Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
Directed by Dwight H. Little
Released: 2004
Starring: Johnny Messner, KaDee Strickland, Matthew Marsden, and Nicholas Gonzalez
Running Time: 97 minutes

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Warning: Due to the extreme cheesiness of this film, major spoilers have been provided.

Unless you like cheesy action/adventure/horror flicks, don't watch this. It's predictable and fake. It's not bad, just slightly boring. By the time the first 15 minutes have gone by, you can pretty much guess what's going to happen. The best thing about this movie is that they don't make you sit through softcore porn. I hate softcore porn. Hardcore porn is fine, but I really don't want to see two people grinding their hips against each other. It's like trying to get off watching a dog humping your friend's leg. It's retarded. Either fuck each other or don't.

Anacondas starts out with a team of people pitching the idea of immortality in pill form. The only drawback is that the chemical they are looking for can only be found in the blood orchid. Speaking from a science background, this is bullshit. If you know what chemical you want, you can synthesize it from other chemicals. You do not need to put your audience through the hell of watching people get eaten by giant fake snakes. You can bore them to death by showing them home movies of organic chemistry lab. Still, scientists do find undiscovered compounds in jungles, so I can see where the got the idea. They just got it backwards. In any case the pharmaceutical execs give the team the go ahead and a motley group of people make their way to the jungles of Borneo.

They get to Borneo during the rainy season. They could have timed the trip better, but the blood orchid only blooms for a few weeks every 7 years. (Reminds me of the Vulcan libido.) None of the regular boat charters will travel along the river until the rains stop, so they find the maverick boat captain, Bill Johnson (played by Johnny Messner), who agrees to go where they want to go for 50 grand. They all board his piece of shit boat (he admits to it later in the film) and head on down the river.

They don't get very far before the black chick, Gail (Salli Richardson) is scared by Bill's monkey (no, that's not a euphemism). The monkey gets left behind when looking for fruit. Then Gail gets knocked overboard and almost eaten by a crocodile. Bill dives in and saves her, but I gotta say, I think she could have stood up and walked to the boat. The water didn't look that deep where she was. Thus ends the first day.

Bill wants to turn back, but the crazy Dr. Jack (Matthew Marsden) offers him 50 grand more to keep going. They continue on and end up going over a waterfall. Everyone survives (damn), and they all salvage what they can from the boat. They try to radio for help, but the radio doesn't work. One cell phone works, but only enough to call one person. Bill calls his friend who owns his own boat and enjoys drinking while piloting it. Still, the friend agrees to pick them all up. I don't know why, but they make a reference to the drunk guy's wife while the drunk guy is looking at a gun in a waterproof case. I'm not sure if he shot his wife or if he wanted to shoot himself. It doesn't matter since he ends up being eaten by one of the anacondas later.

The original group tries to hack their way to where the guy is going to pick them up. The expected happens and one of the people is attacked by leaches and another is eaten by a snake. Bill, herpetology expert that he is, informs the rest of them that anacondas are territorial and they shouldn't have to worry about seeing another one. They continue, and not too many miles away from their pick up spot they see a huge explosion on the horizon. Yep, the boat crashed. Don't worry about the drunk friend though. He was eaten by a huge snake which caused the crash.

They salvage what they can from this wreck, and Bill leads them towards the nearest headhunter village. When they get to the village, there is the usual décor of bleached white skulls and skeletons, but no villagers. OK, there is one, actually half of one, inside a snake, which is cut in half. (Think of a person who climbed inside a huge, snake-colored sock.) The villagers have taken all the boats and left. (They have to be the smartest people in the film.) Bill gets the brilliant idea that they'll build another boat from the villager's huts. They do, but it looks like crap. Meanwhile, one of the black guys in the crew, Gordon (played by Morris Chestnut), is sitting in the hut, relaxing his itching feet when he finds the case with the gun in it. There's also a working phone in it, too. Jack arranges so Gordon can't say anything. It doesn't really matter since another snake eats Gordon while everyone else is watching. Jack steals the boat when everyone else is trying to save Gordon.

Jack heads down river to look for the orchid. Everyone but Gail opts to follow Jack and get the boat back. I'd think I'd side with Gail and hoof it two days along the river instead of following the nut case, but that would be a horrible ending for the movie. They eventually catch up to Jack, but not until they lose another member of their rapidly dwindling group. Bill exhibits some masculine grieving by closing his eyes during a heart-wrenching moment. I mean, I was really moved.

The last scene is chaotic and retarded, and I'm not even going to bother outlining it. I'll just say that Jack gets his in the end, and enough snakes are left alive to continue with the next generation. They don't bring back any orchids, but I can't blame them. Who wants to work with something that looks like it came from the clearance rack of Wal-Mart's silk flower section? Like I said before, this film is cheesy. It is so totally fake, but so are Pamela Anderson's tits, and some people like looking at them. I wish director Dwight H. Little (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and The Phantom of the Opera (1989)) would direct more horror films, preferably without the action/adventure angle.