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Anaconda (1997 film)

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Anaconda
Snake eyes
Theatrical release poster
Directed byLuis Llosa
Written by
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyBill Butler
Edited byMichael R. Miller
Music byRandy Edelman
Production
companies
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release date
  • April 11, 1997 (1997-04-11)
Running time
89 minutes
CountriesUnited States
Brazil
LanguageEnglish
Budget$45 million
Box office$136.8 million[1]

Anaconda is a 1997 action adventure horror film directed by Luis Llosa and starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, and Owen Wilson. An international co-production between the United States and Brazil, the film focuses on a documentary film crew in the Amazon rainforest that is led by a snake hunter who is hunting down a giant, legendary green anaconda.

The film received generally mixed-to-negative reviews, but was a box office success, and has become a 1990s cult classic. It is the first installment in the Anaconda film series.

Plot

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On the Amazon River, a poacher hides from an unknown creature in his boat. When it breaks through the boat and attempts to trap the poacher, he commits suicide by shooting himself to prevent it from killing him.

Meanwhile, a film crew is shooting a documentary about the Shirishamas, a long-lost indigenous Amazonian tribe; the ensemble consists of director Terri Flores, cameraman and childhood friend Danny Rich, production manager Denise Kalberg, Denise's boyfriend and sound engineer Gary Dixon, narrator Warren Westridge, anthropologist Professor Steven Cale, and boat skipper Mateo. The group encounters stranded Paraguayan snake hunter Paul Serone, who convinces them he can help them find the Shirishamas. Most of the crew are uncomfortable around Serone, and Cale clashes with him several times about Shirishama lore. Eventually, Cale is stung by a wasp, and an allergic reaction swells up his throat and leaves him unconscious. Serone performs an emergency cricothyrotomy, seemingly saving Cale's life, but soon after takes over the boat, forcing the group to help him achieve his true goal: hunting down a giant record-breaking green anaconda he had been tracking, which he believes that he can capture alive.

Danny, Mateo and Serone search the wreckage of the poacher's boat. A photograph in an old newspaper reveals that Mateo, Serone, and the poacher were working together to hunt animals, including snakes. Leaving the poacher's ship, Mateo falls into the water, where the giant male warrior anaconda, measuring 25 ft (7.6 m), ambushes and kills him, while the other two return to their boat, unaware of Mateo's fate. Serone manipulates Gary into helping him ensnare the creature which might get him one million dollar in price. That night, he uses a dead monkey as bait to catch the creature, which proceeds to emerge and attack the crew. He attempts to capture the snake, but it coils around Gary, crushing him. Serone thwarts Terri's attempt to shoot the anaconda to rescue Gary, whom it devours, devastating Denise. The crew overpowers Serone and ties him up as punishment.

The next day, the boat becomes jammed near a waterfall, and Terri, Danny, and Westridge enter the water to winch it loose. Denise confronts Serone and attempts to kill him to avenge Gary's death, but he ambushes and strangles her with his legs before dumping her corpse into the river. When the creature returns, Westridge distracts it long enough for Terri and Danny to retreat while he ascends the waterfall. Serone breaks free during the attack and assaults Danny. The snake mounts a tree branch and attacks Westridge, unintentionally uprooting the tree, and he perishes in the subsequent fall. The tree falls onto the boat, subsequently awakening Cale, and Serone, Danny, and Terri escape by jumping into the river. The snake resurfaces and attacks Danny, but Terri, having reboarded the boat, rescues him by shooting one of its eyes out. Serone, still believing he can capture it alive, reboards the boat and pulverizes her. Cale rescues her by stabbing Serone with a tranquilizer dart before losing consciousness again himself, and Danny pummels Serone into the river.

Serone eventually catches up to the group and captures Terri and Danny, drenching them with animal blood to bait a second, much larger female Queen anaconda, measuring 40 ft (12 m); it attacks the pair, slowly suffocating them. He tries to catch it in a net, but it breaks free and attacks him, eventually swallowing him whole, which the pair observe while escaping their respective bonds. It chases Terri into a building, where she encounters a nest full of newborn anacondas, then regurgitates the still-alive, but partially digested Serone and chases her up a smokestack. Danny pins its tail to the ground with a pickaxe and ignites a fire below the smokestack, setting the snake ablaze; the resulting explosion sends the burning anaconda flying out of the building and into the water. As Terri and Danny recuperate on a nearby dock, the creature resurfaces, but he slaughters it with an axe to the head.

