When These Snakes Get Jiggy... People DIE

“You can't let the animals die... just the women.”

-Billy, Seven Psychopaths

I considered calling this a For The Few post since there are going to be spoilers for Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. Of course then I realized that anyone that would care about spoilers has probably already watched the movie. In fact, I think I need to start this post by justifying why exactly I was watching Anacondas in the first place.

It was a typical afternoon at my apartment. I was done with work for the day, and had about an hour or two until jazzercise. This is a very hard time of day for me. I don’t want to get involved in anything too exciting, because it makes it harder for me to stop what I’m doing and go to jazzercise. I don’t want to eat anything, because I’ve finally learned that it’s a bad idea to snack on things like icecream, cookie dough, and frozen pepperoni right before working out. So my solution during this time frame is to read a bit while watching tv. That way I’m not totally invested in either activity. I was browsing the listings trying to find something I’d watched before, but nothing really jumped out. That is, until I saw Anacondas was about to start.

Ta da! Perfect solution. I’ve watched Anaconda before and figured Anacondas would be similarly cheesy and not too distracting. And indeed, at first I was barely paying attention. Scientists, sexual tension, giant snakes, blah blah blah. And then there was Kong. Kong is the pet monkey that lives on the boat, and he is adorable! Near the beginning of the movie it looks like he gets eaten. I was horribly offended. You can’t kill off the animals! But luckily shortly thereafter it’s revealed that he’s still alive. Well now I was intrigued, I had to make sure Kong really survived to the end. Unfortunately it was now time to jazzercise, so I ended up recording the movie when it played overnight to watch some other day.

Look how cute he is! (the monkey)

The good news is that Kong lives. I was concerned. The filmmakers clearly didn’t understand my obsessive need to make sure he’s alive, so there would be shots of the characters walking around the jungle or going over waterfalls and they’d show all the people so you knew who was still alive, but sometimes neglected to show Kong.

You may have noticed the tie to the starting quote, which by the way is from the movie Seven Psychopaths (which is awesome if you have my type of dark, twisted humor). I giggled when they said that in the movie, but it’s so true. Kill off the male and female characters in horrible ways and people may be shocked, but whatevs. Kill a puppy or kitten, and I will start sobbing hysterically. I don’t want to even talk about movies like I Am Legend.

Of course this is also true for children. And I’ve decided the similarity here is helplessness. A baby can’t save itself. A toddler can’t always waddle to safety. Depending on the circumstances, an animal can’t always save itself either. The kids and animals of the world need someone to help them.

What I find interesting about horror movies is the way female characters are treated. And some of that is tied to the idea of helplessness. Just recently I was reading a novel about survivors of the Titantic disaster, and it was talking about how women were protesting the fact that far more men died because they gave their places in the lifeboats to women. Chivalry is all well and good, but as I’ve actually discussed before I don’t want somebody to die to save me. 

I also don’t think that just because somebody is a female we should assume she’s helpless. I mean yes, if there’s a spider attacking me I’m going to scream and run away and not be particularly useful. But giant snakes? Totally cool with that. Or zombies? Well assuming they’re slow and I have a gun or a machete or something useful I can deal with that too.

You can get into a whole debate over how horror movies treat female characters. There is the fact that they are prone to killing them off (at least the slutty ones). Also, that they tend to just run around screaming instead of doing anything productive.

But luckily this is not true of every horror movie! Anacondas has some nice diversity in helplessness. Some of the characters that start out shrill and useless (Gail, I’m looking at you) end up a bit more BAMF by the end.

Which is why I discovered that when I actually sat down and watched Anacondas all the way through, I quite enjoyed it! Is it a good movie? Well, no. But it was fun for me to watch. Since I’m not overly afraid of snakes I could watch it without getting scared (unlike Eight Legged Freaks which was also playing this week, ick). If I happened upon it in a $5 movie bin I’d totally buy it. So while I felt I had to start this post by justifying why I watched Anacondas, I’m finishing it with some of the awesomeness of the movie!

• The whole premise is that there are some flowers in Borneo that can make you live a really, really, really long time. Right.
• Female cattiness is at its best in Gail. I’m still not entirely sure why she survives the movie.
• “I had this friend, who had this friend who shot documentaries, and he and his whole crew went down to the Amazon, and they were all eaten by snakes, and that’s a true story.”
• I actually really like Sam. She’s pretty spunky, and she has a great Neville Longbottom moment. Even when she starts getting a little hysterical by the end – it’s cool. It’s been a bad few days, everyone’s got a breaking point.
• Oh and let’s not forget to talk about our main Alpha male character, Bill. Could they make him any more macho? He wrestles a crocodile/alligator at one point for Pete’s sake! And the voice? This came out before Batman Begins otherwise I’d suspect him of trying to copy Christian Bale. Nonetheless, I enjoy him. He makes me giggle.
• The dialogue and delivery is hysterical. After Bill assures them they’re not going to run into any other anacondas, and then they do, he takes a deep dramatic breath and says “unless…. it’s mating season.” The true fear of people all over the world, anaconda mating season! In fact I’ve just created the new movie tagline – “when these snakes get jiggy with it, people DIE.”