soon the two are dodging CGI shark fins and surfing through awkwardly composited stock footage sharks. They make it to shore and everyone cheers, until the sharks start nipping at Cecily. For no apparent reason, nobody planned this out so that she could be immediately extracted from the water. So Bog has to swim out on his surfboard to save her, while Zack oddly has Sonny pull them in to a jetty about a hundred yards down the beach. After seeing everyone is fine, Zack tells them they need to get right back out in the water and film some more. However, Bog has noticed the sharks are acting weird--and then an underwater POV cam zooms in on one of the sharks and apparently causes it to explode (!) based on the geyser of water that results. Well, Jaws The Revenge did teach us that sharks explode when killed. That bizarre sight makes even Zack agree to call it a day.

We then see Bog surfing at what appears to be sunset, but everyone else's footage is in full midday sunlight as Cecily wonders how he can go back out there after what they saw. Jeremy, meanwhile, mentions to Lemmya that her mother mentioned some ancient ruins on the island and they sneak off, while Zack and Cecily decide to start getting hot and heavy right there on the beach. Well, they talk about the footage first and then start moving on to the making out. At the ruins, Lemmya and Jeremy start making out until Lemmya jokes that she's 15--Jeremy freaks out until she takes her top off and assures him she's 19. This is the cue to him that it's okay for them to start having the kind of awkward, flailing sex in a pool of water that people only ever have in movies. I'm also not really sure where that particular shade of blue in the water came from, but sex in water isn't even a good idea when it's not a pool of water in ancient ruins on a tropical island.

Back at their boat, which is fittingly called The Picnic, Melba decides to take a quick swim over Sonny's objections. She doesn't notice the ominous shadow in the water, of course. Sonny feels something rub up against the bottom of the boat and hurriedly calls melba in just as the boat is rammed. She makes it safely aboard, but then the sinister POV cam grabs Sonny when he leans too far overboard. Dirks, overwhelmed by his conscience, chooses just then to radio their boat. Melba is a bit too busy just then to answer as she helplessly cowers in the boat just as it is rammed one last time. Did I mention that this was all intercut with Jeremy and Lemmya fucking? Yeah. It's about to get even more uncomfortable, because in the afterglow Jeremy asks Lemmya how old she really is. She casually replies she's 17, and he reacts with a pained groan--before perking up and asking, "Is that legal here?"

Gee, thanks, movie. Statutory rape jokes following a sex scene aren't incredibly discomforting at all.

Cecily and Zack never get past heavy petting because Bog comes back onto the beach from the surf and, rather than bugger off, sits a few yards away to visibly mope about how he isn't getting to bang Cecily. It kind of ruins the mood, as you might imagine.

The sun finally sets and Lemmya, still topless, goes to rinse her top in a nearby pool of water. Though, not the one she was just banging a surfer dude in. Unfortunately, she hears a sound and looks to her left to see an enormous crocodile watching her. We see her screaming face reflected in its eye before it eats her off screen. And let me just pause and say that this crocodile may just be the most adorable of John Carl Buechler's creations. Don't get me wrong, it's a well-made series of puppets, but this croc is, in no way, shape, or form intimidating. It looks like it ought to be playing the big jock antagonist in a Muppets frat house comedy.

"You're never gonna beat Sigma Kappa Croc, dweebs!"

Jeremy awakens from the sound of Lemmya's screams, but he must have heard the tail end of it because he starts looking for her, thinking she's hiding from him. And then he finds a dinosaurish footprint (!) with Lemmy's skirt sitting in it. He shows the others, but Zack writes it off as a joke...until they go down to the jetty and discover the wreckage of the boat and see a chunk of human flesh in the water. It's then that Zack remembers that the camera is on the boat and freaks out because they need the tape or else the whole trip will have been pointless. Bog actually agrees with Zack on that and dives in to the water to recover the camera. Um, could it not wait until daylight?

Bog recovers the camera, but in the expected Jaws rip-off moment, he's startled by the gnawed remains of Melba. He gets back to the jetty and gives Zack the camera--but then the crocodile uses its tail to smash the the wooden supports. Cecily rescues Bog and Jeremy while Zack flees, and then the jetty explodes behind them as they run down it, intercut with shots of a small crocodile puppet destroying an obvious miniature. And, much like Carnosaur, the full-scale croc puppet is pretty impressive, if adorable, while the miniature ones are...not.

Impressive, that is. They're still fucking adorable.

The group flees the crocodile, somehow never cottoning to what it is the entire time because they just refer to it as "that thing." Maybe they just didn't see it, I don't know. They reach a clearing and the croc apparently stops chasing them, but they soon realize they're fucked. Ah, but Zack brought a satellite phone...which isn't working. And then they're captured by pirates.

Yes, Lilo Kay is not only surrounded by dangerous reefs, "infested" with sharks, and a place locals give a wide berth to--it's also home base for some pirates. The head pirate (Archie Adamos), after preventing Zack from walking into a booby trap that would have impaled him, steals the satellite phone and points his guns in everyone's face. He demands to know what they're doing on his island, and when Cecily explains they were trying to get off the island because "a creature" was chasing them, he incredulously replies, "A creature? Like Godzilla?" And then he...does a monkey impression? No, mister pirate, sir, that is not Godzilla.

The pirates all have a good laugh, then the lead pirate takes Zack's money when he asks if they have a boat. They're all marched to the pirate boat where, somehow, Zack is surprised to discover they're now prisoners and not passengers. Somehow Zack thinks that yelling, "I'm an American," will make the situation better. And then the head pirate's brother leers through the cage they find themselves in and the head pirate says his brother always wanted an American--though to Zack's relief, he meant Cecily. (Though I'm sure if he agreed to have sex with the pirte to save all their lives, the movie would find a way to spin that against him) She objects on the grounds that she's Australian, but that's close enough. Zack is perfectly okay with his girlfriend being raped by pirates if it keeps them alive. Bog, on the other hand, now starts behaving like less of a jerk as he tries to convince the pirates that Australian girls are awful in the sack.

It doesn't take. Cecily is dragged off to the top deck of the boat, where the pervy pirate rips her top open. (Her bra at least stays in place) Her decision to slap him results in her getting backhanded, but luckily this crocodile is no different from any other movie monster--and it hates rapists. After bumping the boat, the croc leaps out of the water (in a CGI effect that has, bizarrely, aged no worse than modern SyFy Channel movies) to grab the rapist and chomp him to death. And I have to say, this is maybe the least ridiculous scene of its type in a killer croc film that I've seen. It didn't leap over the boat, and most of its body was still in the water so I can buy that it was doing what's known as "tail walking."

Crocodiles just love the fresh flavor of pirate flesh!

Seizing the moment in the confusion, Bog and Jeremy knock all the pirates overboard and start the boat up to leave. Unfortunately, the head pirate shoots at them with his uzi once he makes the shore and manages to ignite barrels of fuel all over the boat. Jeremy, Zack, Bog, and Cecily barely dive off into the water before it explodes. Floating in the water, calling for the others, Zack is startled by Dirks, floating in an inflatable dinghy and smoking a cigar. Um...why is he in a dinghy? And how long would he have had to be floating there?

On board Dirks' vessel, the others talk about what they've just seen. They agree the croc had to be at least 30 feet and Cecily declares that it clearly wasn't killing for hunger. Dirks takes a knowing swig of liquor and tells Arti to show them to their bunks below decks. Bog stays to thank Dirks, and also to see the sign for Dirks' old tour boat. He figures out that Dirks quit because of an encounter with an enormous saltwater crocodile, and Dirks confirms it. He also reassures Bog that he has no intention of trying hunt it down and risking all their lives.

