Images via Netflix

The whole creature feature/natural horror sub-genre of horror movies is a genre that hasn’t been touched in the last couple years. I’m not talking about giant Kaiju monsters like Godzilla, or Cloverfield, I’m talking about movies where the monsters isn’t so much a monster but just a wild animal. Maybe there might be something about the animal that might be emphasized or augmented in some way to make it seem more dangerous or something to actually be afraid of but for the most part the animal is still an animal. You can blame Asylum/SyFy movies like Sharknado and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid or the independently-made Birdemic movies for turning the genre into a joke but there are still a few out there that were actually meant to be serious. Movies like Jaws, Arachnophobia, Crawl, 47 Meters Down, and the original Lake Placid movie.

One creature-feature movie that I recently came across on Netflix that I thought would be awesome to take a look at would be Anaconda. Aside from the fact that Anaconda came out in 1997, a golden age where movie logic was the explanation for a lot of things, Anaconda also featured quite the cast ensemble, which included several people who you would consider high-profile today but back then were relatively unknown.

Anaconda followed a documentary crew made up of director Terri Flores, cameraman Danny Rich, production manager Denise Kalberg, sound engineer Gary Dixon, narrator Warren Westridge, and anthropology Professor Steven Cale as they travel edthe rivers of the Amazon in search of a lost indigenous tribe known as the Shirishamas.

Along the way they encounter a stranded boat and take on its lone inhabitant, Paul Sarone, a former Paraguayan priest turned snake hunter who claims to have information on locating the Shirishamas.

Sarone’s odd personality disturbs the crew while his knowledge of Shirishama-lore has him clashing with Cale. While attempting to untangle a rope caught in the boat’s propeller, Cale becomes incapacitated when a giant wasp stings him in the throat.

With Cale out of the way, Sarone assumes control of the boat and forces the crew to help him with his true goal: hunting and capturing a record-breaking giant anaconda.

Attempts to capture the snake result in the deaths of the boat’s captain and most of the documentary crew, forcing Terri to kill the anaconda with Sarone’s rifle while Danny punches Sarone into the river after he is drugged with a tranquilizer dart by a half-recovered Cale.

With most of their fuel lost due to Sarone’s anaconda hunt, Terri and Danny stop and search an abandoned refinery that they come across for some extra fuel to get them home. There, Sarone who has managed to catch up with them captures them and attempts to use them as bait to draw out and capture a second giant anaconda.

Sarone’s trap fails, and the anaconda kills him before turning its sights on Terri and Danny who had managed to free themselves.

Terri gets the snake to chase her up a smokestack while Danny pins its tail to the ground and lights a fire underneath it causing an explosion that sends the anaconda flying into the river. The anaconda pops up one more time before Danny manages to kill it with an axe to the head.

After finding more fuel, Terri and Danny reunite with Cale on the boat and the three of them continue down the river where they end up finding the Shirishama tribe and resume filming their documentary.

Jennifer Lopez played Terri Flores the documentary crew’s director. Today, Lopez is one of the most recognized women on the planet so she really doesn’t need that much of an introduction, but when Anaconda came out she was still working her way up through Hollywood with her previous role as Selena Quintanilla-Perez in the biographical musical drama film Selena being her big break.

Terri Flores is your typical horror movie final girl character, she’s the character that moves the story forward and exhibits certain attributes that help her survive such as intelligence, curiosity, and vigilance. In fact, Flores also checks off several boxes outlined by Carol J. Clover, the academic who coined the term “final girl,” Flores is sexually unavailable, she avoids vices like drinking and smoking and her first name, Terri, is a unisex name.

In horror movies the final girl is usually played two ways. One is as a damsel in distress who usually needs the help of a strong male character to get them through to the end or as a strong female—like Ripley in Aliens, who doesn’t need help from anybody else to survive the movie. Unfortunately for Lopez the role of Flores was written with the former in mind which is shown in the climax of the movie where she is being chased by the anaconda and it is only through the intervention of Danny—her strong male character that she is able to survive.

Jon Voight played Paul Sarone, a greedy snake hunter looking for his next big paycheck and the movie’s true villain.

https://youtu.be/JeCXfcBjYvQ

Every time I think of Jon Voight in Anaconda it reminds me of this old Mad TV Halloween sketch where some kids are Trick or Treating on Halloween and they come to “Angelina Jolie’s” house and the Jolie impersonator tells the kids a Halloween story which is just a mish-mash of ’90s tabloid stories on Jolie’s crazy life growing up and her relationship with her father which she emphasizes by saying “he was such a bitch because he was in Deliverance…” and “… Up for any Oscars lately Daddy? Oh, that’s right! You did Anaconda!”

