Directed by Luis Llosa (The Specialist) and written by Hans Bauer and the team of Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. (who wrote Top Gun, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, Legal Eagles, Turner & Hooch, The Secret of My Success and Dick Tracy together), Anaconda tripled its $45 million dolalr budget at the box office by basically making a slasher with a giant snake as the killer.

It’s an easy set-up: a film crew is shooting a National Graphic documentary about an indigenous Amazonian tribe and sails right into trouble thanks to snake hunter Paul Serone (Jon Voight, chewing scenery to the point that I was worried that he’d have to give his Oscar back).

Soon, director Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez), her cameraman Danny Rich (Ice Cube), Dr. Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz), production manager Denise Kalberg (Kari Wuhrer), her boyfriend Gary Dixon (Owen Wilson), narrator Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde) and Mateo the boat captain (Vincent Castellanos) have found their own heart of scaly darkness and not everyone — quite possibly no one — will make it home alive.

The CGI for the anacondas cost $100,000 per second. You could probably do that level of CGI on your phone now, which may speak more to the quality fo 1997 CGI than 2022 technology. What you won’t have is Frank Welker, the master of animal voices, to do a snake voice for you.

This movie is dangerously dumb and I love it. I can’t even front — I realize that it is in no way a good movie and worse, it’s a multimillion dollar movie that a 70s movie would make for a quarter of the cost and probably be even better.

Mill Creek’s Through the Decades: 1990s Collection has some great movies for a great price like Housesitter, White Palace, One True Thing, Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Own, The Matchmaker, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Freshman and The Deep End of the Ocean. You can get it from Deep Discount.