Below, Arti is handing out dry clothes to Zack, Jeremy, and Cecily. She makes a snarky comment about her tank top likely being too small for Cecily. Zack's next jerk move is to get all excited about how they just survived an encounter with the Devil, and then he grabs a bottle of whisky nearby and toasts to their survival. The others take turns toasting to the memories of the people they lost to the crocodile, to make Zack feel like shit about being happy to be alive--even though it's not like it's his fault the Lofranco family are dead. Really, the only truly awful thing he's done in the film is not try and stop pirates from having their way with his girlfriend--I mean, that's a pretty shitty thing to do, but somehow the movie seems to gloss over that in comparison to the other selfish behaviors he's demonstrated.

Up on deck, Dirks feels the presence of the crocodile (um, sure) and decides it's time to go Ahab. Zack wakes up in his bunk, surrounded by nude pin-ups--which seems to be a set-up for a joke they don't make. Zack goes snooping and Arti catches him trying to open a chum container , so she sneaks up behind him and hands him a knife to pry it open. Inside the container is a sheep's head, which Zack reacts in horror to--but you really have to wonder what the hell he was expecting to be in there. "Salties love 'em," Arti helpfully explains, pointing out the porthole at Dirks tossing baited bouys over the side. Now Art lays out in detail what Bog earlier figured out partially.

Dirks was a tour boat captain, a very successful one, until one tour of Lilo Kay ended with his all of his passengers being killed by a 31-foot saltwater crocodile. He's been dreaming of revenge for years and now he has the opportunity. Zack points out that Dirks has four people on board who want no part of hunting the croc that nearly ate them. So now the film inexplicably rips off Anaconda as Arti questions Zack's talent as a TV producer. After all, wouldn't a documentary about a man catching and killing the biggest crocodile ever recorded be a huge deal?

Well, Zack didn't bother to share this new deal with the others so they are none too pleased to wake up in the morning to the sight of Lilo Kay. Well, as it turns out, Dirks isn't entirely in on it, either. He rants a while to the group about how the saltie "owns these waters" and must be destroyed. Zack then pitches his idea to the others, and Dirks is none too happy to hear that Arti told him all about the history between him and the croc. I'm not sure why it matters, but okay. Zack then goes on to say that they'll frame the story as a man seeking revenge on the biggest crocodile that ever lived, which he now christens "Big Mick."

Dirks is just as disgusted as the others, and gets in real close to Zack's face to tell him about the horror he witnessed of his passengers being torn apart in front of his eyes. He tells Zack to go ahead and make his stupid TV show out of it, but to stay out of the way. Bog confronts Dirks, but their tense stare down is interrupted by Big Mick taking the bait. As Arti drives the boat, Bog and Jeremy man the winch while Dirks lines up a harpoon shot.

"Hey, what do you guys think of my new piercing? Too much?"

As Zack pretends to supervise, Cecily dives over the side with the camera to film the croc capture from below the surface. Why it would need to be from that angle and not from the boat is never explained. Naturally, the engines burn out from the strain and the beast breaks loose so it can chase after Cecily, but Bog and Jeremy get her to safety just in time. And, hoo boy, the underwater effects for Big Mick sure are dodgy. Jaws 3-D dodgy.

Unfortunately for our heroes, Jeremy ends up trapped within inches of Big Mick's jaws when it comes up after Cecily. So Dirks...tosses Jeremy a knife. Jeremy then jumps onto the croc's snout to stab it repeatedly and ineffectually. As you probably guessed, this results in him getting flipped into the air like a snausage and devoured.

"Witness me!"
"Ugh! MEDIOCRE!"

Bog punches Dirks for getting his friend killed, but Dirks shrugs it off--especially once Arti comes to tell him the engine's dying. Seeing Zack shaking in fear (you know, after having just watched someone he knew get eaten in front of him), Arti assures him not to worry because the crocodile "only eats real men." Could the movie please stop making me sympathize with the yuppie douchebag? Jesus Christ, every shot someone else takes at him just makes me want to see them get eaten more. No one's mocking Cecily for being just as shaken as Zack, for fuck's sake.

At any rate, Dirks takes the wheel, apparently intent on leaving--but then he decides to turn the boat around and speed toward the reef around Lilo Kay. Apparently, since they can't ourtun the crocodile he's decided suicide is a better option. Once they crash, Dirks tells Arti to lead the others to the ruins and fresh water--he claims it's full of alkaline and salties can't stand it because it burns their skin. I very much doubt that, given crocodiles are not known for having sensitive skin, but okay. What is Dirks doing, you ask? Why, staying to set the boat to explode and hopefully lure Big Mick to his death.

So the others walk across the reef, with Zack complaining the whole way, especially after he cuts his foot. Sick of hearing them berate him, he spies Bog's surf board floating nearby and decides to surf into shore on it. Except Big Mick is waiting for him and Zack surfs right into its waiting jaws. (This is a really awkwardly edited sequence) How do our remaining heroes react to witnessing another of their number be swallowed alive?

Bog: "Oh man. That has got to suck."
Cecily: [shrugging] "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person."
Arti: "Amen."

And then they just keep walking like nothing happened. Jesus Christ. Cecily just watched her boyfriend die and that's how she reacts? I mean the other two have been assholes to him the entire time, anyway, so I can at least understand their reaction even if I still hate them for it. But Cecily? That's fucking callous. She reacted with more horror to watching the death of the guy who tried to rape her!

I realize that this entire bit is a casualty of the film coming out in the post-Scream, self-aware horror craze--but despite the many, many, many flaws of Scream it at least still made some effort to have its characters be human beings when confronted with the deaths of people they cared about.

Well, they make it to shore as Dirks is finishing setting up all his explosives. Unfortunately for Dirks, the crocodile bashes through the hull right in front of him. His pistol proves about as useful as the knife did for Jeremy earlier. He leaps up above its snout, grabbing hold of a pipe, to kick at it. That goes poorly. Big Mick gets Dirks' legs in its jaws and tears him in half. Apparently Dirk's is stronger than a 3,000 pound crocodile because he hangs by his arms, dripping blood from his severed torso for a bit before falling off. Back on shore, the others watch the boat sink with no explosion.

Arti wants to go back, but Bog tells her to take Cecily to the ruins and he'll go. He reasons that, Dirks or not, they need the explosives. So off he goes. Meanwhile, the pirate from earlier is watching the women from the woods. Oh, what, you forgot about that subplot, too? Well, the movie might as well have since it resolves it so perfunctorily. After Cecily saves the fucking insufferable Arti from walking into another spike trap, the pirate slaps Arti unconscious. Cecily manages to lead the comically inept pirate back to his own trap, via a sequence just this side of him chasing her around a table. She triggers the trap and he helpfully stands in place to swear and then get impaled. When Arti comes to, Cecily tells her that she was hit by "a bad joke."

You can say that again.

Bog recovers the explosives, meanwhile, only being startled by a severed goat head this time. Cecily and Arti somehow get lost on their way to the ruins, even though Arti suppoedly knows the island and Cecily was just there. They find a rickety bridge, but then they see Big Mick sunning itself on the stream bed below. It sees them and gives chase. They find the ruins just as Big Mick somehow ends up directly behind them, and they have to dive into the water to escape. And, sure enough, Big Mick reacts like he's a vampire who can't cross running water or was just denied invitation into a home. Of course, you'd think that if the water was so alkaline as to burn a crocodile's skin, it would be hellishly uncomfortable for a human, but the two women don't seem bothered by it at all.

