Anaconda

The film is pure B grade, adventure, horror movie fare, dished up beautifully for the nineties, with the best beast since Aliens, the best jungle since Sniper, as good a tongue in cheek villain as you've ever seen, and to top it off the delicious Jennifer Lopez; very tasty tucker indeed for Mr Anaconda.

If you loved Scream, and plenty did, then slither in to see this Jaws in the Jungle.

Jon Voight of Midnight Cowboy and latterly of Heat fame, is the bad bloke in Anaconda; a Paraguayan failed Priest turned giant snake hunter called Paul Sarone.

Sarone is a tough dangerous man with a turned down mouth, a malicious glint in the eye and a raspy, South American lilt to his accent that would do any Shirishama Indian proud, if a Shirashama Indian should chose to talk with a raspy Paraguayan accent.

It's a pleasure to watch Jon Voight, a master actor, enjoying himself so much in the role.

In search of the aforementioned Shirashama Indians, who are a rumoured tribe of Brazilian jungle dwellers, an intrepid, and importantly, mostly likeable, barge load of anthropologists and film makers head up the wilds of the Amazon River, and you just know that some of them will become the snake's breakfast; it's that sort of film.

Any film called Anaconda isn't going to be a Gorillas In The Mist, wild life, love affair.

Snakes aren't the general public's favourite animals, but even people who hate snakes find them fascinating. There's something about them that gets hearts racing, irises dilating and venom flowing.

Snakes, especially the 40 foot long, vicious people hunters these Anacondas are said to be in this film, are ideal monsters for the movies; especially if you can get them to look realistic.

In fact, the Anacondas in this film are fantastic; a triumph of illusion. The snakes in Anaconda are remarkably life like, vicious, fast and dangerous and are by far the most impressive monsters I've seen on film, comparing well with the Raptors in Jurassic Park and those nasties in the Aliens movies!

Anaconda sits comfortably within the adventure/horror genre though and isn't designed to scare the hell out of its audience, or to envelop us uncomfortably in two hours of tension, as Aliens did so admirably for example.

But Anaconda isn't afraid to have favourite characters devoured by Mr A. Imagine an Indiana Jones movie where Indiana's girlfriend gets captured AND eaten by the natives, and that's something like Anaconda!

After the cast numbers start to diminish you know that the rest had better watch out!

There has to be blood on the fangs! Remember when that girl actually fell to her death off that rope early in Stallone's Cliffhanger?

We knew then that Cliffhanger for all of its silliness, was a film where hero's and heroines might perish.

The menu in Anaconda includes Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz and Danny Trejo, as well as Jon Voight. Eric Stoltz (Mask) doesn't feature very much. Like Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, Stoltz lies about sort of dying for most of Anaconda.

Ice Cube (Boyz In The Hood, Higher Learning) looks mean and suspicious and Danny Trejo plays the poacher. Trejo also doesn't last long, but you may recognise him as that exceptional knife throwing assassin in Desperado.

Jennifer Lopez is a head turner. She was that gorgeous cop in Money Train which starred Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson and was also the sexy maid in Blood And Wine; playing Jack Nicholson and Stephen Dorff off against one another.

In Anaconda she's very attractive and therefore likely to be crushed!!

Anaconda was directed by Luis Llosa who was up here a couple of years ago directing Sniper, and was also in charge of The Specialist starring Sylvester Stallone.