<Can’t get enough Horror Franchise Movie Reviews?  Here’s another one!>

Anacondas:  Trail of Blood is almost exactly like the previous Anaconda film, Anaconda 3.  The difference is that there is no David Hasselhoff.  That means it’s not very good.

As in Part 3, scientists are still out in the jungle fucking around with the Blood Orchid trying to make some Anti-Cancer serum.  Since John Rhys-Davies only has a week to live, he wants that shit bad.  But first, he must send out an army of slimy European hitmen into the jungle to kill the chick who knows all about the Blood Orchids (Crystal Allen).  And of course, where there are Blood Orchids, there are giant ass anacondas.

Director Don E. FauntLeRoy favors the usual Direct-to-DVD style action (shootouts and such) over the anaconda attacks, which is particularly disheartening for a die hard Anaconda fan like myself.  I do compliment him for his limited use of the snakes’ POV shots (or as I like to call it, “Anaconda-Vision”) though.  Once the anacondas finally do get to strut their stuff, FauntLeRoy does let the red stuff flow pretty freely. 

Sadly, Anacondas:  Trail of Blood is a big fat bore most of the time.  The main reason for this is that there are way too many useless subplots that get in the way of the Anaconda action.  (The tedious scenes involving the scientist chick getting bit by a mosquito is a prime example.) 

There is one scene in this movie that is positively genius.  This European hitman is about to get swallowed up by the anaconda.  He realizes his own mortality and figures he’ll take the anaconda out with him.  The guy grabs two grenades from his belt, pulls the pins, closes his eyes, and lets out a mighty battle cry just as the snake is bearing down on him.  About five seconds go by and the dude opens his eyes again, only to see the snake slithering away.  He looks down at the grenades and goes “Oh…” before blowing up into a hundred pieces. 

That shit had me rolling on the couch in laughter.  This scene is right up there with the Lance Henriksen “Whoops!” scene from Hard Target.  It’s that good.  If Anacondas:  Trail of Blood had about two or three more scenes of high class hilarity like that; it may have been worthy of the Anaconda name.   

Rhys-Davies gets the best line when he says, “He has appeared… to have disappeared!”

Special Note:  For whatever reason, the odd-numbered Anaconda movies are called “Anaconda” and the even-numbered Anaconda movies are called “Anacondas”. 

I like the Anaconda movies almost as much as I like movies with the number 3 in it, so I was game for this Direct-to-Sci-Fi Channel sequel.  Now I know that I am breaking my self imposed moratorium on Sci-Fi Channel Originals by watching this flick, but goddamn it, any movie that features a hungry Anaconda, the number 3, AND David Muthafuckin’ Hasselhoff is worthy of my time.  The first Anaconda had a reliable hodgepodge of veteran actors and up-and-coming stars, the second flick had… Morris Chestnut.  In Part 3, we got the Hoff and that’s all we really need.

The plot has John Rhys-Davies using extracts from Blood Orchid to create a cure for cancer in an underground lab.   He shoots up a giant anaconda with the serum with the hopes that its offspring will hold the secrets to the cure.  Predictably the snake gets loose and John’s got to send the Hoff out into the woods to find it.

The reviews I read about this movie were all pretty scathing and had me prepared for the worst.  I don’t know if it was the lowered expectations or what, but I kinda dug Anaconda 3.  It wasn’t Mega Snake or anything but it got the job done.  Honestly, what were all the reviewers expecting from a direct-to-Sci-Fi Channel sequel to Anaconda?  It’s not like its Chinatown or anything.

What really bothered me was that reviewers said that this flick “had no connection to the first two movies”.  HELLO… in the second scene of the movie, the weasly scientist guy tells Rhys-Davies about the Blood Orchid!  You remember the Blood Orchid, don’t you?  You know, the one from Anacondas:  Hunt for the BLOOD ORCHID!  Really folks, are you all smoking crack or something?  How could you forget about the fucking Blood Orchid?  And you call yourselves movie critics…

The flick suffers from being filmed on the cheap and has some pretty shoddy CGI, but I enjoyed myself more often than not on this one.  The thing that irritated me the most was the abundance of false scares.  Seriously, every five minutes somebody would whip around, the music would swell, and… it would be a goat or something instead of a bloodthirsty anaconda.  Also, the movie kinda petered out near the end when it should’ve been heating up.  I must commend director Don E. (Today You Die) FauntLeRoy for not overdoing it on the Snake Cam POV shots though.

The best thing that can be said about Anaconda 3 is that it tops it’s predecessors in the gore department.  It’s actually one of the goriest Sci-Fi flicks I think I’ve ever seen.  The giant snake bites heads off, impales people with its tail, rips off their faces, wraps itself around its victims and crushes them to death, swallows them whole and regurgitates their undigested bodies (a staple of the series). 

What really makes the movie though is the Hoff.  He’s great in this.  I particularly liked his barroom brawl scene.  He also gets all the best lines like: “Always know the animal before the hunt!”, “If you follow my lead, I’ll lead you right up the snake’s ass!”, and “I intend on getting a nice new pair of Anaconda snakeskin boots!”

AKA:  Anaconda 3:  Offspring.

The original Anaconda was good because we got to see a list of big name stars and up and comers get turned into snake chow.  This time the biggest star is Morris Chestnut.  A team of pharmacologists go to Borneo to find “The Blood Orchid” which can give eternal youth.  “It’ll be bigger than Viagra!”  They hire a rugged captain (Johnny Messner) who has a dilapidated boat.  “She may be ugly, but she puts out!”  He also has a monkey that gets more screen time than any of the human actors.  After the boat goes over a waterfall (excellent effect), the team head deep into the jungle and are attacked by giant snakes.  “That was the biggest snake I’ve ever seen... BY FAR!”   Of course, the snakes are so big because they’ve been eating the blood orchids.  And of course, IT’S MATING SEASON.  “You trying to tell me there’s some snake orgy out in the jungle!”  There are also crocodiles and paralyzing spiders too.  It’s pretty much B Movie Gold.  The boat captain is like a character out of a 40’s movie and the female lead (Kadee Strickland from The Grudge) has a southern accent that completely disappears by the final reel.  And any movie that ends in a bunch of giant snakes in a “Mating Ball” is okay by me.  It just proves the rule that any movie that has “THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID” in the title is a good movie.  Directed by Dwight (Halloween 4) Little.

A documentary film crew goes down the Amazon River and pick up crazy old John Voight, who is obsessed with capturing a giant man-eating anaconda alive.  The snake (a combination of animatronics and CGI) can eat and puke out its prey.  Voight is wonderfully over the top with his scarred face and overblown Peruvian accent.  Eric Stoltz must have had a great agent cuz he spends most of the movie sleeping.  With Ice Cube (“I’m goin’ back to L.A.!”), a pre-star Owen Wilson, and Kari Wurher.  It’s nice to know there was a time in film history when a CGI snake was a bigger box office draw than J. Lo.