Seeing that the crocodile can't pursue them, Arti and Cecily decide to...flash their breasts at it. Sure, okay. Well, Arti flashes her breasts, Cecily just pulls her top down a bit. I guess Kate Fischer either decided Sirens would be the only time she'd be getting naked in a film, or this movie didn't pay her enough. At any rate, when Big Mick roars angrily at them, they turn and run for the opposite bank of the pool while Cecily quips, "I guess that's what you call croc teasing!"

Dear God, I like Jim Wynorski movies and that's painful.

Night falls as the two sit on the ruins, watching the crocodile sitting across the pool from them. Why he's been waiting there for them now when he hadn't been just waiting around for prey before is beyond me, but whatever. Arti angrily wonders aloud if Bog will ever show up, then asks if Cecily really likes him. Cecily sort of defers the question, so Arti turns to talking about her fear that Dirks is dead. She explains that Dirks won her in a dart game and was the first man to treat her with dignity. So, yeah, the fact that the movie is now implying she was sold into sexual slavery makes me feel a little bad about calling her insufferable now.

Man, sexual slavery and statutory rape. This movie really wants you to feel icky about the characters who provide its nudity, doesn't it?

Bog returns with a big grin on his face, having somehow found a way to the ruins that did not take him right past the crocodile. He asks Cecily for a kiss, which I guess is supposed to be endearing, but it's really, really not. He breaks the bad news about Dirks to Arti, and then he looks at the crocodile and wonders aloud if it realizes it's about to be blown up.

Well, no, it couldn't, since the plan is to lure the crocodile into a passage in the ruins and set off the charges to collapse the structure on top of it and crush it. This seems needlessly complicated, since it requires Bog to lure the beast to where the women are waiting in a tiny space with no escape, in order to hopefully bring the ruins down on Big Mick before it can reach them. They could easily just walk over to the crocodile and toss one of the charges at it with a lot less risk at present. However, this is the plan they've chosen, so Cecily tells Bog to go do what he does best, "Piss things off." Yeah, like the reviewer!

Bog knocks part of the ruins over to form a bridge across the stream feeding the pool. Big Mick seems to get it's a trick, but Bog eventually succeeds in luring it across the patently foam bridge. The plan works and a few rocks fall on top of Big Mick, most certainly killing him forever and ever. "If that didn't do it, nothing will," Bog declares. He and Cecily begin to walk away, but Arti has to try and air her grievances by kicking the croc in the snout. You'll never guess what happens next.

"Hey, baby, are you Captain Hook? Because you make my clock go Tick-Tock."

Yep, Arti gets chomped by the utterly not dead crocodile after her kicks rouse it out of its stupor. Bog attempts to save her, but that promptly fails and so Cecily and Bog are forced to flee as the croc gives chase.  This results in them rolling and sliding down a steep hill, the croc hot on their heels. Somehow they land on a ledge and are able to do a Tarzan swing to safety, just ahead of the croc. They fall safely into the stream below and it--lands on a huge rock spike (!) that runs it right through. Bog and Cecily watch its death throes from the water, before it succumbs to its wounds.

Now that the movie's hero is dead, Bog pretends to pass out to trick Cecily into trying to do mouth-to-mouth on him. When she objects that wasn't a kiss, he basically forces her into one anyway. But it's okay, see, because she wants it. Ugh, Bog then wonders how they'll get off the island, but they both declare that they don't care. Good, they can starve there for all I care. The End.

"It wasn't the spikes that got 'im. It was budget killed the hand puppet."

In the intro, I almost lied to you. See, when I watched this on Netflix a few years ago, I liked it way more than I expected to. Not enough to revisit it in any hurry or add it to my collection, but I enjoyed it. So when I started writing this review, I assumed my opinion would not have changed much.

Oh, but it did. It did.

For one thing, I had forgotten just how insufferable the characters are. While Cecily is almost likable, at least 90% just because Kate Fischer is an incredibly gorgeous woman, the most sympathetic characters in the film are definitely Lemmya and her parents--if we ignore the creepy running gag about her real age--and from the moment we see them we know they're only there to be croc bait. People of color in their native "exotic" land surviving a monster movie while the dumb white foreigners get devoured? Unthinkable!

So once they're eaten, we're stuck with a bunch of bad actors playing repulsive people. To be fair, Duncan Regehr, Kate Fischer, and even Joel West are mostly capable actors--but the others alternate between saying their lines flatly, inappropriate facial expressions, and that certain broad way of enunciating their lines that would make them feel like the worst actors in a high school play. I can't decide if I'm more eager for the actors or the characters to bite it.

(Er, not literally, so if one of the actors gets eaten by an actual crocodile, I am not going to celebrate)

That leaves the crocodile action, and while there is a lot of it, it's still pretty lacking. I've touched on the effects already but it bears further elaboration: the full-scale puppet head and front legs are quite good, but a lot of the croc footage is a plainly miniature prop and puppet. There's certainly something charming about the woefulness of those effects, but good they are not. And the filmmakers seem to have no idea what to do with the croc. Consider the introduction of the pirates, a plot thread that adds nothing to the film.

Not only do we only see one pirate get chomped by the crocodile when the heroes make their escape, despite having set up multiple potential victims, but the lead pirate doesn't even get eaten by the croc when he shows up again later. He just gets killed by one of his own traps and that's that.

Really, the film's story is it's greatest failing. Not just the fact that it has no idea what it's doing and throws in pointless plot cul-de-sacs. I mean the fact that it utterly fails to make good on the great premise it promises the viewer.

Consider two things: One, its title is Blood Surf; Two, look at that fucking poster! If the film was going to promise surfers getting eaten by a crocodile, it fucking failed to deliver in a big way. The titular blood surfing happens in one scene, and the only person eaten on a surfboard is Zack! His death should have happened to an actual surfer, way earlier. The title and poster belong to a movie that should have been about a whole bunch of expendable surfers trying to outdo each other in blood surfing at Lilo Kay, and then those who survived the initial attack trying to stay alive and kill the croc.

Instead we get two surfers, only one of whom gets eaten, and the film turns into an Anaconda rip-off midway through before abruptly abandoning that thread.

If they weren't going to realize the greatness of surfers being devoured by a giant crocodile, then they should have stuck with the original title, Krocodylus. Throwing a "K" onto "Crocodylus" is perfect for this movie--utterly stupid while thinking it's clever.

If you must watch this movie, do it for the adorable crocodile puppets. If you expect anything more, you will leave sorely disappointed.

Today's review brought to you by the letter B! Hit the banner above to see what the other Celluloid Zeroes chose for B!

HubrisWeen 2015, Day 1: Anaconda (1997)

Snakes don't scare me.

Oh, sure, if you put me in the same room with an angry cobra or a hungry reticulated python I'm probably going to be terrified, but that's not what I mean. I don't have a deep-down, ingrained, irrational fear of snakes. The mere sight of one does not make my hair stand on end and if I see one in the wild I'm just as likely to walk over for a closer look as run in the other direction--provided we're talking about just a harmless non-venomous snake, that is. I'm not an idiot.

A lot of this comes from my mother, who has always loved snakes. We had pet snakes all my life, from tiny garter snakes to a six foot long bull snake. I know that, most of the time, snakes can be very sweet-tempered pets. And, in general, snakes are unfairly maligned creatures with far more to fear from us than we have from them. In fact, many snakebite victims are people decided to react to the presence of a snake by killing it and karma got them when the dead snake's reflex actions made it bite them.

