While a healthy influx of brains isn’t really something you’d credit the people at the SyFy channel with at the best of times, you really do have to admire the ruthless, cool-headed business scene that lies behind the existence of Lake Placid Vs. Anaconda – after all, why spend all that money making two awful movies that no one wants to see when you can merge them both and simply make one?
Wilfully disregarding every shred of common sense it can solely to cash in on other versus movies such as Alien Vs. Predator and Freddy Vs. Jason, even the title is utter nonsense (how does a snake fight a lake?), but then, that sort of thing has never stopped low budget Hollywood before; and so, in 2015, the channel asked the ultimate question: if a crocodile and an anaconda fight in the woods, and no one tunes in, should I bother making a sound?
Oh well, I’ve come this far so I might as well forge ahead…
After the events of the erroneously titled Lake Placid: The Final Chapter, we find that local, grizzled ne’er do well, Jim Bickerman, survived his climactic mauling but obviously hasn’t let the loss of a leg, an arm and an eye teach him any noticable life lessons as he’s back to his old tricks. Sneaking back into the quarantine zone of Black Lake, he and fellow mercenaries capture one of the giant crocodiles that lurk within in order for experimentation by the Wexal Hall Corporation, the moral-free boffins who have been tinkering with Blood Orchids and giant anacondas in the last couple of installments of that other reptilian franchise. Of course, not only does everything escape, but in the chaos, the gate to the quarantine zone is damaged allowing crocs of various sizes to spill into the surrounding area.
Meanwhile former poacher and recurring character Reba is struggling with her unlikely new role as the Sheriff of Black Lake and her array of clueless deputies and calls in Fish and Wildlife officer Will Tully to aid with this latest outbreak of rampaging reptiles, butcTully has other anxieties on his mind.
You see, his daughter Bethany, is currently at Clear Lake with a bunch of other girls who are jumping through the hoops of vicious sorority girl, Tiffani, in order to join Delta Gamma and it doesn’t take long for the various crocs to see this as some sort of scantily clad smorgasbord.
On top of all this, Wexel Hall CEO, Sarah Murdoch has arrived in person to corral her escaped anaconda and proves she’s as cold blooded as any other the other marauding reptiles in the area in her quest to snag the pregnant serpent and thus secure a wonder drug for her company. So the stage is set for a showdown between franchises that not only no one wanted, but proves to be impressively flat – Lake Placid Vs. Anaconda? Try Syfy Vs. attention span.
Now, at this point, I know that I’m not supposed to be taking either of the Lake Placid or Anaconda franchises particularly seriously, but it still feels like the continuing slog of these movies feel less like a desire to keep “loved” sequels in motion and more like some sort of tax deduction that the IRS didn’t notice. I mean, did anyone out actually need these two, plodding, series of TV movies to collide in an explosion of jobbing character actors and stunningly unconvincing CGI? I mean, most other Versus movies are usually born from the debates of competing fan bases that result in a dream scenario, but who the hell was debating the winner of this fight – and if such people actually exist, is there any way to revoke their internet privileges?
Anyway, back to the movie and despite the addition of a rival reptile to stir shit up, it’s actually business as usual when it comes to the basic Lake Placid template with the movie leaning way more on the snapping crocs than it does on the hissing slither-monsters. In fact, the movie virtually forgets about the Anacondas entirely after the opening and most focuses on the croc crunching their way through the glorified bikini models that makes up most of the cast. In fact, the actual “Vs” of the title doesn’t technically kick off until half hour from the end and even then, any hot crococonda action (or should that be anadile?) is kept to a strict minimum. It’s exactly this type of filmmaking decision that just pisses me off – why make a Lake Placid Vs. Anaconda movie in the first place if the two animals barely interact save for a couple of isolated moments.
As if to prove my point, the rare times the two aggressive animals actually butt skulls actually show an amusing streak that almost rises above the typically primitive visual effects. In one, belly laugh generating moment, a croc actually hurls an anaconda into the blades of a hovering helicopter while elsewhere a croc is crushed in the ‘conda’s coil to the point where it pops likes a blood balloon with both times showering the cast with blood. If more of the flick was dedicated more to the central, almost nonexistent, brawl, matters may have been far more fun, but the main thread of sorority-girls-in-trouble just proves to be the same old stuff – just with less clothes.
In general, the acting at this point is basically now somewhere between a Troma movie and a particularly lazy Adam Sandler comedy, with people uttering verbal garbage such as “She’s not gonna make it!” while a victim is literally being dragged to her death. However, in the midst of this miasma of awful line readings and unfunny running jokes, Yancy Butler, God love her, still forges on with a character she’s played for three films now. Similarly cashing in an oddly loyal paycheck is Robert Englund, whose gnawed-on Bitterman returns with more missing pieces than a delivery of a flat pack bookcase and, much like Butler, he brings an air of much-needed professionalism to this further example of blatant cashing in. Still, it doesn’t help that a lot of deep cuts in the script requires a more than working knowledge of a bunch of sequels that are notoriously pretty poo; for example, Anabelle Wright’s sociopathic CEO is the daughter of John Rhys Davis’ character from the last couple of Anacondas, but who honestly wants to remember all that crap?
For those wondering which species manages to emerge victorious, the movie proved to be the final bullet in the grey matter of the Anaconda franchise and the final entry in the Lake Placid series managed to lope on for one more entry that took the form of a overly serious reboot, so a guess that the result of this reptilian ruckus is a triple knock out that delivers a coup de grace that takes out the croc, the snake and the audience in one, apathetic, death blow.
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