Welcome back to 1 out of 5 – Would Recommend, where crossovers don’t make us cross. Taking two popular monster franchises and crossing them over is a time honored tradition – Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, Mothra vs. Godzilla, Freddy vs. Jason, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, etc. and so forth. Today, we chronicle one of the newest movies to do so: Lake Placid vs. Anaconda.
What’s The Plot?
When a corrupt pharmaceutical company accidentally lets both giant crocodiles and giant anacondas loose on the fictional town of Lake Placid, Maine, it is up to tough-as-nails sheriff Reba and experienced game warden Tully to save the town. Complicating matters is a group of sorority pledges having a beach day right in the path of the crocs and ‘condas! And one of them is Tully’s daughter! There’s not much more to the movie’s plot than that, unsurprisingly.
Who Made This Beautiful Garbage?
The film has the best CGI basic cable can buy.
SyFy Channel, who have been shepherding both the Lake Placid and Anaconda franchises since their respective second and third entries. This Sharknado-esque horror-comedy is a far cry from the theatrical releases that kicked them off, but succeeds in being pretty entertaining. We buy movie posters.
Five Reasons to See It
- Robert Englund (who played Freddy Krueger for 20 years) plays corrupt groundskeeper Bickerman, who works for the bad guys. He is undeniably the best performance in the movie, which horror fans should already expect.
Unfortunately, he never gets to call anyone “bitch”.
- Several of the awful sorority queen bee’s speeches are paraphrased or quoted from the profanity laden “Deranged Sorority Girl E-Mail” that went viral a few years ago. Points for authenticity.
- The Anaconda doesn’t really do much, but what it does do is spectacular – it pops one crocodile like a balloon, constricts an SUV, and whips a croc in two with its tail.
- The sorority girl beach scenes pay a lot of attention to the actresses’ butts. Which makes sense, because that anaconda don’t want none unless you’ve got buns, hun.
- “Well Tully, I’m Reba and I don’t have any friends, so you can call me ‘Reba’.”
Recommendation
This movie is very much in the Sharknado vein of self-aware horror comedy, but manages to work by just slightly more in every aspect than “serious” direct to video monster movies. There is one odd factor: the movie is oddly continuity heavy, with Sheriff Reba (played by TV’s Witchblade, Yancy Butler) and Bickerman being returning characters from the Lake Placid sequels and the main human villain being the daughter of a character from the Anaconda sequels. You don’t exactly have to know who they are to enjoy the movie, but that’s more continuity than most mainstream versus movies have. Either way, movie’s surprisingly funny and at a Red Box near you, so give it a look!
Also, the movie has the same sequel hook as Godzilla ’98. Unlike that movie, it may actually have a sequel.
NEXT WEEK: We’ll watch a true satire of so-bad-its-good, 1988’s Return of the Killer Tomatoes!