I'm sure that old fairy tale about snakes and apples doesn't help matters.

All of this is to say that if a movie wants me to be scared of a snake it has to really work for it. It's a futile effort, most of the time, but it's exceptionally Sisyphean in the case of movies about snakes eating people.

The reason for this is two fold. One, snakes generally don't eat people--or at least, not adult humans. An infant or small child is, unsurprisingly, at risk of being a snake's prey but there are very few verified cases of an adult human being eaten by a snake because there are very few snakes actually large enough to eat an adult. Our body structure also doesn't lend itself well to being swallowed whole, and snakes can't eat any other way. That's not to say that snakes don't try, often resulting in an adult being killed but not devoured: it's simply a case of their eyes being bigger than their stomachs. Or, in some unfortunate cases, a snake smelling a prey animal that the human was trying to feed them and grabbing the human instead.

For some reason, though, people seem to find the idea of just being killed but not eaten less horrifying than being a successful lunch. And few horror films are willing to be so transgressive as to have their monster snake devouring babies and children.

Secondly, even if a snake managed to eat an adult person, that'd be it. You know the old joke about, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you"? Well, if you're in a group of people and one of you gets grabbed by a python and eaten, then that's just too bad for Steve. The upside is that the rest of you will be perfectly safe from further snake attack because it's gonna take that python around an hour to eat Steve, and days to digest him.

So you see, if your premise is "one huge snake attacks and eats a group of people" then you're asking me to swallow a conceit slightly less ridiculous than "a pack of flying bush pigs devours people." (Somebody get SyFy on the phone!) Worse than that, the latter premise would assume you know it's impossible, while the former thinks of itself as "plausible." And while it may sound ridiculous to complain about lack of a believable premise in a monster movie, when it comes to suspension of disbelief I definitely subscribe to the school of thinking that says, "You can ask an audience to believe the impossible, but not the improbable."

Anaconda starts off with the improbable right away, by expecting you to believe that Danny Trejo encountering a hungry Anaconda wouldn't end with Trejo having a stunning new pair of boots. This is almost more unbelievable than the film's opening crawl that claims that anacondas grow to 40 feet in length--despite the fact that even the reticulated python, the longest species of snake in the world, has only ever been officially recorded at a length of 25 feet. Anacondas, while the heaviest snake species, are not the longest. In fact the longest ever recorded was 17 feet long, just about half as long as the film is claiming the species routinely grows.

Of course, anacondas also don't regurgitate their prey because they love killing and want to kill and eat again, which the opening crawl also claims. Snakes only vomit up prey for two reasons: One, they're stressed and that triggers a vomit reflex, and Two, the prey rots in their stomach before they are able to fully digest it. It makes no sense, biologically, for an animal to expend the type of energy required to kill and swallow an entire animal whole, just to vomit it all up and go back to hunting. The sole reason the film even makes this claim is to make it reasonable that the snake would stilll be after our protagonists after eating one of them.

Right, back to explaining why Danny Trejo is here. Well, Trejo is a poacher whose boat has become stranded in some tributary of the Amazon. While he hollers at his broken radio, an ominous POV cam stalks closer to his boat. Something rocks the boat, terrifying all the caged animals. Trejo nails one small board over the cabin door--only for something to smash up the floorboards beneath him. Now, despite launching him several feet into theair, our unseen assailant (the film wisely keeping the snake off screen at this time) fails to catch Trejo, so he makes his escape by yanking the board off the cabin door with his bare hands.

So, what exactly did he think that board was going to do?

The POV cam, having apparently busted through the floorboards, chases Trejo up on top of the cabin. Trejo fires his revolver at it but misses terribly. For some reason, he decides to climb up his boat's mast. He watches as the POV cam circles around him until it's right in front of his face, which would mean it was less than a foot from him. Rather than shoot his attacker now when he couldn't possibly miss, he takes the gun and blows his own brains out.

Even the heroes in The Mist would think this guy was giving up too quickly.

To his agent's horror, Trejo was serious about getting out of the movie by any means necessary

We then cut to a hotel, somewhere in the Amazon, as our heroine, Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez!) sits at her laptop in a skimpy nightgown--13-year-old me would like to note that she appears to be wearing nothing under that nightgown and it's just this side of see-through--and looks over pictures of native tribespeople. This is 1997, so she's probably using InfoSeek to find these pictures. It's a miracle she found anything, then. We get our first indications that director Luis Llosa has no idea how to make a film scary as he sets up a false scare with a shot of water rippling outside her room and a sting on the soundtrack, but then fails to deliver anything. When Dr. Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz!) arrives, he does so by knocking and not scaring anybody except those with an irrational fear of gingers.

It should be pretty clear that Terri and Cale have a history that goes beyond professional almost immediately. Terri teases him about how disheveled he looks, and he jokingly claims he barely escaped a piranha attack while meeting with some potential guides. Already the movie is reminding me of better movies, as well as Amazon denizens more likely to kill you than an anaconda.

At any rate, Cale has hired Terri to film his encounter with a barely-known and nigh-legendary tribe in the Amazon. He claims he wanted the best director for the job, but later evidence will suggest that he's lying or else there was an implied, "...but they were busy, so I got you." Let's just say that Ava DuVernay she is not.

The next morning, the boat for their project pulls up accompanied by sinister music (!) because this movie is as subtle as a two-by-four to the face. Terri meets with her cameraman, Danny Rich (Ice Cube!), who is excited for her because, "Not every day my homegirl from SC gets to direct her own documentary." Wait, this is her first documentary directing gig, ever? So Cale was joking earlier. Speak of the ginger, he's arguing travel plans the boat's captain, Mateo (Vincent Castellanos), who is insistent they take a route 55 kilometers out of the way due to the rainy season approaching. Seeing Cale, Danny implies that Terri is using this gig as an opportunity to spend time with Cale.

Look, movie, we get it, already: they're boning. Let's move on, shall we?

Now we're introduced to our, ugh, comic relief: the documentary's narrator, Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde). Now, usually a documentary of this sort would just add the celebrity narrator in post, yet here Westridge is the David Attenborough analog. Except he's the sort of pretentious high class English stereotype that complains about not being in the lap of luxury, brings fancy wine along on a boat trip to the Amazon, and insults the production manager, Denise Kalberg (Kari Wuhrer!) by asking her to take his bags to his cabin. Oh, and Denise is clearly banging the sound man, Gary Dixon (Owen Wilson!) because it's that kind of crew.

Westridge is somewhat dismissive of Terri, but he does mention her short films so at least we know she does have some directing experience. The expedition gets underway and we get some exposition via watching Westridge's filmed narration: they are looking for "The People of The Mist" or the "Shirishama." After a pointless scene where Gary tells Denise that the jungle makes him really, really horny, a rainstorm rolls in.

Hearing someone shouting in the rain, they come upon a boat stranded in the roots of the trees. Danny films all this, and the film starts in with heavily sinister music even before the stranded man leaps aboard and turns out to be Paul Sarone (Jon Voight!), who exchanges a significant glance with Mateo because this film does not understand how to do dramatic irony without being really obvious about it. Sarone doesn't mind that they can't take him back to Manaus because he is certain the people in the next village can help him fix his boat.

The next scene is Sarone spearing a fish and preparing it for the crew. Hilariously, Terri observes that they'll have to film him doing it next time--despite the fact that he had to crawl out onto a tree limb to spear the fish, so there's no reason she shouldn't have already been filming him! Sarone reveals he is from Paraguay and was studying to be a priest when he decided he would actually prefer to catch snakes in the jungle to sell to zoos and collectors. When he finds out the crew are looking for the Shirishama, he conveniently claims to have seen them and promises to direct the crew to where they are. Westridge incredulously points out that any river captain would say the same after five whiskeys.

