2/5 Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid... Attack of the flying burning snakes
  by Julian Kennedy (St Pete Florida)
Anacondas The Hunt for the Blood Red Orchid: 4 out of 10: I had the following criticisms of the first Anaconda movie. How did the snakes get to the Amazon when they live hundreds of miles away in the Ecuadorian swamps; man those CGI snakes look fake; and you know what this movie is missing, some racist comic relief, you now with the scared black person who follows Bob Hope around looking for ghosts. Well they answered my third concern.

The good news the anacondas are still in the jungle, as opposed to Sequel number 3 and 4 . However the filmmakers have now moved the titular snakes to Borneo, which is in Asia, which seems a rather large slither from the swamps of Ecuador, in South America. It is kind of like finding tigers in Africa. (Perhaps the snakes escaped from a zoo.)

The snakes look okay while under water, but fail miserably while airborne. Of course, most snakes do not do flying well; though that would be an interesting explanation for their intercontinental migration. The snakes do not even really look like real snakes, and the effects people in the extras admit it is a combination of many different snakes. This is the explanation for why the anacondas have grown fangs and become surprisingly flammable. Apparently, real anacondas do not have the right 'tude.

With English accented villains, ship crushing waterfalls and paralyzing spiders, the movie comes awfully close to not needing the snakes at all. (This is my Amityville Horror 2 rule. A movie in which the family was so awful a haunted house seemed redundant)

As for the actors, only two stand out Morris Chestnut as the horrible and embarrassing black comic relief, and the monkey who is by far the best actor in the film and definitely needs a new agent. I am serious. The monkey has a Jack Nicholson Five Easy Pieces breakout performance.

Another helpful hint, if lost in the jungles of Borneo do not try to build a raft to Kota Bharu like the characters in the movie do. It is about a thousand kilometers of open ocean away as the anaconda flies.

3/5 Better Than The First. Take it For What It Is....One Big Snake Movie
  by Sebastian Sanjurjo (Miami FL)
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R313C4G701RLM5

2/5 Sssssssillly.....Sssssschlocky......Sssssstupid
  by SHAWN JAMES (Bronx, NY)
Anacondas The hunt for the Blood Orchid...Okay I said I wouldn't touch this one with a ten-foot pole in my previous review of Anaconda. But I'm a huge fan of Salli Richardson's work. So I picked up some Tums and forced myself to suffer through this cheesy sequel. I'm a nice guy, but I don't think I'd do this for one of Jada Pinkett's movies.

Anacondas: The hunt for the Blood with some Ruthless New York corporate types working at a big time pharmaceutical company. They're looking to cash in on the blood orchid, a rare flower that's only in bloom for six months out of every seven years or something. These Corporate types head down to Borneo and hire out Bill Johnson, a mercenary type (there's always one in these types of movies) with a grimy rundown boat (Think Millennium Falcon) to ferry them to the orchid. Salli's character Gail Stern runs afoul of a toilet and a monkey, and falls overboard.(Looking extra HOT in a tank top and shorts!) Thankfully Bill saves her from a gator in one of the best scenes in the movie. Later, Jack offers Bill extra money to go off course and the boat falls over a waterfall.

After salvaging some supplies from the wreck Bill and the corporate types make the journey to rendezvous with another boat. Along the way the big cheesy CGI snake pops up and has Dr. Ben Douglas for a quick snack. Captian Bill explains to us that anacondas are common around here and they eat people. Unfortunately, Anacondas are from South America not Southeast Asia, and these snakes don't eat people. But the movie moves on in spite of these minor plotholes.

Terrified, the crew runs into the Jungle with Gail and Jack (slimy British guy) arguing about who's running things and whether or not to end the expedition. While the first CGI snake sleeps off a meal it would have puked up in real life, Ruthless executive type Gordon Mitchell resting his tired feet runs afoul of a deadly stone spider which has a paralyzing bite that last two days. Ruthless Brit Jack wants to cash in on this new discovery and puts it in a specimen jar. Scared brotha Cole, runs afoul of leeches and the quest for the blood Orchid continues with yet another crew member picked off, more arguing, and more laughs for me.

Cut to the drunken captain at the rendezvous point. After taking a sip o' ripple, (a big No-No) He runs afoul of a big CGI snake who has him for lunch and his boat blows up. The explorers run into the remains of the boat, and salvage what they can find. Later they run into the remains of him puked up. Maybe this CGI snake read the rest of the script and couldn't take anymore of this schlock.

