Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

Warning: midway plot spoilers. SHE'S UGLY, BUT SHE PUTS OUT was said about John Messner's boat. This was his funny line which he delivered in a tough guy monotone as the guide, Bill Johnson, former special ops agent and acting school drop out. The movie has some great scenery as the movie starts with a native in Borneo being hunted by an extinct Tiger, escaping then to be eaten by a species of Anacondas that are not indigenous to that region. However that doesn't seem to phase the writers as they script in a group of scientists to look for a rare flower that doesn't exist either. It only blooms for six months once every six years and they only have 2 weeks to obtain it, or wait. This flower is believed to be a chemical fountain of youth.Once in Borneo they obtain overpriced guide services to go up the river during the rainy season. During the trip, one of the two babes falls overboard and is accosted by a man-eating Borneo crocodile (They exist.). Our guide leaps into the water and kills the big rubber croc with a knife and saves the girl. Now the reason why she fell over is that she was doing a cell phone commercial on the boat by walking around with a phone saying, "Can you hear me now?" The problem is that these were NOT cell phones (no towers in jungle) but radio satellite phones which makes no difference where on the boat she stood.It appears that the river is flooded and dangerous. The guide is bribed to take the dangerous route to save time. The boat cascades over a water falls and is lost, but everyone survives as does a cell phone used to call the guide's friend who will pick them up. However in order to get there they have to transverse through the jungles. Along the way, someone gets eaten by an Anaconda, a snake which has not just fangs, but a whole mouth full of long razor sharp teeth.They arrive at the meeting location just in time to watch the rescue boat explode. Taking what the can, they decide to locate a nearby tribe of former head hunters so they can be rescued. But wait! The tribe has been eaten by snakes. It seems it is mating season for the snakes and neither the guide nor the natives knew when that was. Everyone in the group, except one evil corporate guy, wants to call off the quest. (Guess how that works out?)Okay. The plot had a few minor holes in it. The snake had some close-ups and was realistic looking enough. The woman were pretty and at times sexy. The acting, except for Messner was passable for a horror flick. Messner at his best was about like Van Dien at his worst (I hope they got him cheap.)

A scientific expedition sets out for Borneo to seek a flower called the Blood Orchid, which could grant longer life. Meanwhile, they run afoul of snakes and each other. Although it's nowhere near as good as the original Anaconda starring Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez Anaconda 2: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid is still a watchable and good/dumb action movie with some pretty bad cgi and some OK acting here and there although some of new characters are kinda poorly developed and as always someone needs to go insane for some stupid flower but besides those issues Anaconda II is still a great over the top sequel that at least it's watchable and terribly good but nowhere near as great as the first one (7/10)

A scientific expedition sets out for Borneo to seek a flower called the Blood Orchid, which could grant longer life. Meanwhile, they run afoul of snakes and each other.Some reviews are saying this film is "criminally underrated". Well, those people have no idea what they are talking about. The movie is apparently part of the "Anaconda" franchise, I think (this is not clear), and they could not even muster up a single B-list or even D-list actor to carry the picture.This was rather boring and did little to hold my attention. Maybe I am getting old and cranky, but I have seen enough bad movies in my life. Even SyFy, which makes the worst, has a way of often making them entertaining. This was bad and boring, the ultimate one-two punch of failure.

Traveling to the Indonesian jungle, a pharmacology team looking for a new life-extending flower finds that the area is home to a massive snake looking to mate and tries to escape from the area alive.This one turned out to be quite decent overall. One of the better features is the rather fun times it has with the snakes throughout here as there's some highly enjoyable moments here. The first encounter in the swamp is quite an enjoyable example of this by using both the suspense of showing it around the group and them thinking it's there before utilizing the action spectacle of the initial attack in front of the remaining survivors, and there's a rather fun finale above a pit loaded with creatures that makes for another great time. The biggest scene though is naturally the attack in the hut which features the chilling stalking scenes of the completely-aware-but-paralyzed victim and the resulting attack before battling the creature in the flaming hut that provides this with some rather exciting scenes as the burning wood collapses around them. Likewise, the adventure segments of the first half do tend to feature some fun as well with a different sort of action throughout the trek into the jungle with the group going along the unfamiliar scenery along with the waterfall ploy and the jungle hikes which is all pretty fun. There's not a whole lot here that doesn't work, but it is pretty sizable in that the film's adventure scenario in the first half really takes its toll on the rest of the film in keeping the snakes off-screen for quite a while. This results in them being utilized so infrequently it really has to rush through its scenes in the final half in such a blur that they feel more like an after-thought to a story about the dangers in the search for a rare flower. Not only that but the fact is the first half is filled with useless scenes that merely exist solely to pad out time with even less time for the creatures, so that the numerous flirting scenes with each other or the monkey hijinks eventually cause this one to drag out even more than what is needed. The last issue is the rather egregious CGI for the snakes which never really evokes any kind of reality on screen which seems natural here and is what keeps this one down somewhat.Rated PG-13: Violence, Language, and animal violence.