Voight seems a bit out of place in Anaconda given other films he’s been in (this was in 1997 so it was pre-Transformers and National Treasure). I can see him taking the role because he was convinced that Sarone is supposed to be an Ahab-like character and the anaconda is his white whale. While Sarone has an almost fanatical obsession with hunting the Anaconda down like Ahab did with Moby Dick I feel the whole lesson on the dangers of fanaticism and obsession is lost because Sarone is motivated entirely by greed while Ahab’s obsession was created out of his desire for revenge.

Supposedly, Jean Reno was originally considered to play Sarone until Voight was attached. Honestly, I really thought they should have held out for Reno, his performances in films such as Leon: The Professional, Mission Impossible, and Ronin shows that he has the correct energy to play Sarone, not to mention he would have saved us the horror of watching Voight try to pull off speaking English with a Spanish/Portuguese accent.

O’Shea Jackson AKA Ice Cube played Danny Rich, the documentary crew’s cameraman and a childhood friend of Terri Flores from South Central LA. Like Lopez I don’t think Ice Cube needs that much of an introduction. I feel Ice Cube is like Michael Cera in the sense that no matter what movie or TV show he’s in, his characters are always the same, which is this thuggish/ghetto hood rat. I’m not talking about just Friday or Boyz n the Hood, take a look at other stuff he’s done like Ghost of Mars, Are We There Yet?, and XXX: State of the Union, or Fist Fight, and 21/22 Jump Street—they all have him with the same personalities and energy.

Danny is the strong male figure to Terri’s final girl. Danny is the one who tries to save the documentary crew from Sarone. First by trying to take him out with his pocket knife, then by punching him out. He’s also the one who saves Terri from the second Anaconda, first by pinning the Anaconda’s tail with a pickaxe and blowing it up. Then when in typical horror movie-fashion the anaconda pops up still alive he saves Terri again by killing it with an axe.

Looking at Danny, I feel Ice Cube was cast to compliment Lopez and give Terri this urban/ghetto-fied background which is shown when it is revealed she and Danny are childhood friends especially given how movies like to treat Latinos and Blacks in movies. Ironically, this whole ghetto/urbanifying of Lopez’s character predates her “Jenny from the Block” persona by like 5 years.

Eric Stoltz played Dr. Steven Cale, the anthropologist professor attached to the film crew, Terri Flores’ love-interest, and the movie’s alpha-male figure until his position is usurped by Sarone. I know Stoltz was the original Marty McFly in Back to the Future before the part was recast with Michael J. Fox, Stoltz also played Rocky Dennis in the biopic movie Mask.

Cale’s position as the movie’s alpha-male character is established early on the film. As the anthropology professor attached to the documentary crew he’s basically the leader in charge of the exhibition. Also when he thinks the crew thinks they are under attack by wild animals he pulls a gun out of his bag, giving the impression that he’s supposed to be the crew’s protector which enforces the idea he’s an authority figure.

As part of her final girl image, Flores had to be shown as “sexually unavailable or virginal,” which wasn’t hard considering her love interest spent about 90% of the movie incapacitated. When a rope gets caught in the boat’s propeller, Cale dons scuba equipment and goes down to cut it loose when a wasp hidden in his scuba regulator by Sarone stings him in the throat causing it to swell up, requiring Sarone to perform an emergency cricothyrotomy to save his life. At this point we don’t see Cale again until he suddenly regains consciousness to stab Sarone with a tranquilizer dart before passing back out again, and we don’t see him again until the film’s ending.

The wasp scene is probably one of the more creepier scenes in the movie. Aside from the above still of them pulling a big ass bug out of Stoltz’s mouth we also get the added bonus of watching Voight be creeping on Lopez. Then there’s the gore factor when he makes the incision in Cale’s throat so he can breathe again.

Honest, I’m really wondering why they didn’t just kill Cale off since his part is so minimal. Looking back at the movie, I’m assuming keeping Cale alive was done to keep the plot going forward because his condition and safety provides a logical excuse for the crew to listen to Sarone when he offers them an alternate route through the jungle.