Captain Johnson and his crew head to a village of headhunters where the snakes have had all you can eat villagers. We learn the Blood Orchid made the snakes big and long lived while the crew put together a makeshift raft and a plan to get out of there. But Jack has other plans. While the crew bickers, he leaves Gordon paralyzed by the stone spider and steals the raft to go on his quest for the blood orchid. This builds into a cheesy climax where poor guide Tran gets killed, Bill gets shot, and another one of the big snakes blows up good after having a flare shot into it's mouth like an after dinner mint. Jack with a bag full of blood orchids faces off against everyone who survives. Fighting with his secretary being bit by the stone spider falls into the pit of anacondas and becomes a snake and Kidney pie. The movie ends with the survivors rolling down the raft back to civilization.
Man, this movie was cheesier than Kraft, Borden, Land O Lakes and Velveeta combined. Ridiculous CGI snakes from a Commodore Amiga, and a retarded script full of stock characters, fifth grade logic and a predictable storyline don't make for much scares in this horror flick. But I did get plenty of laughs watching these poor actors recite the wretched dialogue.
This one is nowhere near as good as the first Anaconda which was a smart mix of action, suspense and psychological drama that worked. Jon Voight stole the movie as the snake who manipulated the documentary crew in his quest to poach the big anaconda. Here in Anacondas, there are no clear heroes, like in the first film. Everyone's a villain so there's no one to root for except for the snakes. Unfortunately, they don't get enough victims to snack on. Scared brotha should have been served up instead of Tran.

Salli Richardson...She's the only reason I watched this. She gives a strong performance and does her best considering the sssillly script she had to work with. She had great facial expressions and conveyed Gail's emotions very well, and her scenes with the monkey were some of the best parts of the movie. The acting here from everyone else is okay considering the imbecilic script these poor actors had to work with. Johnny Messner is a lot of fun to watch as Bill Johnson. He has a Han Solo type vibe that carries the movie and keeps it entertaining. Karl Yune is great as Tran, I really liked his character. He was so much fun to watch I really wished he survived to the end of the movie. KaDee Strickland shows a lot of promise here and steals a few scenes later in the movie. Morris Chestnut isn't given much to do here except play tough bald black guy like he did in Half Past Dead. Matthew Marsden is rotten as the bad guy, but again, that's because of the screenplay. Eugene Byrd is painful to watch as Cole, the scared brotha who kept reminding me of Cuba Gooding Jr. He's supposed to be the comic relief, but he's more annoying than funny. I kept waiting for the snake to eat him.

Anacondas is good for a rental at best. If you're having an MST3K party or you just want to turn off your brain for a few hours and enjoy some mindless cheese, this is the movie for you. Pick it up along with Crocodile 2: Death Roll starring the talented Heidi Lenhart for a double feature of: Great actresses' who deserve better stuck in VERY VERY cheesy sequels. Somebody write these ladies a decent screenplay!


2/5 There Be Snakes, B-I-G Snakes!
  by Van T. Roberts (Columbus, Mississippi, USA)
Although your skin may crawl at the sight of giant snakes in director Dwight H. Little's new movie "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid," this shallow, uneven, in-name-only sequel to "Anaconda" (1997), with an unknown cast leaves a lot to be desired as a blood-curdling creature feature. Whereas "Anaconda" with Jennifer Lopez pitted our protagonists against a pair of predatory anacondas, "Anacondas" raises the stakes considerably with dozens of dinosaur-sized anacondas surrounding our heroes in the middle of anaconda mating season. The quiet moments stand out as the eeriest in this suspenseful but anti-climatic thriller. As our intrepid heroes wade through the watery reaches of the jungle, the camera hovers overhead to give audiences a bird's eye view of the characters sloshing along blissfully unaware of the humongous coils of an anaconda as it glides silently underwater around them without creating a ripple on the surface. "Anacondas" doesn't get any better than this elaborately-staged long shot. Unfortunately, a slipshod screenplay credited to four writers and second-rate, computer-generated, special effects shots of the reptiles rips the fangs out of "Anacondas." Mind you, the original "Anaconda" suffered from shoddy special effects snake shots, too, but the name brand cast more than compensated for the cheesy snakes, especially Jennifer Lopez in a wet tank top and Jon Voight as a hammy villain. While "Anaconda's" anacondas switched between the spurious CGI snakes in the long shots and believable animatronic puppets in the close-ups, the snakes in "Anacondas" are totally computer generated and appear anything but intimidating. Incredibly, the two snakes in "Anaconda" possessed more personality than the unknown number of synthetic anacondas slithering around in "Anacondas" with nothing to distinguish one snake from another. Scenarists John Claflin and Daniel Zelman of TV's "They Nest' and Michael Miner and Edward Neumeier of "RoboCop" do a poor job of laying out the ground rules in this battle between humans and snakes. One minute we're told anacondas with a man-sized snack in their bellies lay off hunting, then the next minute we learn that these giant, Alaskan pipeline-sized anacondas chuck up their victims then continue to hunt. The first-half of this lean, efficient, but predictable 97-minute, PG-13-rated serpent saga succeeds in setting up our heroes' objectives and obstacles. The second-half doesn't pay off the creepy suspense, however, with enough spine-tingling scenes of snakes making supper out of humans.