"Five whiskeys? That's breakfast on the ree-ver," Sarone replies.

Sarone also calls Denise "little baby bird" when she asks if salad would go with his fish, which isn't creepy at all. That night Denise dances seductively for Gary, Danny smokes a cigar (so, uh, kudos for not making the token black guy light up a joint, I guess, unless that's not really a cigar), and Cale and Terri discuss fireflies before locking lips. A menacing POV cam is watching the crew from the shore, and this film goes the Jaws 2 route since it decides to just fucking show us the anaconda on the shore.

Our first shot of the anaconda is the animatronic creature created by Walt Conti and I'm going to go ahead and come to the defense of Mr. Conti. This animatronic is usually maligned in most reviews, but I think it's actually quite well done. The only real issue is that it looks nothing like an anaconda. Oh, sure, the coloration is right, but anacondas have a very distinctive head with the eyes and nostrils positioned on top of the skull, like a crocodilian, and the head is kind of long and narrow. This creature's head is short and wide, and its eyes aren't in the right position at all.

The real deal...

...the wannabe.

I'm sure the average moviegoer is not going to notice the difference, of course. So really it's down to how convincingly the creature moves, and if you ask me it moves quite believably. Of course, that's because it has a CGI counterpart that...doesn't. We'll get to that in due time.

Instead of attacking the crew, the anaconda sets its sights on a black jaguar. Perhaps to make the animatronic snake look better, the jaguar is rendered via an obviously stiff prop or possibly even an actual jaguar borrowed from a taxidermist's office. The quick cuts in the scene do nothing to disguise this. The scene ends with a shot of one of the jaguar's eyeballs on the forest floor (!), which I can only assume is because this particular jaguar had a glass eye that it was always losing since the implication that the anaconda squeezed the cat so hard its eye popped out is too stupid for me to fathom.

The next morning, Westridge and Danny have an unfunny disagreement over Danny's rap music, before the group comes across a huge snake totem. Sarone claims it is a Shirishama totem because they worship giant anacondas. He waxes poetic about a legend of an impossibly huge anaconda, but Cole points out it's a legend of a tribe called the Maku. Sarone tries to claim both tribes have the same legend and that the Shirishama can be found down the next fork in the river. "I know this. I trap snakes for a living," he asserts, because trapping snakes and finding lost tribes are totally the same discipline.

Cole declares they're not going to take the route Sarone suggested because it doesn't make any damn sense. Terri tries to film Westridge in front of the snake idol but Sarone ruins the shot. Rather than ask Mateo to back up the boat and try again, she just accepts it as a loss. (Though I'll pretend it's because they get enough of an establishing shot that she can cut before Sarone jumps into shot and loop Westridge's dialogue in later with other footage of the totem, because I need to believe our heroine has some skill as a director)

That night, Gary and Denise go ashore to "get some wild sound," which is code for "record some audio, then start to get it on in the forest." As you would expect, they are interrupted by a rogue POV cam that chases them before Sarone appears with a rifle and seems to shoot at them. It naturally turns out that Sarone was actually shooting the wild boar that was after them. He drags it aboard so he and Mateo can cut it up for food. Danny finds the idea of a boar being food unusual, so maybe he keeps halal.

The next day, something finally sort of happens. For some reason the boat is dragging a rope behind it (?) and the rope gets caught in the propeller. Cale decides to dive down and cut it loose, despite Sarone asserting that "the ree-ver can kill you in a thousand ways," but all Cale is worried about is the candiru acu--the infamous little fish that swims up your urethra and lodges itself with spines. Of course, while Sarone leers at Terri topside, something goes wrong for Cale under the water. He's hauled up and turns out to have a wasp in his mouth. Sarone performs an emergency tracheotomy with a knife and a pen before Cale can suffocate.

Sarone suggests they need to get Cale to a hospital as soon as possible and, conveniently, the best way to do that is to take the route he suggested yesterday. Terri is suspicious but sees no other option. Of course, when the route brings them to a wall that Sarone didn't know would be there, she becomes even more suspicious. Sarone just happens to have dynamite with him--"Always good to be prepared" should not be the end of the discussion when someone reveals they brought dynamite onto your vessel--but Terri is reluctant because she's worried that blowing up the wall might upset the ecological balance of the river.

Does Terri think beavers made that wall?

Sarone's idea wins out, and he and Gary take the inflatable dinghy out to plant the dynamite. Several roving POV cams zero in on Gary in the water, but Sarone pulls him to safety and they light the fuses. Hilariously, nobody thought to move the boat back further and the resulting blast screws them in three increasingly idiotic ways: first, debris sinks the dinghy; second, the drums of spare fuel laid sideways on the deck and secured by a single flimsy rope are all knocked into the river when a branch falls on them; and third, a bunch of various species of small to medium-sized snakes lands on the boat. Everyone panics like a bunch of wusses while Sarone tosses handfuls of snakes into the water and Mateo sprays the poor things off with a hose. Hilariously, Sarone insists on calling all the snakes "babies."

Westridge somehow ends up with an animatronic baby anaconda on his finger that he doesn't notice until it starts swallowing his finger and I take back what I said about the film's animatronics not being that bad, as the attempt to show it swallowing his finger is embarrassing. Hilariously, Sarone just pulls the snake off of Westridge's hand, which would be an excellent way to tear the shit out of the man's finger and leave him full of snake teeth--snakes' teeth are basically hooks directed toward their throat, so you have to unhook their teeth by pushing their head forward first if you want to get them off with a minimum of damage to you. The cartoonish "Rargh!' sound the baby snake makes as Sarone tosses it off the boat is even more hilarious. As we'll soon see, this movie has no idea what a snake sounds like.

Westridge's accusation that Sarone "knew there would be snakes here" is even more hilarious. Snakes? In the Amazon? Why, I never! On ahead they go, until they come upon Danny Trejo's boat from the beginning of the film. The menacing POV cam decides to take on a Dutch tilt as it watches them approach, which suggests the monster is watching them with its head cocked quizzically to one side. Sarone suggests they investigate the wreck to see if there's fuel. For some reason, Danny follows Sarone and Mateo to film it but Gary doesn't go along for sound because...Teri is the best director, clearly. Aboard the vessel, Sarone hides a newspaper clipping with a photo of him, Mateo, and Trejo holding an anaconda before Danny can see it. Danny finds a rifle that has oddly been bent in several places because snakes hate guns, I guess?

Sarone has Danny help him carry a chest he finds, which Danny goes along with awfully quickly. Mateo, meanwhile, nearly falls through the hole in the floor. Mateo dallies a bit as Danny and Sarone float the chest back to the boat--with Danny's camera stowed inside--and then Mateo manages to somehow fall backwards off the boat like a moron. He is then ambushed by an anaconda in the only scene in the film where we see an anaconda almost hunting like an actual anaconda. I say almost because anacondas don't just squeeze their prey so hard that their ribs break and they definitely don't grab their prey by the head and twist to snap their neck!

This is also our first time seeing the CGI anaconda and while it's not nearly as awful as I remembered--perhaps years of SyFy Original Pictures and Asylum films have shown me what truly terrible CGI looks like--it's still very bad and probably why I'm less harsh on the puppet snake. For one thing, the CGI snake is not the same color as the animatronic, it doesn't blend into the physical environment it's been deposited into at all, and it moves way too fast and effortlessly for an animal as big as it is supposed to be.