Kari Wuhrer played Denise Kalberg, the crew’s production manager. Wuhrer is probably best known for her stint on Sliders in the ’90s, her role as town sheriff and Scarlett Johansson’s mom in the movie Eight Legged Freaks (another great creature feature movie that I should really do a write up on), and her work as an MTV VJ. In recent years, Wuhrer’s work has consisted of voice work as well as parts here and there in various TV shows and direct-to-video movies.

In contrast to Flores’ final girl character, Kalberg is the opposite and is typical scream-queen gore bait. Kalberg is constantly trying to sex it up with her boyfriend or just doing stuff that could potentially put her danger.

https://youtu.be/K_naeUFwBiE

In contrast to other horror movie women who meet their end at the film’s monster, Kalberg is killed by Sarone when she tries getting revenge for her boyfriend’s death. Sarone who despite his old age is able to entangle her with his legs and strangle her before dumping her body overboard. Sorry for the Tamil dubbing but it’s the only clip I could find. This scene came a bit out of nowhere. Considering that Jon Voight at the time was almost 60 when this movie came out and Sarone looked to be just as old it was pretty surprising to see him jump up and take Denise out like that, but I guess to the writers it was the best way they could think of to get him out of the ropes.

Jonathan Hyde played Warren Westridge, the documentary crew’s English narrator, because all great narrators are English. Hyde has done quite a great deal of theater work with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre. Movie watches however will probably recognize him from his dual role in the Jumanji as Van Pelt and Samuel Parrish, Richie Rich where he played Cadbury, the Rich family’s butler, and the Mummy where he played another uptight English guy.

In fitting with his role of the English character, Westridge is depicted as having this refined and snobby, having lived. On the boat he overpacks, bringing with him golf clubs and bottles of wine, which he refuses to carry himself and tries to get Denise and the other crew members to carry for him.

Based on his archetype you would think that Westridge would be more than willing to help Sarone capture the Anaconda given how much money that could be made. There’s always that one guy in a movie who goes along with the villain because he’s either greedy or immoral, but surprisingly it’s not Westridge. Once things start going downhill for the production crew, Westridge basically turns into Hudson from Aliens as he goes on these panicked rants of how they need to get out of there. Westridge is resistant to Sarone the entire way, only complying to his demands out of safety from Sarone. In fact, Westridge is actually the one who knocks out Sarone with a golf club, allowing the crew to tie him up and take control of the boat again.

Owen Wilson played Gary Dixon, the crew’s sound engineer, and Denise’s boyfriend. Like some of the other cast members, Wilson is a pretty recognizable celebrity today given his work with Wes Anderson and frat pack comedies as well as being one half of several comedy duos with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jackie Chan. Prior to Anaconda, Wilson was still pretty unknown, a glance at his filmography shows that all he had was a small part in The Cable Guy and Bottle Rocket which he also wrote.

As Denise’s boyfriend, Gary is the guy she’s always trying to sex things up with.

As I said earlier, in almost every horror movie there’s always one guy who goes along with the villain, and Gary is the guy to do it. Gary is easily swayed to join Sarone when Sarone mentions how much they can get for the snake and also how much the crew could make by documenting its capture

Vincent Castellanos played Mateo, the boat’s captain. Of all the cast members of Anaconda, Castellanos is the least recognizable. A quick glance at his IMDB page shows that his career is mostly just small roles here and there. Castellanos’s most recent work according to IMDB was in the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks where he played Federico, an employee at The Bang Bang Bar, the Twin Peaks Roadhouse. Mateo’s part in Anaconda is pretty small.

Like I said earlier, he’s the boat captain, a job that he has until he becomes snake food. One thing that really bugged me about his character though is after his death and the crew incapacitate Sarone, they find a newspaper clipping of Mateo with Sarone and another snake hunter.

At this point Terri jumps to the conclusion that meeting Sarone was no accident and it was planned out ahead of time by Mateo and Sarone. This is something that is implied throughout the movie. First when Mateo and Cale are plotting the boat’s course and Mateo suggests a certain route as being the safest before the camera ominously focuses on him, and is further reinforced as the movie progresses with the way Mateo and Sarone look at each other. If this is the case, why? It’s not like they needed the documentary crew’s help, in fact, the crew was pretty resistant to helping Sarone the entire time, not to mention if Sarone and Mateo were experienced snake hunters you think they would have the confidence to handle it themselves. The only logical explanation about meeting Sarone being a setup would be because Sarone and Mateo needed to hijack the documentary crew’s fully financed expedition for their snake hunt. If this is the case this brings up the question of how much does the snake hunt cost? The only real major expense is fuel but you would think they could scrounge up enough money for fuel, or at least buy some on credit given how much they could potentially make from the giant anaconda.