Afterward, the pair reunites with Cale, who begins recuperating on the boat. While floating downriver, the trio locates the Shirishama tribe they were originally seeking and, realizing Serone was right, begins filming their documentary.

Cast

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Music

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Soundtrack

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Anaconda: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Film score by
Randy Edelman
ReleasedApril 22, 1997
GenreSoundtracks
Film scores
Length33:56
LabelEdel America Records
Anaconda soundtrack chronology
Anaconda: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
(1997) 		Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
(2004)

Randy Edelman composed and conducted the film's soundtrack, released by Edel America Records.[2]

Track listing
  1. Main Title (4:45)
  2. Watching and Waiting (4:43)
  3. Night Attack (2:47)
  4. This Must Be Heaven (1:39)
  5. Down River (2:43)
  6. Seduction (3:27)
  7. Travelogue (2:45)
  8. Baiting the Line (2:47)
  9. My Beautiful Anna... (conda) (2:54)
  10. The Totem's Scared Ground (2:26)
  11. Sarone's Last Stand (3:00)

Reception

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Box office

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The film opened at No. 1 with $16.6 million in its first weekend and remained at the top spot in its following week.[3][4][5] In total, Anaconda went on to gross $136.8 million worldwide.[6]

Critical response

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On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 41% of 56 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5/10. The website's consensus reads: "Anaconda’s pulpy pleasures are constricted by its own absurdity, but creature feature fans may enjoy its brazen silliness."[7] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 37 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[8] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[9]

Film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film a mixed 2 out of a possible 4 stars, criticizing the film's "hokey" special effects and "expositionless" script but complimented the film's use of Brazilian locale and Voight's campy performance.[10] Roger Ebert awarded the film 3+1⁄2 out of 4 stars and called it a "slick, scary, funny Creature Feature, beautifully photographed and splendidly acted in high adventure style".[11]

Despite the initial negative reception, Anaconda has since become a cult classic, often viewed as being so-bad-it's-good. The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made.[12]

Accolades

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The film was nominated for six Razzie Awards in 1998 including Worst Picture (which lost to The Postman), Worst Actor (Jon Voight; which went to Kevin Costner for The Postman), Worst Director (awarded to Costner for The Postman), Worst Screenplay (lost to The Postman), Worst New Star ("the animatronic anaconda"; which went to Dennis Rodman for Double Team) and Worst Screen Couple (Voight and "the animatronic anaconda"; where they lost to Rodman and Jean-Claude Van Damme for Double Team).[13][user-generated source?] It was also nominated for two Saturn Awards including Best Actress (Jennifer Lopez; who lost to Jodie Foster for Contact) and Best Horror Film (which went to The Devil's Advocate). It won two Stinkers Awards including Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Fake Accent for Jon Voight (who also won the latter award for Most Wanted).

Award Category Subject Results
Golden Raspberry Award Worst Picture Verna Harrah Nominated
Carole Little Nominated
Leonard Rabinowitz Nominated
Worst Director Luis Llosa Nominated
Worst Screenplay Hans Bauer Nominated
Jim Cash Nominated
Jack Epps Jr. Nominated
Worst Actor Jon Voight Nominated
Worst Screen Couple Nominated
The animatronic anaconda Nominated
Worst New Star Nominated
Saturn Award Best Actress Jennifer Lopez Nominated
Best Horror or Thriller Film Nominated
Stinkers Bad Movie Award Worst Supporting Actor Jon Voight Won
Worst Fake Accent Won

Legacy

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The broadcast of the movie during primetime viewing on South African television station e.tv has become a national running gag, with the station airing the movie several times every year since the mid-2000s.[14][15][16]

Other media

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Sequels

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Main articles: Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, Anaconda 3: Offspring, and Anacondas: Trail of Blood

A sequel, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, was released to theaters in 2004. Two more films follows with a direct-to-video release, Anaconda 3: Offspring (2008) and Anacondas: Trail of Blood (2009).

