Anaconda 4 Trail of Blood... So Cosmo says you're fat

Anaconda 4: Trail of Blood: 4 out of 10: Anaconda 4 has some surprisingly effective scenes in its 88 minutes.



There is a car chase towards the end of the film; first of all, the snake is chasing a car all the while a gun fight erupts among the passengers and an intruder. There is also a silhouetted chase on a sunset drenched hill between three groups of characters that have no prior knowledge of each other with the snake in the mix. Heck, there are even some tender moments between an older gun toting woman and a blond man-child lost in the woods as a snake watches them.



Much like a previous incarnation, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Red Orchid this movie comes awfully close to not needing the snake at all. In fact it, dare I say it, a removal of the anaconda may have made Anaconda 4:Trail of Blood a slightly better film.



The non-snake stuff is fairly simple. John Rhys-Davies, in full "pick up a paycheck" mode, is a bad guy with bone cancer who has financed a cure which involves genetically altering snakes. He hires a hit man (who brings along six friends who cannot shoot straight and twirl their mustaches) to inexplicably kill the lead scientist (who has disappeared, translation: has been eaten.) The assassin is also asked to kill a blond chick played by Crystal Allen. She acts like an old west gunslinger but is apparently a herpetologist.The blond chick meanwhile is setting explosives in an orchid bed located in one of those ridiculously well lit caves with light bulbs placed at foot long intervals, burning 24/7. She runs into what appears to be a fifteen year old boy whom immediately becomes her love interest in a weird Private Lessons kind of twist. He is looking for the base camp where some other unrelated (non-giant snake creating) scientists are digging up a frozen body out of a UFO or something.



Like I said the snakes are almost crowded out of their own movie. It is probably for the best. While the CGI is better than many other killer snake movies this is damning with faint praise indeed. The snakes in question don’t look like anacondas or even snakes at all. Replacing shark fins with bear claws does not make the shark scarier. And giving anacondas silly rows of over-sized teeth and the ability to regenerate like the T-1000 (Terminator 2 Judgment Day) does not make them any scarier.



Oh,and while I picked on the first movie for having anacondas in a jungle,they are after all swamp and marsh dwellers; and picked on the secondmovie for having them in Borneo, which is in Asia last I checked; I don’t have words to begin to describe the jaw-dropping silliness of Anacondas in Romania. The Carpathians in fall do not create the proper snake attack vibe unless it is a 60 foot cottonmouth. Also a note to the Syfy Channel: If I see “Bear-Shark Claws of Death” on your channel anytime soon I’m coming after you guys. I’m just giving a friendly warning here.






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