Some of you may be aware, through careful reading of my column, of my Fiance’s somewhat sadistic/masochistic attitude towards programming. In fact, he has deliberately programmed movies so bad I didn’t even bother to write about them, just so people would be compelled to beat him up. Part of this comes from an event we used to host that was the precursor to Den of Sin nights. We called it the “Craptacular Crap-a-thon” and basically it consisted of us requesting the worst looking preview tapes we could find from our supplier at the video store we work at and then watching them in a marathon session under the proviso that each attendee was responsible for their own booze. Well, this week’s column is a return to those not so halcyon days as we subjected our friends to the badly awesome “Boa vs Python” and the awesomely bad “Anaconda”.
It was a respectable turnout with 8 people in attendance to start. We’d even managed to coax Corinne out despite her still having some misgivings after the “Dragonstorm“ incident. In fact, my fiancé had put this program together with the express intention of further torturing Corinne. I was excited since Sinister Sam had already seen “Boa vs. Python” and had described it as “Showgirls” meets Mad Foxes meets “Anaconda”. Not believing that a film could be that amazing, especially one starring CG snakes, I knew I had to witness it for myself. I was further buoyed by the knowledge that my favourite Canadian actor, David Hewlett was the star. Those who’ve seen “Treed Murray”, “Cube” or my personal favourite, ”Nothing”, are already familiar with Mr. Hewlett’s delicious sarcastic charms, but for those who aren’t I’m going to indulge myself a little and gush my nerdy Canadian heart out in this column. My devotion to the film was completed upon realizing that Mr. Hewlett spent the majority of the film in a tight black t-shirt.
The film started off well enough with epic whooshing titles and an equally epic Bruckheimer-esque score. Someone commented during the opening that this was the kind of film
that just tried to cram as much crap on screen as possible to try to detract from the overall shittiness of the movie. I should also point out that the film also stars not one, but two Playboy bunnies (although only one of them gets naked). There are also multiple bad accents and a lot of Romanian county-side masquerading (not terribly convincing) as various urban American cities. It’s kind of funny how some people (okay, the entire Peanut Gallery) are able to appreciate the cheapness and ineptitude of exploitation films from the ‘70s and ‘80s, but expect their modern day counterparts to be full of good performances and production values. I blame Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez for bringing exploitation into the mainstream and in so doing setting the blueprint for modern audiences of what “exploitation cinema” is supposed to look like. Those movies are not exploitation movies, they are mainstream movies that just happen to ape old school genre picts. What “Boa vs. Python” is is a not too tongue in cheek ode to b-movies, made with a b-movie budget. Lets face it, dialogue like ”with my implants and your snake…“ spoken by the non-naked bunny was not supposed to be taken seriously.
The “plot”, if we insist on dwelling on it, concerns a bad rich hunter man and his slutty girlfriend who import a giant snake which growls. The growling snake escapes and starts to eat a bunch of people in suburban Pennsylvania. This somehow becomes a job for the FBI and agent blondie bikini babe is called into action. She teams up with my darling Mr. Hewlett and put what looks like a pair of wraparound shades on his equally giant snake (snicker). Then a bunch of stuff happens, including a hunting party which drew comparisons to “Escape 2000” and giant CG snake sex. This is followed by explicit proof of how low the budget was, including many machine gun shooting scenes where no rounds are actually deployed (they didn’t have money for bullets), and the climactic subway scene that is made up entirely of “Doom” level snake fighting effects and Mr. Hewlett and agent bikini babe standing against a rear screen projected sign that reads “Subway”. Oh, and I almost forgot the leather clad midget dominatrix from the rave scene.
I managed to draw much ire for this screening choice, even though I didn’t choose it, because I was the only one present who seemed to really enjoy the movie. Hell, I was squealing with glee and clapping my hands. Even my Fiancé was in on the peanut gallery bitch-fest although he later admitted to thinking it was “rad”. There was also much speculation as to where we knew agent blondie babe from. Someone suggested that she was from the Pamela Anderson show “V.I.P.” since “she runs like she’s on V.I.P”, but this was never confirmed. I later found out she was married to David Boreanaz which now has me rethinking my opinion of him.
Time for an intermission. Check out “Anaconda” in part two of ENTER THE DEN OF SIN: CURSE OF THE SERPENTS>>>
