Anaconda is famously one of those horror adventure movies that is so bad that it is good in its own way. One brilliant part of the movie is that you can genuinely tell that the actors are terrified of the anaconda in the movie. Although the movie is almost three decades old, thanks to one of the actors’ children who revealed new info on Twitter (X), we now know why the cast of Anaconda was, in fact, terrified of the animatronic snake on set.
Hearing the name Anaconda (1997), you’ll probably think back to a time of terrible horror movies that were so bad they were good. The name evokes the same feeling as Sharknado, Devil Fish, Alienator and Vampire’s Kiss, which are films you know are awful but have cemented their place in movie history. Anaconda was directed by Luis Llosa and written by Hans Bauer, Jim Cash, and Jack Epps Jr. It was the start of a movie franchise that included Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004) and three television movies, including Anaconda 3: Offspring (2008), Anacondas: Trail of Blood (2009), and Lake Placid vs Anaconda (2015).
The franchise started with a “National Geographic” film crew taken hostage by an insane hunter on a quest to capture the world’s giant snake, the deadly Anaconda. The cast consisted of Danny Trejo as the Poacher, Eric Stoltz as Dr. Steven Cale, Frank Welker as the voice of the Anaconda (yes, it had a voice actor), Ice Cube as Danny Rich, Jennifer Lopez as Terri Flores, Jon Voight as Paul Serone, Jonathan Hyde as Warren Westridge, Kari Wuhrer as Denise Kalberg, Owen Wilson as Gary Dixon, and Vincent Castellanos as Mateo.
Ice Cube’s son, O’Shea Jackson Jr, shared on Twitter (X) why the fear on the actor’s face looked so genuine.
While CGI was already a thing during the time of Anaconda, in the 1990s, it was still a terribly expensive process to try and have scenes of your movie made in CGI, not like today’s movies, where you can get away with almost all of your movie being shot on a set with a green screen.
According to this fantastic article by ScreenRant, who discussed many facts you might not have known about Anaconda, each second of screen time showing the computer-generated snakes costs $100,000, so you can imagine that that would stack up quickly.
Because of these expenses, many movies, including Anaconda, chose to make films combining practical animatronics and CGI, relying heavily on practical effects and clever camera work and acting. The film featured two animatronics, a Queen and a Warrior model. The first was 40 feet long and weighed around 2.5 tons, and the second measured around 25 feet and weighed around 0.75 tons. As if the size and weight of these weren’t terrifying enough, according to O’Shea Jackson Jr’s tweet, the animatronics had a proclivity to malfunction.
“Technology was not what it is today, and sometimes the snake would malfunction. It even tore up catering. Going haywire flipping tables and throwing sh*t.” According to him, the actors seemed terrified of the animatronic snakes and not the CGI ones because they were genuinely afraid that the machines would malfunction.
If I saw a 40-foot metal and rubber animatronic malfunctioning and then had to act with that thing and let it get close to me, I would be terrified as well.
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Did you know this interesting fact about the animatronic snakes from Anaconda?
Anaconda |
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A "National Geographic" film crew is taken hostage by an insane hunter, who forces them along on his quest to capture the world's largest - and deadliest - snake. |
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| Studio: Columbia Pictures, Cinema Line Film Corporation |
| Running Time: 1h 29m |
| Release Date: April 11, 1997 |
| Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson |
| Director: Luis Llosa |
| Writers: Hans Bauer, Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr. |
| Genre: Action, Adventure, Horror |
| Box Office: $136.8 million |
