Brain my Hurts! The Bad Movie Topic.
Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 7:19 pm
Ouch. I just got back from being dragged to anaconda by my parents.
My head literally started to HURT from the stupidity of the movie, not to mention the insipid - predictable plot. They didn't write this thing, people- they photocopied another script and changed a couple of names.
It's arguably the worst movie I've ever seen that was made in the past decade. Everything about it makes it seem like a made for TV movie.
The worst special effects I've seen since Jurassic Park was produced.
The most screwed up "facts" ever. This thing deserves to be a fairytale. It takes place in Asia, but apparently Scarlet Macaws live there - I was not notified of this. Several other African or South American animals are "featured" in obvious stock footage that heralds back to the days of "Leech Woman". The least they could've done was include some Asian animal stock footage in a movie that takes place in Asia. I wouldn't have been suprised to see shots of a kangaroo spliced in there.
Then there are the anacondas themselves. Yeah - apparently anacondas don't strangle their prey. Instead, anacondas are quicker than alligators - lashing out and tossing their prey in the air - and being able to catch it again. This is almost as bad as watching an alligator movie in which the reptiles kill their prey by shooting at them.
The result is animation that obviously looks unnatural - even to those who haven't studied animals.
And yes - anacondas ARE South American, also - not Asian.
Why did they set this movie in Asia again? There's a single Asian guy in the cast, but that's it.
Oh, and splashing a snake with a very small tank of gas can cause an explosion big enough to blow up 20 snakes in a canyon.
Oh, and who can forget the plot itself? Magical flower grants immortality, so naturally a man turned evil in the name of science betrays his companions to get it. Naturally he dies. Didn't this sort of plot become rote in 1957?
And damnit - the cast gets an annoying, comedy-relief pet monkey that eats up an INSANE amount of screentime. Seriously, about 1/4 of this movie has gotta be focused on the damn monkey alone.
And the acting, if you can call it that - was incredibly insipid. Moriss Chestnut is a pretty talented performer who almost manages to slog through the horrible script with a shred of dignity. However, the other characters are tolerable at best.
In particular - there's a character with a HORRIBLE southern accent, and a character with a GRUESOME British accent. Both are made arguably worse by the fact that the accents come and go - totally at random. Thus, their ear-rendering lingo sneaks up and ambushes the viewer - assaulting their sensibilities like Superman bitch-slapping a red-headed stepchild in K-Mart.
And to top it all off - there's the worst part of ANY bad horror movie.
The cowardly, wise-cracking, comedy-relief black guy who keeps on panicking and has to be saved by his betters (the whites, naturally). I thought I was going to puke at what was recognized as an offensive stereotype back in the '80s. But there he is - talking in ebonics and making jokes a 10-year old on heroin could see coming. This, of course - being inbred hicktown USA - the audience was cracking up. But there wasn't a single non-white person in the audience aside from myself - so that's problably saying something.
I managed to stomach cowardly, wise-cracking, comedy-relief black guy for the first 20 minutes by reassuring myself he would die early - he always does. But NO - he just kept on surviving, and surviving, and SURVIVING. When is this jackass going to DIE? By the last 15 minutes, I was praying for mercy - praying for the snakes who defy the laws of physics to put the annoying character out of my misery. But he SURVIVED. The damn idiot survived throughout the entire goddamn movie.
Making such witty one-liners as "That be a big ol' snake, dawg! Word up!". I was beginning to wish I had a brick with which to beat my own brains out.
But in the end - it was through. And I was left in a sickened daze. I've always been a fan of TRULY bad movies - but I lived in peace. Assured that the shitty scifi-horror dreck of the 1960s would never be featured in theaters again - regulated to the crappiness of Sci-Fi channel original movies.
How wrong I was.
How bloody wrong I was.
I now know how an HP Lovecraft character feels. I have looked into the abyss of the worst this generation's entertainment industry has to offer. And I survived.
But at WHAT PRICE?!
At what price?!
My head literally started to HURT from the stupidity of the movie, not to mention the insipid - predictable plot. They didn't write this thing, people- they photocopied another script and changed a couple of names.
It's arguably the worst movie I've ever seen that was made in the past decade. Everything about it makes it seem like a made for TV movie.
The worst special effects I've seen since Jurassic Park was produced.
The most screwed up "facts" ever. This thing deserves to be a fairytale. It takes place in Asia, but apparently Scarlet Macaws live there - I was not notified of this. Several other African or South American animals are "featured" in obvious stock footage that heralds back to the days of "Leech Woman". The least they could've done was include some Asian animal stock footage in a movie that takes place in Asia. I wouldn't have been suprised to see shots of a kangaroo spliced in there.
Then there are the anacondas themselves. Yeah - apparently anacondas don't strangle their prey. Instead, anacondas are quicker than alligators - lashing out and tossing their prey in the air - and being able to catch it again. This is almost as bad as watching an alligator movie in which the reptiles kill their prey by shooting at them.
The result is animation that obviously looks unnatural - even to those who haven't studied animals.
And yes - anacondas ARE South American, also - not Asian.
Why did they set this movie in Asia again? There's a single Asian guy in the cast, but that's it.
Oh, and splashing a snake with a very small tank of gas can cause an explosion big enough to blow up 20 snakes in a canyon.
Oh, and who can forget the plot itself? Magical flower grants immortality, so naturally a man turned evil in the name of science betrays his companions to get it. Naturally he dies. Didn't this sort of plot become rote in 1957?
And damnit - the cast gets an annoying, comedy-relief pet monkey that eats up an INSANE amount of screentime. Seriously, about 1/4 of this movie has gotta be focused on the damn monkey alone.
And the acting, if you can call it that - was incredibly insipid. Moriss Chestnut is a pretty talented performer who almost manages to slog through the horrible script with a shred of dignity. However, the other characters are tolerable at best.
In particular - there's a character with a HORRIBLE southern accent, and a character with a GRUESOME British accent. Both are made arguably worse by the fact that the accents come and go - totally at random. Thus, their ear-rendering lingo sneaks up and ambushes the viewer - assaulting their sensibilities like Superman bitch-slapping a red-headed stepchild in K-Mart.
And to top it all off - there's the worst part of ANY bad horror movie.
The cowardly, wise-cracking, comedy-relief black guy who keeps on panicking and has to be saved by his betters (the whites, naturally). I thought I was going to puke at what was recognized as an offensive stereotype back in the '80s. But there he is - talking in ebonics and making jokes a 10-year old on heroin could see coming. This, of course - being inbred hicktown USA - the audience was cracking up. But there wasn't a single non-white person in the audience aside from myself - so that's problably saying something.
I managed to stomach cowardly, wise-cracking, comedy-relief black guy for the first 20 minutes by reassuring myself he would die early - he always does. But NO - he just kept on surviving, and surviving, and SURVIVING. When is this jackass going to DIE? By the last 15 minutes, I was praying for mercy - praying for the snakes who defy the laws of physics to put the annoying character out of my misery. But he SURVIVED. The damn idiot survived throughout the entire goddamn movie.
Making such witty one-liners as "That be a big ol' snake, dawg! Word up!". I was beginning to wish I had a brick with which to beat my own brains out.
But in the end - it was through. And I was left in a sickened daze. I've always been a fan of TRULY bad movies - but I lived in peace. Assured that the shitty scifi-horror dreck of the 1960s would never be featured in theaters again - regulated to the crappiness of Sci-Fi channel original movies.
How wrong I was.
How bloody wrong I was.
I now know how an HP Lovecraft character feels. I have looked into the abyss of the worst this generation's entertainment industry has to offer. And I survived.
But at WHAT PRICE?!
At what price?!