There are roughly four thousand recognized species of Serpentes (or snakes) in this world, and a fascinating fact is that snakes will shed their skin about twelve to sometimes fifteen times a year. So, if every single snake shed its skin at once, stretched out, it could sprawl across over a thousand acres of rainforest! Now, it’s true, there are a few timid little slither-dithers out there who might be a bit shy about shedding their reptilian coats, but I believe it’s time for us to lift our “Don’t Slither on Me” flags high in the air and tell them it’s time to be free to shed that false skin! Be proud and loud about what’s underneath and sidewind their way down the runway, and there is one film that deals with snakes that need to do the same. Of course, I am talking about Columbia Pictures’ 1997 wakey-wakey-snakey-bakey Anaconda, starring the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson (“Wow!”), Eric Stolz, and Jon Voight. Although this little venomous little cinematic cobra wants to hold tightly to the ‘studio A-list picture’ skin, it’s time for it to shed this skin and be free to wriggle around, roaring (but never boring) how proud it is to be a B-movie creature-feature that never bites (unless it’s hungry)!
When Roger Corman watched Universal Pictures epic 1975 fish-out-of-water blockbuster (literally inventing the word) Jaws, his direct quote was “Uh-oh. We’re in trouble,” and he was right. For years, the B Movie had been relegated to the bottom-of-the-barrel mackerels like Corman, or Jack Arnold (Tarantula), or Ed Wood (Bride of the Monster), when Richard Zanick, Jr., and David Brown hired a young up-and-comer Steven Spielberg, thinking he would make a cheapy-cheeky killer-thriller with a (puppet, not robot as always assumed) shark, they had no idea they were changing the course of studio-back (meaning money) monsters at the box office. Anaconda has every right to be a distant third cousin of Jaws (the one you avoid at all costs at your grandma’s birthday celebration) and movies of this ilk, where money was thrown at it to make it look more prestigious, when underneath the dried-up outer layer was a B-movie begging to swim through the murky waters of audience enjoyment. With a budget of forty-five million dollars, the film was promoted heavily to the critical community to be talked up differently, but upon release, this movie earned over one hundred and forty million dollars due to its roots in the B-movie jungle. Sure, it has the likes of those stars (with Voight giving such a performance, he should have won the Razzie and Oscar for the role), but it’s within the confines of the B-movie history that the film yields its dividends against the studio snakes-in-the-grass. All the scales of B-movie making rules are there. Cast an older (preferably award-winning) actor in a supportive role? Check. Cast a musician to cash in on the youth market? Check. Love story among the cast? Check. Horrible (and annoying) people who hate every second of being on the adventure? Check. Blood? Check. Breasts? Double check. Monsters? Absolutely check! What fascinates about films like this, as well as the others that try to copy (Python with Casper Van Dien anyone?), is how in debt they are to their roots, yet like a Saharan Sand Viper hiding in the earth, they are too afraid to identify themselves as a B Movie the audience can enjoy for the ride, even though this is the reason it rattled so much on the home video market shelves! However, all these years later (and thanks to online support, which was just in its infancy when the movie skulked into theaters), the film has a solid fan base, not only with audiences, but with the stars themselves. Just last year, Jack Black and Paul Rudd starred in a remake/sequel/meta/nostalgia-baited version where they love the movie of Anaconda so much they actually travel to the Amazon to retrace the locations of the original movie, only for there to be another (real) anaconda chasing them. If that’s not true love for the B-movie side of this split-tongue-in-lizard-cheek movie, then maybe you need to swim up the creek without a paddle (or a big tub of Dr. Hook’s Snake-Be-Gone)!
In the dark, silent, and menacing force of the jungle (or soundstages in Burbank), a documentary film crew are doing a Heart of Darkness up the Amazon to capture an elusive tribe, they get more than they bargained for when a random snake hunter (Voight, playing a real snake himself) tricks them into believing if they take him with them he will help them find the tribe. Still, his heart is truly blackened to find an elusive monster anaconda, larger than he has ever seen in his entire life. Becoming wise to his devious ploy (or is it coy), the crew holds him hostage, but as the crew starts to go missing, they need his help to save them before they get too wrapped up in danger (or rapped up in Ice Cube’s case). As the poster perfectly says, “If you can’t breathe, you can’t scream” with sheer delight in how entertaining this skitter-ditter B-movie is!
Undulating your way at an elongated eighty-nine minutes, and captured (on film) by Luis Llosa (who made some B-movie greats, Crime Zone and Fire on the Amazon for Corman), you can find this little creeper crawler on most streaming services, but be sure to have a solid B-movie fest by getting the DVD star power pack of Ice Cube films, featuring this floating alongside XXX: State of the Union and Ghosts of Mars. Ice Cube would graciously make a small cameo in the Black/Rudd version. However, he never made a song for either of them to promote the movie, missing a huge mark on the B-movie checklist. So, if you ever see a movie that refuses to shed its A-list skin status for its truthful B-movie glory, just take a couple of deep breaths, as someday, like Anaconda, it will be audaciously proud of where it came from (just don’t get all emotionally choked up about it.)
