Lake Placid vs Anaconda
scientist: "Our friend is awake."
corporate guy: "That's not possible. I gave that thing enough tranquilizer to knock out an elephant for twelve hours."
scientist: "You know this isn't an elephant, right?"
release year: 2015
genre: monster horror
viewing setting: home streaming 4/20/23
synopsis: Some evil corporate people are trying to make an immortality serum, a process that somehow involves not only Lake Placid's giant crocodiles but also some mutated anacondas.
impressions: And now we get to it: the cross-breeding of two monster franchises. The science part of the story made little sense, but I will give them credit for tying this one to past entries in both of the series. There's plenty of CGI action, including a couple of battles between the title monsters. As always, I offer a random list of things you will find in this movie: the belief that a tiny dart will knock out a giant reptile...two lakes...the poacher is now the sheriff...a croc hiding under a bed for no known reason...some sort of idiotic sorority trip, run by an idiotic girl...a completely over the top mayor...a waterskier fatality...the director's annoying habit of switching back and forth between two action scenes...an exploding croc...two crocs conveniently holding an anaconda in place while the humans figure out what to do...the croc tail-whip maneuver...one monster somehow hurling another up into a helicopter's blades...a guy getting swallowed alive...everyone ending up covered in blood...possible setup for sequel. Overall, this one was okay but had the same problem as the previous entry: a fight or chase involving one or more of the monsters would be in progress, and then suddenly the humans would be wandering around with no monster in sight.
reviewer quotes:
me: "The anacondas have no kills yet...they're never gonna catch up."
body count: 12 humans killed by crocodiles, 3 humans and 3 crocodiles killed by anacondas. This tells us a couple of things: first, crocodiles prefer human prey...and second, anacondas hold the clear advantage in head-to-head matchups.
acting: Yancy Butler continues her run as tough croc-fighter-in-assorted-capacities Reba. Corin Nemec is the fish and wildlife officer who mostly runs things. Oliver Walker is a bumbling deputy. Robert Englund is back as the poacher from last time (minus a few body parts.)
final word: Entertaining, but less than the sum of its scaly parts.
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