"You made my mother into boots, you bastard!"

Also, despite what this movie may tell you, snakes don't scream when they're attacking their prey.

Hilariously, in the time it takes for the others to realize Mateo is not following and Danny to turn and wade back to where Mateo was last seen, both the snake and Mateo have vanished. Given that we last saw the snake opening its mouth and preparing to eat Mateo, this is fucking impossible. Maybe Danny is just very unobservant and didn't notice the 40-foot snake eating Mateo because he comes back with only the man's flashlight. Sarone explains where Mateo went by dramatically unfurling a snake skin he found in the trunk. It's supposed to be a shed skin, but it unfurls perfectly and appears to be thick as leather, which would not be the case.

At any rate, while I realize that Sarone is right about what ate Mateo, I come back to the fact that there are far more likely explanations than "eaten by a snake." Like assuming he was eaten by a caiman, or perhaps a drop bear. Indeed, Terri insists snakes don't eat people and Sarone counters with pointing at the scar on his face. Um, just because something bites people, doesn't mean it eats them. At any rate, Sarone goes on about how the snake could have easily sensed Mateo's body heat and then goes on to describe how anacondas squeeze you so tight your bones break and your veins explode.

Okay, if I stop and rant at every time this movie wrong this movie is about snakes this review will never get done. However, this is just as much bullshit as the idea that anacondas grow to 40 feet long and barf up perfectly good food just so they can go kill something else. What constrictors do is far, far creepier--they squeeze every time their prey exhales until the prey's lungs can no longer take in air and the prey suffocates. There might be some occasional broken bones or burst blood vessels, but they don't kill their prey by crushing them to jelly.

Sarone then makes his pitch: imagine if they could catch this monster snake alive. Of course, if it was really eating Mateo they could easily go capture it right then. Terri insists they wait overnight for Mateo. The only upshot of this is that Sarone manages to seduce Gary to the side of, "we can totally catch the biggest snake that ever lived since the Titanoboa went extinct and get a million dollars for it." Yeah, that's somewhat unlikely, but okay. I mean, sure, a 40-foot anaconda would be an amazing find, but how many zoos have the facilities to house a snake that large?

The next day the boat continues on without Mateo. Westridge is driving now, so maybe he's not totally useless. Sarone shoots a monkey for bait and then he and Gary reveal that they're working together now. Gary tries to explain it off as trying not to waste the documentary since now they can make it about the snake catching. But no one else is on board, so Sarone almost shoots Danny to make his point that they are going to catch this snake. Hilariously, that night we see that Sarone's plan for catching an anaconda is to attach a dead monkey to a winch and tow it behind the boat. I can think of a lot of things you'd catch that way in the Amazon--caimans, piranha, giant catfish--but a snake that hunts mainly by ambushing prey is definitely not one of them.

So naturally, Sarone's plan works almost immediately. Before you know it he has a shrieking anaconda on the line. As the snake makes hilariously un-snake-like "blarghle garble" Tasmanian Devil-style sounds (courtesy Frank Welker, of course), everyone but Gary insists Sarone let the snake go before they all get killed. Which is an...odd thing too be concerned about, really. Danny decides to try and shank Sarone with a knife he just happened to have, but the anaconda tail whips him and the knife goes in the river. It then also tail whips Sarone and breaks free of the hook, which oddly then detaches itself from the line and nearly impales Westridge. Everyone agonizes over where the snake is now, and because this is a movie it didn't just swim the hell away from the big, noisy bright thing that tried to attack it.

In slow-motion, which just adds to the hilarity, the anaconda bursts out of the water and spits the monkey carcass at Westridge. Sarone orders everyone not to move as he gets a bead on it with a crossbow (!) that has a tranquilizer dart for a bolt. Instead of listening, Terri runs for the cabin and naturally the snake smashes the window trying to get at her. Before it can lunge at her, Sarone shoots it in the open mouth with the dart--and hilariously you can see the white wires controlling the puppet as it writhes in pain after this. Somehow it spits the dart out (which would not mean it did not get tranquilized, as long as Sarone did the right dosage, but the movie apparently doesn't know that) and continues screaming, while writhing all over. It then whips a bench at Denise with its tail and knocks her into the water.

Hilariously, it quickly snaps its head towards the sound* of her hitting the water--and, again the vocalizations of the snake are hilarious and not even remotely believable in this sequence--and as Gary dives into the river to save her, the anaconda follows suit. Gary does help Denise out of the water and makes it back onto the boat as well, but unfortunately the anaconda is right behind him.

[* A few years ago, I'd have griped that the snake couldn't have heard her because snakes don't have external ears and can only sense vibrations through the ground. However, it is now known that snakes can hear sounds that travel through the air. Whether they can hear them well enough to have heard her hit the water that quickly is debatable, but sadly I have to concede the movie isn't being stupid in this one instance]

The CGI snake here is even worse. Not only does it obviously not belong to the same space as the man it's attacking, but the effects people forgot how important lighting is to a CGI creature. The anaconda is a couple F-Stops brighter than everyone else, so it might as well be glowing.

"I told the director, 'I'll only take the part if you light me better than everyone else.'"

The anaconda pins Gary to one of the pylons and snaps at the others as they try to free him. Terri grabs the rifle, but Sarone stops her because the snake is no good to him dead. Which is, of course, bullshit because even dead that'd be a record-breaking snake, but villain. The pylon gives way and the snake drags Gary off into the river. Terri consoles a weeping Denise, while Sarone makes a hilariously half-hearted gesture of tossing leaves into the river and mumbling a prayer for Gary's soul.

Denise attacks him, screaming, "You brought that snake here! You brought the devil!" Sarone brushes her off by saying that the devil is inside every one of us. Wait, in addition to Godzilla? We must all be very crowded. Sarone then demands Westridge load his equipment into the cabin, and when Westridge refuses Sarone slaps him around and then threatens him with his revolver. Satisfied, Sarone goes to the wheelhouse, while Danny goes to talk to Terri about plans.

The camera then goes below the water so we can see the film's single worst CGI effect: the anaconda swimming past, its body distended from Gary's body and--in the most laughable moment I've ever seen in a killer snake film--we can the outline of Gary's screaming face pressed through its belly. Apparently this anaconda lacks a stomach wall and the usual muscles on the belly required to move a snake along.

Is there really anything I could say that would make this more hilarious?

Okay, I take it back. A  more unbelievable scene follows as Terri dolls herself up and goes to see Sarone in the wheelhouse.She's there to, ugh, seduce Sarone. She talks to him while thrusting her breasts outward and, in the film's most hilariously misguided line, tells him, "This film was supposed to be my big break. But it's turned out to be a big disaster." And how!

She's pretending to have decided she wants to film Sarone capturing the snake to salvage the expedition, but she's using it as an excuse to appeal to his machismo. Well, poor Jennifer Lopez earns her hazard pay when Sarone buys the act and plants a big messy one on Terri. Unfortunately, he opens his eyes and sees Danny sneaking up on him with a bat--but he doesn't anticipate Westridge swinging a golf club through the window behind him. "Asshole in one," Westridge quips. Danny and Westridge want to throw him in the river but Terri objects and suggests they just tie him up.

Look, I get being squeamish about killing the guy, but surely there are other options than "keep him around."

When Sarone comes to, tied to one of the remaining pylons, Terri confronts him with the newspaper clipping. She's realized that somehow this was all one big set-up--and, again, a needlessly convoluted one because I can think of no reason why he even needed the film crew if he just wanted to catch a snake--and lists off the things he planned from the beginning. Sarone sneers and says, "How could you forget about the wasp?" Terri stage punches him in response. She then goes to check on Westridge and Danny, leaving Denise to exchange significant looks with Sarone. Westridge is giving Danny lessons in driving the boat, when they come upon a waterfall.

