Anaconda ★★★½

DOES Anaconda have the best ‘wink’ ever committed to celluloid?

If you’ve seen the 1997 American adventure/horror film you will know exactly what I’m referring to. If you haven’t then I’m not going to spoil it.

‘The wink’ is just one of many ridiculously fun moments in a film that also features terrible computer-generated imagery, including the awful animatronic anaconda, and a thoroughly enjoyable, over-the-top performance from Jon Voight.

The unusual casting is one of the best features of this ‘so bad, it’s good’ entry.

Eric Stoltz plays anthropologist Professor Steven Cale who has hired a steamer and local skipper, Mateo, to take him along the Amazon in search of a lost-lost tribe called the Shirishamas, snake worshippers also known as The People of the Mist.

He is being accompanied by documentary film-makers led by director and former flame Terri Flores, played by Jennifer Lopez. Ice Cube is the cameraman, Owen Wilson the sound man and Johnathan Hyde plays the on-screen narrator.

Along the way they encounter Voight’s character, Paraguayan former priest turned snake hunter Paul Serone, who offers to lead them to the tribe’s secret location.

Of course, Serone has other motives and ends up trying to take over the expedition by force. Meanwhile the group are being stalked by a massive anaconda that seems to be able to fly and teleport as it takes out a range of victims.

Through all this the entire cast, particularly Hyde, try manfully to chew as much scenery as possible, but never match the wondrous performance that is Voight’s sneering, snarling, lecherous and accent-twisting Serone.

Anaconda has been a box-office success, based on its budget, and is now a minor cult film. It spawned four sequels – Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004), Anaconda 3: Offspring (2008), Anacondas: Trail of Blood (2009) and Lake Placid vs. Anaconda (2015) – and there is now talk of a re-boot.

Unfortunately, neither Serone or any of the characters from the first film appear in any of the sequels. Let’s hope a reboot brings them back.