Anaconda (1997)

One thing I always wonder about after seeing a movie such as this: why is this giant snake such a problem now? Did it take reptile steroids recently? Is it a mutation or affected by alien forces? Before the events of this film, my impression is that this snake was slowly going through its life like any other big snake - which is why no one was aware of it. Why all of sudden now, when a documentary crew chooses to investigate a part of the Amazon jungle, does this super snake decide to show off its super-duper stalk & kill abilities? See, maybe it's just me, but I don't think real giant snakes behave this way: faster than running humans, able to catch 'em in midair as they jump to 'safety' - there are certain laws of nature & physics that just cannot be simply ignored. And I can't believe this clever snake was also so clever as to wait for some foreign visitors - Americans - to pay the jungle a visit before publicizing its ultra powers. But that's the outrageous aspect of such monster-on-the-prowl pictures and you go with the flow or you just don't go. The main thrill is watching to see which of perhaps a half-dozen stock B-pic characters make it to the end; will half of them make it? Two? Just one?
The other cheap thrill is watching Jon Voight ham it up as an evil poacher. He's picked up by the hapless crew near the beginning and very soon manipulates everything towards his goal of capturing an Anaconda alive (for the money). Voight wears an evil sneer throughout the entire film, to make sure we understand he's evil, and basically gives the snake a run for the money as to which is the more dangerous of the two. This was Jennifer Lopez just before she hit diva status in perhaps her first starring role (she'd been in supporting parts before this). Ice Cube as the cameraman mostly growls his dialog and scowls a lot. Eric Stoltz, as the leader of the expedition, gets incapacitated early. One other point emphasized is that such snakes like to vomit up their meals soon after swallowing, for the joy of eating it again. The FX, a combo of digital and robotics, aren't too bad. Overall, this has an old-fashioned sense of monster scares. One can't deny this spawned a bevy of imitations in the direct-to-video (King Cobra) and Sci-Fi Channel markets. There's been giant cobras, rattlers, and pythons since, all traced back to this flic. Its own sequel didn't arrive until 2004, with different characters.  BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10