A scientific expedition of multi-racial, stereotypical characters led by an urbane British scientist, Dr. Jack Byron (Matthew Marsden of "Black Hawk Down"), and his entrepreneurial right-hand man Gordon Mitchell (Morris Chestnut of "Half-Past Dead") plunge into the wild jungles of Borneo to retrieve a rare bloom, the Blood Orchid, that they plan to use to manufacture the "pharmaceutical equivalent of the fountain of youth." The corporate CEO's eyes light up when Mitchell predicts, "It'll be bigger than Viagra!" Unluckily, this unusual flower blossoms only once every seven years, and they are in the middle of the two-week blooming season when Byron and Mitchell launch their expedition. Director Dwight Little and his quartet of scenarists do an effective job of setting the plot into motion and saddling our heroes with problems galore. Anyway, when our heroes arrive in Borneo, the rainy season sets in, and nobody wants to ferry them into the rain-swollen jungle. Byron and Mitchell find an American expatriate, Bill Johnson (virile Johnny Messner of "Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault"), with a barge who will accommodate them if they can pay him $25-thousand dollars. One look at Johnson's ramshackle boat, and you'd swear you stumbled onto "The African Queen." During the scenic trip down river, pharmaceutical big-wig Gail Stern (Salli Richardson of "Biker Boyz") falls overboard and a ravenous crocodile attacks her. Johnson's Tarzan-style fight with the croc qualifies as the most exciting action sequence in the entire movie. Later, Johnson's boat is caught in an undercurrent and pulled over a waterfall. Little gets more mileage out of Johnson's boat crashing over the waterfall than he does in the struggle with the snakes. Of course, while all this is going on, the anacondas circle, flickering their tongues in anticipation. Set afoot with no weapons and a slim chance of survival, our woebegone heroes must brave the jungle and hope they don't get eaten. Along the way, they discover to their horror that the diabolical anacondas have been feeding on the Blood Orchid and the flower has made their monster-sized man-eaters.

Although "Anacondas" takes place in Borneo, Borneo has no anacondas, only pythons. In other words, Little and his four writers have exercised considerable dramatic license in piecing together this half-baked, herpetological hokum. Again, the second half finds our heroes trying to elude the snakes after they turn against each other over whether they should still try to retrieve the Orchid. Cinematically, the snakes lack menace, and they strike so swiftly that they appear cartoonish, undercutting the dramatic impact of the death scenes. The writers never reveal how many snakes that our heroes are up against, so we have no idea if they are whittling down the opposition. A minor surprise or two with regard to who gets chomped first and who escapes being snake bait cannot redeem the uninspired last half-hour. The MPPA PG-13 rating clearly takes a toll on the snake munching scenes. Despite the erratic plotting and the poor SPFX, veteran director Dwight H. Little (whose screen credits include "Halloween 4," "Free Willy 2," "Rapid Fire," "Marked For Death," and "Murder At 1600") delivers lots of mild jolts and atmospheric moments. Anybody who reacts to the least provocation of terror will find the presence of a small monkey in the cast particularly troubling. Like a cat in a haunted house, this screaming monkey jumps into somebody's lap when they least suspect it and all hell breaks loose momentarily. Altogether, a fair potboiler from start to finish, "Anacondas" fails to pay-off an enthralling first half with its counterfeit snakes and its formulaic plot.



1/5 The worst snake movie ever created since "Rattled"
  by Ted E. Kissel (Greencastle IN)
OK, this was the worst movie about a giant snake/snakes I'd ever seen. And the worst movie about snakes I'd ever seen since "Rattled". The Anaconda's in this movie aren't that mean looking and you never really even see them squeeze anything to death and swallow anything whole. So it does not surprise me that people are trying to sell this movie for one cent on this web site. And I can't even believe the idiot who made this film was able to create a sequel.