Did I really watch a movie that featured a prolonged chase scene where an enormous snake chased a monkey through the jungle that ended with a false kill? And did I really hear somebody in the audience yelling back at the screen for the monkey to get away? "Run!" "Don't hide in there!" "Stupid!" I’m sorry but if you’re going to yell such things back at the screen could you at least save it for the human characters.

When the history of cinema is written ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID will have its own spot in cinematic history assuming the history of cinema ever includes an entry for "Most Monkey Reaction Shots in a Single Film Not Actually About or Starring a Monkey". If I never see another monkey reaction shot in a movie I'll die a happy man. You see a Borneo riverboat captain (I dubbed his boat "Frankenstein's Trawler" due to it being a rickety boat built from the parts of other rickety boats) has a pet monkey that tags long with the pharmaceutical company adventurers - a collection of multi-ethnic caricatures of the most annoying time, many of whom undergo inexplicable personality changes as the film progresses - that have hired him to take them on a deep jungle adventure in search of a rare orchid with potential disease-curing properties, and director Dwight Little seemingly decided to have the monkey act as some sort of Greek chorus to let the audience know what everyone should be feeling during that particular scene. Virtually every single time something happened the film would cut to the monkey for a reaction shot. When the characters are supposed to be scared, the movie cuts to the monkey acting scared. When the characters are supposed to be excited, the monkey starts screeching and jumping around like a crack whore going through withdrawals. When something funny happened, the monkey would be shown being cute. Is it wrong to hate a monkey? Is it wrong for a human being to have this much hatred in his heart directed at a simian? I really did grow to hate that monkey. I wanted that monkey dead.

And while you’re at it, you can also bring me the head of the even more annoying comedic black sidekick character. I’d like to congratulate actor Eugene Byrd for playing his character so far over the top that it actually surpassed broad comedy and entered the realm of being a cringe-inducing racial stereotype. Boyd played his part so whiny, fraidy cat, and over-the-top spastic it made Marlon Wayans performance in D&D seem subtle and nuanced by comparison. Worst of all, this character ends up saving the day after surviving what surely should have been a fatal anaconda attack. But no... This guy gets snared by an anaconda that decided to coil around him right away but decided it would have the bone-crunching constricting part until a later date, thus allowing him to be rescued. And then he saves the day at the end during the final encounter set above a pit full of horny anacondas making a giant ball of slithering snake love. I could accept him not dying (though I wasn't happy about it) but making him the overall hero who swoops in to save the day at the end? Oh, hell no!

At one point this annoying wisecracking sidekick starts rambling on about this TV show about anacondas he saw on Animal Planet and starts spewing facts like he's some kind of expert all of a sudden. One important fact he neglected to mention: There are no Anacondas in Borneo. Nope, anacondas are native to South America and only South America. But I guess if you're dumb enough to sit through a movie about big CGI anacondas eating stupid stereotypes then you won't care about such facts. Not that it matters too much anyway since there is surprisingly little anaconda action in this movie that is in fact called ANACONDAS. There’s more actual hunting for the titular Blood Orchid than there are actual anaconda attacks. Heck, I recall only two people getting off’d by the big snakes in the first hour. I don’t know about you but if I go see a movie about people getting eaten by giant snakes then I expect to see a lot more scenes of people getting eaten by giant snakes.

ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID is really more of a jungle adventure flick than a killer animal movie and I think that's really where the problems stem from. Anacondas are just the biggesst obstacle in the way of these drug company reps desperate to get more samples of this Blood Orchid while still in bloom (not for much longer) because the flower only blooms once every seven years. Oh, and the anacondas feed on the flowers in order to remain super-sized immortal anacondas. Wouldn't you know that the Blood Orchids grow on the other side of the pit where anaconda orgies takes place. Too bad it take three-quarters of the movie to finally get there. Up until then characters are either shown bickering amongst themselves or trying to get romantic with crew members of their opposite sex; then they have to deal with waterfalls, alligators, paralysis-inducing spiders, and all manner of backstabbing on one another's parts. Sometimes an anaconda pops up to thin out the cast a tad but not much until the last 25 minutes and even then it's not much to get excited or scared about. At least the original movie had Jon Voight's spectacular regurgitated death wink.

I don't know what sort of movie the makers of ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID set out to make but the only thing they succeeded in doing is crafting a film that exists only to be mocked. Unless you intend to get together with some friends and give the film an MST3K style riffing I can think of no other logical to watch it. It's not good - at all. It's competently made yet still unengaging and quite dull early on, quite dumb from start to finish, and between that annoying monkey and the wisecracking black guy's Stepin Fetchit quality shtick...

Well, it was still better than CONGO.

I can't help but think that perhaps it's time to put the giant snake nature gone amok subgenre to rest for awhile and find a new killer reptile to terrorize moviegoers. Just no more giant snakes. Notice how few new big killer snake movies there have been in the two years since the release of ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID? The nature gone amok genre is in need serious need of some fresh animal meat. How about a nature gone amok flick about a huge, mutant, man-eating gecko? That Geico Gecko seems poised to go on a killing spree. He seems so polite but I bet it wouldn't hesitate to bite someone's head off if given the opportunity.