Now, there's lots of dialogue about how "beautiful" the waterfall is, but it's hilariously obvious that while most of the film was shot on location in a rainforest, this was shot on an artificial set. Danny runs the boat aground on a sandbar. So they have no choice but winch themselves free. This means Danny, Terri, and Westridge have to get in the water. Westridge quips about having to spend all night picking leeches off his scrotum the last time he was in water like this, because he's forgotten the earlier warning about the candiru.

While the three go about wrapping ropes around trees, Denise decides to threaten Sarone with a knife instead of either of the guns. This means she gets super close to him before he manages to make her resolve falter by telling her never to look in the eyes of those she kills--and then he somehow launches himself five feet straight into the air and wraps his thighs around her throat, somehow. He says a prayer as he strangles her to death and then kicks her body over the side. The others hear the splash but don't seem overly alarmed by it. Well, until Danny sees a ripple in a floating mat of grass and correctly interprets it as an anaconda approaching.

Danny and Terri make it to the boat, but Westridge distracts the anaconda and climbs up the waterfall. Sarone has used Denise's knife to cut himself loose and after Terri grabs the rifle, he attacks Danny. Hilariously, he then grabs the rifle in Terri's hands and throws her into the remaining fuel barrel, where the foley artist mysteriously decides Jennifer Lopez colliding with a barrel of gasoline should sound like the sound effect of two car fenders colliding. Sarone stabs Danny in the leg and Terri repeatedly fails to get a clear shot at him.

Westridge meanwhile, has hidden behind the waterfall, but when the snake--now hanging from a tree--finds him, he leaps from the waterfall. Unfortunately, his opponent has turned back into its CGI form and physics no longer apply to it. It strikes down at him faster than gravity and then reels him back up to the branch its wrapped around. Unfortunately, the added weight of a human somehow causes the tree to uproot and fall onto the boat. Everyone falls into the water and the impact shocks Cale out of his apparent coma.

Despite having a perfectly good meal already in its coils, the anaconda abandons Westridge's body so it can attack Danny as Terri is pulling him back onto the boat. Well, first Denise's body oddly chooses right then to float to the surface and then the anaconda attacks Danny. Once again, the anaconda takes the unusual tactic of letting go of Danny with its mouth after wrapping him in its coils--constrictors like anacondas always use their mouths to hold their prey in place while constricting--but this time it makes even less sense because it also decides to grab Denise's dead body in its jaws. Man, this anaconda's eyes are way bigger than its stomach.

Of course, the real reason it does this is so Terri can grab the rifle and shoot it in the head without risking shooting Danny in the process. This is sequence is really awkwardly, um, shot. We see Terri shoot the snake three times--and despite the rifle having a scope she just shoots from the shoulder and barely even looks down the barrel---and it's clear that the shots are the same squib effect from different angles as she shoots it through the right eye and blows its skull open. Yet, as the creature sinks into the river, dying, while shrieking like a pterodactyl--the only damage is that its right eye is gone and it's bleeding from the mouth. Naturally, Danny is somehow fine because the snake goes limp rather than crushing him into pulp with its death throes.

However, Sarone attacks them, hilariously screaming, "You killed my warrior snake!" Terri's attempt to get free by biting him does not work out, however Cale sneaks up and stabs Sarone with the tranquilizer dart. Hilariously, Sarone mutters, "The dart," before he puts thumb in Cale's throat wound in case we wouldn't figure out what Cale just stabbed him with. Danny then knocks Sarone into the river, but observes forlornly that the dart somehow dislodged itself and is floating on the surface. Of course, in reality Sarone was just drugged with a dose of tranquilizer meant to sedate a 40-foot long, probably one-ton snake and pushed into water. Unless he has gills he should be dead, but this movie is only 70 minutes in so I'm sure you've figured out he's fine.

Cale goes back to bed, having passed out again. Danny says the tree knocked them loose (!) and via the magic of running the film backwards (no, really, watch the waterfall) they back off the sandbar. Continuing on down the river, the boat--now making the cliche "engine running out of fuel" sounds--happens upon an abandoned boathouse. Assuming it might have fuel, Terri and Danny head inside to investigate. Oh, yeah, and despite being stabbed in the thigh, Danny is just walking with a slight limp. Walking up the plank to the boathouse they find axes and rifles strewn about. the two decide they don't want to know what happened there and just hope there's fuel, as an upside-down POV cam advances on the boathouse before doing a barrel roll to right itself.

Look, if your movie has been completely unengaging for the last 73 minutes, dumb camera tricks aren't going to suddenly make you Sam Raimi. Inside the boathouse they find some drums of fuel, but also a shed snake skin--which, admittedly, looks more realistic than the one from earlier--and then Sarone knocks them both out with his rifle. Yes, Sarone somehow beat them to the boathouse. Either he's a hell of a swimmer, or earlier Sarone pulled a Dead Alive and mixed up the tranquilizer and the stimulants. It would explain a lot, actually.

We see another POV cam approach the boathouse while doing a barrel roll, before cutting to Terri and Danny tied together on the floor. They come to just as Sarone finishes filling a bucket with monkey blood and then splashes said monkey blood on them. As has been noted, the shot of them being splashed with the blood is a really odd shot because it's in slow motion so we can tell that the two are already soaked in blood before the splash hits them, and the splash is clearly added in post. Sarone plays with some powder on the floor, explaining that it's what happens to human bones after they go through an anaconda. Well, yes, the bones would be powder but they'd also be mixed in with a pile of anaconda shit, not just artfully strewn about.

Danny and Terri then realize they're sitting on a net as Sarone heads up a ladder. And then another immense anaconda descends towards the two from the ceiling. So apparently this boathouse's ceiling beams are stronger than trees.

"Greetingsss, have you heard the good word?"

Danny and Terri try to run but the snake wraps its coils around them, tail-first. Which is rather like an ordinary human picking up a cheeseburger with their feet. Sarone then leaps down from hsi perch, using his weight to pull the net up and trap the snake. He then wraps the rope around a nearby valve so he can aim at the snake with his tranq crossbow. Of course, it makes no sense he'd A) use a projectile dart on a netted creature and B) that he'd keep acting like he can't get a shot. It doesn't need to be shot into its head!

Well, the pipe proves weaker than the ceiling beams and when it breaks the snake decides to abandon its prey and chase after Sarone, who tries to flee up the ladder only for it to chase him up the ladder and catch him. I still recall, when I first saw an ad for this film, that was the bit used as the closing "holy shit" shot and it immediately set me to giggling and I knew I had to go see this piece of shit. Do I really need to point out that a real anaconda moves on land like a giant earthworm, and couldn't outrun an able-bodied grown man, much less chase him up a ladder, too?

The ladder gives way, of course, but when Sarone tries to flee Danny somehow pulls the net up and delays Sarone long enough for the snake to recapture him. So, while Terri and Danny untie themselves, Sarone gets to hear his bones break and his neck swells (!) to, I'm guessing, indicate his blood vessels exploding. And then the anaconda begins to eat him, starting with the memorable shot from inside the anaconda as it swallows him.

"Welp, there's your problem: you've got a camera lodged in here!"