Danny Trejo played a snake poacher in the beginning of the film, who while under attack by the anaconda chooses instead to take his own life rather than be squeezed and eaten by the anaconda. It’s Trejo’s boat that the crew stumble on while going down the river and it is his boat where Sarone picks up snake-hunting gear as well as the newspaper clipping of him, Sarone, and Mateo capturing another snake.

Frank Welker and Gary A. Hecker provided the voices for the anaconda. I’m not that familiar with Hecker, but Welker is basically voice-acting royalty. Aside from being the voice of Fred in Scooby Doo and several Transformers, he literally has 100s of acting credits on his resume, most of which aren’t even speaking roles, but roles which involve him making animal noises.

As a horror movie, most of the scares from Anaconda are psychological. None of the visual horrors happen until way later in the movie. Ophidiophobia is a fairly common fear, add to the fact that the snake in this movie is supposed to a giant man-eating snake and anybody who has a fear of snakes should be a little on age after just hearing the premise. Now imagine being in the movie, you’re on a boat in the middle of the Amazon with a crazed snake hunter trying to find a giant man-eating anaconda that can pop up at any time—you’d be scared out of your mind. Because most of the scares from Anaconda are supposed to be psychological this is why like the movie Predator, we don’t actually see the titular monster right away. We’re only given glimpses of him to know he’s there until halfway through the movie. Even when we get the full reveal of the anaconda we don’t see it do much so we don’t know the full extent of how it consumes its victims.

This gradual reveal of how exactly the anaconda eats its prey makes the anaconda more terrifying because rather than just showing everything up front and desensitizing the audience to the anaconda by showing them what to expect, each anaconda scene builds up on the previous scene, giving the audience another reason to be scared of it.

This gradual reveal I feel also does well to emphasize the fact that Sarone is the movie’s true villain while the anaconda, despite being the titular monster is just a secondary antagonist.

Take a look at this first scene where we learn the anaconda is out there. The entire thing takes place at night and the only shots we get of the anaconda are either of it behind some grass or brief flashes of it as it wraps itself around the panther, leaving the anaconda still a bit of a mystery for the audience.

https://youtu.be/FOBpKP64O-8

Then there’s the full reveal of the anaconda when it eats Mateo. This is the anaconda’s big reveal. We see it in all its glory and we finally get a clear look at what it does when it wraps itself around Mateo and squeezes the life out him before biting him. The only thing we don’t see is the anaconda actually eating him.

This is pretty much the same thing that happens in Gary’s death scene. We see the anaconda grab Gary and wrap itself around him and bite down on him but we don’t actually see Gary get devoured.

However, while we don’t see Gary get eaten, Gary’s death does one up Mateo’s death because we do see the anaconda after it kills Gary, swimming through the river, bloated by Gary still in one piece its belly, with his face pushing against the snake’s side leaving an imprint, like a death mask made of snake skin.

https://youtu.be/AGbE4ixRdLQ

Westridge’s is pretty much more of the same. We don’t see the anaconda actually eat him. However, the way it chases him does give the audience a sense of how unstoppable the anaconda is.

This all leads up to the final confrontation where the anaconda catches and eats Sarone. We see the anaconda catch him, constrict him, bite him, and this being the ultimate encounter with the anaconda we also see him swallow him, in a very graphic manner. If seeing Jon Voight get swallowed whole by a giant snake wasn’t terrifying enough. There’s also the part where the snake regurgitates him while chasing Terri and right before his corpse collapses he gives Terri a super creepy wink.

https://youtu.be/bP3lFw9JnNQ

Nature itself is a scary thing. Don’t believe me? Just let this clip from Family Guy explain it to you.

And just for fun here is that audio track dubbed over live action footage because it’s entertaining.

Seriously, though there’s a lot of stuff out in nature that can easily kill you which is what makes natural horror/creature feature movies an interesting horror genre to follow. As I said earlier, movies like Sharknado, Birdemic, have made this genre a joke, but honestly if you remove the gimmicks those movies have, nature itself can already be scary.