Crossover

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Main article: Lake Placid vs. Anaconda

Lake Placid vs. Anaconda (2015), a crossover film with the Lake Placid film series.

Even though no characters from the first film appear in the sequels, the events of the first film are referenced by the character Cole Burris in the second film, when he says he knows a man (Dr. Steven Cale) and another man (Danny Rich) that took a crew down to the Amazon, where they were attacked by snakes; in Lake Placid vs. Anaconda, character Will "Tully" Tull describes the same incident of the snakes in the Amazon to Reba, without explicitly mentioning the characters.

Remake

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On March 1, 2024, a Chinese-produced remake was released.[17][18]

Reboot

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Main article: Anaconda (2025 film)

In January 2020, Sony Pictures announced a reboot is in development and screenwriter Evan Daugherty was hired to write the reboot film.[19] In 2023, Tom Gormican was announced to direct the film.[20] In August 2024, Variety reported that Jack Black and Paul Rudd were in early talks to star in the film, which was said to focus on a group of friends who seek to remake the original 1997 film. Gormican would also co-write with Kevin Etten. Brad Fuller and Andrew Form would produce through their Fully Formed Entertainment company.[21] Daniela Melchior joined the cast a month later.[22]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Anaconda (1997)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on January 26, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2017.
  2. ^ "Anaconda – Randy Edelman". AllMusic. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Retrieved April 16, 2018.
  3. ^ "'Anaconda' Slithers Into the Top Box-Office Spot". Los Angeles Times. April 14, 1997. Archived from the original on 2022-09-21. Retrieved 2023-03-31.
  4. ^ "Weekend Chart 1" Archived 2021-01-29 at the Wayback Machine. boxofficemojo
  5. ^ "Weekend Chart 2" Archived 2021-01-28 at the Wayback Machine. boxofficemojo
  6. ^ "Anaconda" Archived 2022-01-26 at the Wayback Machine. boxofficemojo
  7. ^ Anaconda at Rotten Tomatoes Edit this at Wikidata
  8. ^ Anaconda at Metacritic Edit this at Wikidata
  9. ^ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com. Archived from the original on 2019-08-09. Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  10. ^ Leonard Maltin (2 September 2014). Leonard Maltin's 2015 Movie Guide. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-698-18361-2.
  11. ^ Ebert, Roger (April 11, 1997). "Anaconda". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on August 16, 2014. Retrieved September 20, 2014.
  12. ^ Wilson, John (2005). The Official Razzie Movie Guide: Enjoying the Best of Hollywood's Worst. Grand Central. ISBN 0-446-69334-0.
  13. ^ "Razzie Award (1998)" Archived 2017-11-13 at the Wayback Machine. IMDb
  14. ^ "'Not again!' – eTV's Saturday Night Movie choice sparks huge backlash". The South African. 13 January 2022. Archived from the original on 25 January 2022. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  15. ^ "E.tv dragged for airing Anaconda movies". Sunday World. 13 January 2022. Archived from the original on 23 January 2022. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  16. ^ "Is this why eTV refuses to retire 'Anaconda' from its archives?". The South African. 14 January 2022. Archived from the original on 24 January 2022. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  17. ^ "There's a Chinese Remake of B-Horror Classic Anaconda, and the Trailer is Absolutely Bonkers". 26 March 2024. Archived from the original on 26 March 2024. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  18. ^ Squires, John (March 26, 2024). "'Anaconda' Trailer – Preview Brutal Chinese Remake of the 1997 American Creature Feature!". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved January 31, 2025.
  19. ^ Kit, Borys (January 24, 2020). "'Anaconda' Reboot in the Works With 'Snow White and the Huntsman' Writer (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on March 30, 2021. Retrieved January 25, 2020.
  20. ^ Kamal, Nathan (March 11, 2023). "Exclusive: Anaconda Reboot In Development From Massive Talent Director". Giant Freakin Robot. Archived from the original on May 26, 2023. Retrieved May 26, 2023.
  21. ^ "'Anaconda' Re-Imagining in the Works with Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Early Talks to Star". 22 August 2024.
  22. ^ Kroll, Justin (September 30, 2024). "Daniela Melchior Joins Paul Rudd And Jack Black In Sony's New 'Anaconda' Movie". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on September 30, 2024. Retrieved September 30, 2024.
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