Anacondas: The Hunt For the Blood Orchid Year: 2004 Director: Dwight H. Little Written by: John Claflin, Daniel Zelman, Michael Miner, Ed Neumeier Threat: Snakes Weapon of Choice: Spider IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
Anaconda

Rish's Reviews
When I first heard they were making a sequel to 1997's Anaconda, I thought, "That's it, the Four Horsemen have begun their fateful ride." When I found out the title was going to be Anacondas: The Hunt For the Blood Orchid, I began to relax, because the God of the New Testament couldn't possibly exist.
Our story takes place in Borneo, where a new, miracle flower has been discovered. This so-called blood orchid is so valuable, that a team is immediately dispatched to retrieve it. They go boating down the river, fighting among themselves, only to find something worse awaiting them: giant anaconda snakes. We are all screwed!
The bad news is, Anacondas: THFTBO was a fairly awful movie. The good news is, I saw it right after I saw Cellular, which was a truly awful movie, so this seemed quite alright.
The acting wasn't all that bad, and I found myself quite entertained. Of course, I had extremely low expectations. The cast was pretty unremarkable: instead of Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, and Eric Stoltz, we have . . . well, the most famous face was Johnny Messner, who I think I saw in a straight-to-Showtime Lorenzo Lamas nudie flick once. (that was a joke, Mom) I didn't know which was worse: KaDee Strickland's mouth overflowing with sharklike teeth, or her awful Georgian accent. Morris Chestnut actually came across pretty darn great. The guy had charm. The loud, complaining black guy annoyed me at first, then I started finding him amusing. I must be getting senile.
I suppose the real stars of a movie like this are the snakes. And in a couple of shots, the snakes looked pretty real. Unfortunately, they were featured in more than a couple of shots.
It had a silly premise, but the main point was to strand a bunch of people in the jungle and have them picked off one by one by giant killer snakes, so they did alright. My bald friend seemed to think they were ripping off Jaws. I couldn't tell what they were ripping off, exactly. It was dumb but it was fun, and if that was what the filmmakers were going for, then they succeeded.
Doesn't mean I'm going to go see Anaconda3, though.
Best Scare: The best shot in the trailer was a great god's-eye-view shot of the people crossing a river with the giant black snake swimming unseen right next to them.
I'd Recommend It To: You know what? I'm going to recommend this movie. What the heck.
Posted: November 9, 2004

Total Skulls: 16

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?