Naturally, as we watch a CGI anaconda swallow a CGI Sarone we can see that the effects people didn't bother to watch a snake eat. The beast just swallows Sarone like a crocodile or other large animal, rather than "walking" its way over his body with side-to-side motions of its head to use its teeth to drive him down into its throat. And, hilariously, despite the fact that Sarone is literally still in its throat, the anaconda still turns when Terri goes for the fuel and tail whips Danny before chasing after Terri.

This is rather like a human eating an entire large Chicago-style deep dish pizza by themself and then deciding to run down the delivery driver on foot so they can steal another one of his pizzas to also eat. So it's not surprising that, after Terri barges into a room full of actual anacondas, the big one smashes through a window beside her and vomits up Sarone. Yeah, you'd puke, too if you'd eaten an entire turkey and then did a hundred-meter dash right after. Of course, despite having been constricted, swallowed, and partially digested, Sarone is alive enough to wink at Terri with his remaining eye before finally dying. Oh, and Terri runs back to Danny to tell him with great horror that there's an entire nest of anacondas back there. Yeah, and? If you were being chased by a lion and you found a bunch of lion cubs, would you be horrified?

I might add that the nest bit is idiotic on several levels. First, the film should not have given us a good look at actual anacondas if it couldn't be bothered to make its fake ones actually look like the real deal. Second, they're trying to imply that these are babies, which makes no sense--the snakes in that room were at least five feet long or more, so they would be of breeding age and despite giving birth to live young, anacondas don't stick around to take care of their babies. Third, the film already had a baby anaconda attack Westridge, so why is it expecting us to not know that baby anacondas are not that big? I'm going to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt, though, and assume that they were implying the snake was vomiting up Sarone so she could eat Terri and not to feed her "young." Surely even this film isn't dumb enough to think that baby snakes could work together to somehow eat one adult human.

And I say "her," despite Danny referring to the snake as a "him" since female anacondas are larger than males. So the two snakes we've seen would have to both be female.

Danny suggests luring the snake into the smokestack and using fuel to blow it up. (You know, fuel they need to get the hell out of there) Terri volunteers to head up the chimney since she isn't injured. The snake pursues her, but oddly this forty foot snake is unable to catch Terri in a 50-foot smoke stack despite earlier climbing up a ladder in under a second. Danny uses a pick-axe to pin its tail toi the floor, then goes into the smokestack to tell Terri to climb out the top before he lights a fuse. Oddly, the snake does not turn back around and attack him despite having been stabbed in its tail.

An attempt at tension is made when Terri can't open the hatch at the top after Danny lights a trail of fuel--and how exactly he's blowing the snake up is never made clear--and the snake shakes the pick-axe loose. Terri finally gets the hatch loose and shuts it on the snake, then is forced to jump from 40 feet up as the smokestack explodes--but lands in the water instead of on the concrete she was dangling over a moment before. Of course, from that height water would snap her bones just as badly, but here not even the debris from the explosion bothers her. Well, until a flaming anaconda lands beside her.

Now, despite being on fire and presumably in a great deal of pain, the anaconda doesn't even submerge itself. It swims after Terri at the top of the water, completely on fire the entire time. I will grant that it's a cool visual, but it's also an incredibly stupid one. Danny pulls Terri up onto a walkway as the anaconda finally succumbs to burns and sinks under the water...only to burst up through the planks of the walkway so Danny can bury an axe in its skull and call it a bitch. Lovely. Anyway, as the film's hero sinks back under the water, axe still buried in its brain, the editor forgets what they just saw so we can watch Danny toss aside the axe that he shouldn't even still be holding.

Terri and the once again conscious Cale reunite, and then the crew happens upon the Shirishama after all. Cale observes that, "Sarone was right," but it's just as likely it's a total coincidence. The Shirishama also probably don't worship anacondas, so sadly we won't be seeing them massacre the surviving protagonists. Whatever, Terri got her movie after all. The End.

"OH GOD IT HURTS! IF ONLY I WERE COMPLETELY SURROUNDED BY SOMETHING THAT COULD PUT IT OUT!"

Revisiting this film for the first time since I saw it back in 1997--I don't recall ever watching it on video--I found that it definitely hadn't gotten any better. In a lot of ways, it was worse. Ironically, the effects that were mocked for being awful even at the time are one of the few things that haven't aged all that badly. I mean, sure, the CGI is bad but it's actually not nearly as terrible as I'd remembered.

No, where the film falls down is basically all the areas where subpar effects would be forgiven. The screenplay is bad, not only full of plot points and character decisions that make little sense but also dialogue that no person would say. Not only ridiculous lines, but ones that sound like the screenwriter just bought a thesaurus and wants to show off what he learned. The acting is also pretty unspectacular--Jennifer Lopez, Jonathan Hyde, and Eric Stoltz do just fine even if they end up with some awful material, but Ice Cube and Owen Wilson basically just say their lines, Kari Wuhrer is stiff, and Jon Voight is attempting to give the kind of scenery-chewing performance that he honestly just cannot pull off. He comes close a few times, but Brian Blessed he ain't.

The music for the film is pretty woeful, as well. However, where everything truly falls down is definitely in the direction. Luis Llosa cannot decide if he wants to present a film with straightforward, stolid direction or if he wants to deliver something more like a Sam Raimi film, with crazy angles and wild POV shots. He tries for both and ends up making a visually pedestrian film that occasionally tries way too hard and the scenes where it does just look out of place.

And honestly, crazy and energetic is what this film should be. Even the filmmakers seemed to realize that nobody was going to buy their titular menace as an actual threat, and yet they do nothing to try and at least liven up the film around it. This film should have been emulating Piranha with a huge balance of comedy to go with the horror, but instead there's no sense the film took itself anything but seriously. Of course, the few feeble attempts at comedy indicate that maybe that approach would have just made the film even worse.

Plus, the film is already hilarious without the filmmakers trying to make it so, An anaconda is just simply not a viable threat--we all remember the embarrassing circus that resulted when that moron tried to get one to eat him alive--and when you have to blatantly violate biology and physics to make it one, you need to give up and find a new monster. While I suppose someone with a crippling phobia of snakes might find some scenes in this film unsettling, I'm not even sure I believe that.

Anaconda is an awful film, simply put. It's the worst kind of awful, really, because it's only occasionally fun to mock and it never manages to be painfully bad, either. It's just bad. About the only thing I can say in its favor is that it's at least never boring. And yet, somehow a film this stupid and terrible managed to get a sequel that was even dumber and crappier. At least this film doesn't think anacondas live in Borneo!

That's a tale for another time, though.

Today's review brought to you by the letter A! Hit the banner above to see what the other Celluloid Zeroes chose for A!

Announcing Hubrisween 2015!

It's that time of year again, kiddies! The leaves are changing color, kids are disemboweling a squash relative and carving holes in its flesh before shoving an open flame inside, and a bunch of foolhardy geeks known as The Celluloid Zeroes are settling in with their Blu-ray players to once more follow on Checkpoint Telstar's coat tails with the third annual HubrisWeen!

This year our ranks have increased by two, as Checkpoint Telstar, Yes I Know, and myself will be joined by Micro-Brewed Reviews and Web of The Big Damn Spider!

So join the bravest and/or most foolhardy of The Celluloid Zeroes as we bring you a horror or monster movie a day for every letter of the alphabet, starting with A on Tuesday, October 6th and going all the way to Z on Halloween!

Will we have to duplicate entries for Q and X? Will any of us avoid the curse of having to do a Zombie movie for Z? Who will be the first to crack after having to endure something no motrtal should ever witness? Tune in at 9AM Eastern/ 8AM Central each day to find out, dear reader!

Here's a little preview of what's coming: