Monster Movie of the Week: Anaconda (1997)

ANACONDA (1997)

Director: Luis Llosa
Genre: Nature Horror

THE MOVIE

The mid to late '90’s saw a CGI-aided renaissance in monster B-movies. Luis Llosa’s Anaconda was a part of that wave and is somewhat of a minor classic creature feature. It features a well known cast including a pre diva Jennifer Lopez, Eric Stoltz, Ice Cube (with his trademark gangsta staccato delivery) and Owen Wilson and, at the time, the movie showcased what one could do with CGI effects in a fairly low budget monster movie. Refreshingly, among the survivors at the end of the movie are a Latina and a black man, which is a bit of a rarity in this genre.

But of course the real reason to watch Anaconda is Jon Voight’s insanely over-the-top performance as Paul Sarone, a creepy Paraguayan snake hunter who slowly takes over a National Geographic documentary expedition. Not since Al Pacino in Scarface, has a non-Hispanic actor so operatically overplayed a Latino character in a major movie. Sarone speaks with a heavy (and inexplicable) Caribbean-Spanish accent, he leers, he grimaces, he constantly reminds the other characters of his jungle prowess because he “hun’s e’snakes for a leeevin’” I suppose the producers choose Paraguay as Sarone’s country of origin because there was less of a chance of someone saying “Hey! He doesn’t look or sound Paraguayan!” I mean, how often do you run into someone from Paraguay?

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

Then there are the snakes, which have not aged well in the twelve years since this movie was released. They look fake and plastic and very mid 1990’s CGI. The compositing of shots in which the snake interacts with the actors is pretty bad.

Oh, well. It’s a fun movie with a fantastic set piece at the end set in a very cool abandoned jungle outpost (so what if it looks like it is from a Universal Studios stunt show?)

MONSTERS FEATURED

A couple of giant anacondas and their babies.

DVD AVAILABILITY

Widely available on DVD and also available on Blu-Ray.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

It is established early in the movie that anacondas swallow and regurgitate their prey. So after Jon Voight meets his ironic fate he makes a very special cameo appearance and proves that just because your character is dead doesn’t mean you have to stop overacting.

SEQUELS

Anacondas: The Search for the Blood Orchid 2004

TRIVIA

The movie would lead you to believe that anacondas regurgitate their prey often and apparently for the hell of it. In actuality they only do it when startled or in states of high anxiety. So they don’t like to puke any more than you or I.

TRAILER

Bonus Monster Movie of the Week: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953)

Director: Eugene Lourie
Genre: Monster on the loose, proto-daikaiju movie.

THE MOVIE:

You may not have seen The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms but it is without a doubt one of the most influential genre movies of the 1950’s and beyond. If it seems like a fairly typical 1950’s monster movie (A giant prehistoric creature is awakened by atomic testing at a remote location while bland characters try to find a way to stop it as it wreaks havoc on the nearest big city) that is because it was copied over and over again. It also has an interesting but under-developed subplot about the dinosaur carrying a virulent disease.

Typical alarmist Liberal Media.

Lourie’s was later followed by such movies as Them! (1954) and It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955.) The Beast actually resembles another seminal monster movie: Gojira, or Godzilla: King of the Monsters, (1954) as the Americanized version of the original film was known. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is actually the midpoint between King Kong and the original Godzilla series. Like King Kong it uses stop-motion technology to bring the story of a monster terrorizing New York to life. Like Gojira the monster is saurian and is the result of atomic testing.

One could actually make the case that the American Godzilla (1998) was in fact more of a remake of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms than Gojira. Its creature is far more like the Rhedosaur in nature than Toho’s Godzilla. And the American Godzilla’s landing in New York is almost identical the Rhedosaur’s arrival in The Beast. There are several other shots in the Godzilla remake that seem to intentionally pay homage to The Beast from 20000 Fathoms. Maybe they should have just remade that movie instead.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

The Rhedosaurus effects are accomplished though some very nice stop motion courtesy of the great Ray Harryhousen and some truly crappy hand puppet work for close ups. I was really surprised by how good the creature looked in most of his shots. Its nice to see that in the twenty years since the original King Kong the stop motion techniques were refined to a kind of high art form. The Rhedosaur has a wonderful three dimensionality and texture under the lights and is well integrated into the backgrounds.

New York is a great city...for me to poop on!!

This particular dinosaur is not your usual T-Rex or Allosaurus clone but an invented quadrupedal carnivorous creature. It resembles the animals that Naomi Watts stumbles upon in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005) which later chase her into a rotting log before getting munched on by a bigger dino. The Rhedosaur is ike that, but much bigger.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

The Rhedosaurus and some stock footage ocean life.

The Rhedosaur, terrorizing Ralph Kramden's apartment building.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

There are actually quite a few, from the famous attack on the lighthouse to the creature’s entrapment in a Coney Island roller coaster.

DVD AVAILABILITY:

It is available on it’s own with a nice little documentary featuring an interview with Harryhousen and some trailers or in a two-pack with Them!

SEQUELS:

None.

"Where Brooklyn at?"

THE TRAILER:



SEE ALSO

Gojira (1954), King Kong (1933), Godzilla (1998)

Ex Games: Turok Dinosaur Hunter

When a man meets that special video game, there is a certain magical spark that occurs. There has to be a special kind of chemistry that will let him know, This is the right game for me. After all, how often have you been recommended a video game, read a glowing review in a magazine only to find when you have taken it home-gotten it out of its packaging, fooled around with its tutorial level-this is not a game with which you can spend hours and hours. This is awkward and uncomfortable for all involved.

However, with certain games you know you can commit right away. It's cool. You know this is a game that you will play often and worthy of your collection. But, sadly, nothing lasts forever and there is no real monogamy in video games.

These are my ex games.

In 1996 I bought a Nintendo 64, upon learning about the upcoming Star Wars game, Shadows of the Empire (a long and sad story for another time involving the quest for the perfect Star Wars game). After some nauseating hours playing Super Mario 64, I finally got used to the idea of 3D gaming and soon discovered the joy of the classic first-person shooter Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (in my mind it will always be Turok, The Dinosaur Hunter). I spent hours and hours in my little studio apartment in Rogers Park completely immersed in this (at the time) amazing world of killer dinosaurs, attempting to locate all of the pieces of the Chronoscepter. Turok was loaded with some absolutely insane weapons and featured a uniquely open and expansive world for its time when corridor shooters like Doom were the norm.

Personally, I was knocked out by the design aspects of the game, particularly its locations which had a real world, Pre-Colombian historical aesthetic. Many of the building were based on Mayan or Incan structures which really captured my imagination at the time. In some strange way, this game was a stepping stone towards some of the things in which I would be interested later in life and some of the traveling that I would do. When I finally made it to my first Inca ruin, high in the Andes of Peru, I couldn't help thinking of Turok.

I will always regret that I never finished this game. I'm not sure how it all ended. Shame. Boredom. Negligence. A furtive transaction at Funcoland. You spend weeks and weeks together and this is what happens. It makes it hard to keep playing video games. Maybe one day I will see Turok on the Wii Virtual Console and I will take it out for a spin. Or maybe it will never be the same.

Maybe I should leave well enough alone.

Monster Movie of the Week: The Thing (1982)

The Thing (1982)
Director: John Carpenter
Genre: Horror/Suspense

THE MOVIE:

John Carpenter's The Thing is the story of a small group of men who are manning a remote American Antarctic outpost. Their isolation is interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious dog which is chased by a helicopter from a distant Norwegian settlement. Attempting to kill the dog, the helicopter and it's pilot are destroyed. MacReady (Kurt Russell) and some others from the American base investigate the Norwegian settlement to find it destroyed. They also find what appears to be a flying saucer half buried in the ice and a mangled semi-human body.

When they return to the American station, the mysterious dog begins to mutate into some sort of Lovecraftian tentacle monster, attempting to absorb and mutate the other dogs in its pen but is torched by the crew before it can finish. From here we can very well have Alien On Ice, after all, this was produced immediately after the success of Ridley Scott's movie. No doubt, the success of Alien allowed The Thing to be made. However, the twist offered by Carpenter's movie is that this alien creature is able to assume the form of any other organism, so from a dramatic point of view it offers the suspense of never knowing which members of the crew are human and which have been infected by the monster. This fact alone helps underscore the tension and heighten the relationships between the characters, adding a nice mystery element to the story. It's the rare movie of this genre that gives its actors something to do other than running around screaming.

The Thing was released at the tail end of the late '70's and early 80's sci-fi movie boom and was lost in the shuffle, actually being released the same month as Blade Runner and E.T. At the time of it's release it was criticized for its excessive gore and disgusting special effects. It is one of those movies that actually found its legs on the subsequent home video market, which was barely existent when it was first released. The movie has spawned a number of comic book sequels as well as a video game.

The Thing is actually a remake of a fifities sci-fi movie, The Thing From Another World, which in turn was loosely based on the novella "Who Goes There?" written in the '30's by John W. Campbell, which seems to have borrowed the Antarctic setting and themes from "At The Mountains of Madness" by H. P. Lovecraft. Carpenter's remake actually stays closer to the plot of the novella, and restores the movie's idea that the creature can assume anyone's shape or identity. It also seems to have inspired the first season X-Files episode "Ice."

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

The Thing is a seriously gory and disgusting movie but the effects are groundbreaking and imaginative and push the envelope of pre-digital effects. You don't really see effects this imaginative until T2 is released in 1991. I can even say that for a movie released in 1982 there are a few shots that DONT look dated today, which is pretty good for a movie that relies on stop-motion and animatronics.

The monster is only recognizable as a monster when it is in midtransformation, when it is a mismatched collection of tentacles and bizarre flowery appendages, with human and animal parts randomly thrown in. Sadly, one never gets to see the alien's true form which would have been cool at the finale. Perhaps it doesn't have one.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

"The Thing" in various forms.

DVD AVAILABILITY:



Collector's Edition released in 1998 with an 80 minute documentary, commentary from Carpenter and Russell and deleted scenes.

There is also a Blu-Ray which I haven't yet seen.

SEQUELS:

None, but there have been rumors over the last five years or so about a sequel/prequel/remake. Right now, it looks likely to be a prequel set in the Norwegian base.

SEE ALSO:

Alien (1979), The Fly (1986), The X-Files "Ice" 1993

TRAILER: