Lake Placid vs. Anaconda

I have always had a soft spot for science fiction B-movies. And while Lake Placid vs. Anaconda fills all the requirements for terrible B-movie glory, it is not actually good in any manner.

People often forget that the original Lake Placid and Anaconda films were quite good in a campy creature kind of way. The onslaught of sequels bastardizing their originality and fun of those films have relegated the sub-genre to pure and lovely guilty pleasure filth. Lake Placid vs. Anaconda has nearly every ghastly B-movie trope we've come to expect from these films, and it's not in a good way.

The plot of the film often gets overly summarized to the point of stating the title in sentence form. Lake Placid vs. Anaconda has a super science-y organization funding crazy genetic research while searching for an elixir of youth. Of course, that means they need a super anaconda to bear love children formed from breeding the snake with the gigantic crocodile, thereby making "baby croc-a-condas." Along the way the creatures get loose and go on a killing spree, as they often do, and what do they stumble upon but a group of near- naked sorority girls during rush.

Lake Placid vs. Anaconda has all the literal makings of a B-movie without any of the self referential and irreverent humor of its more successful predecessors, such as the recent Sharknado and Piranha 3D. For some inexplicable reason, the makers behind the film chose to minimize the comedy, and without humor it is just dull.

A B-movie stuff wouldn't be true to itself if it didn't fail at some basic film making techniques, and the sound production, anaconda effects and dialogue overall are pretty terrible. And for a B-movie where gigantic creatures are constantly killing humans, it was pretty weak on the gore and creativity in the death scenes, with the only amusing part being croc on anaconda casualties.

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The first Lake Placid movie was very enjoyable, if with its flaws. The second was awful, with a waste of its big names. The third was an improvement, but still mediocre at best. The fourth, strangely called The Final Chapter, had some big flaws but was much better than expected and the best since the original. This latest entry, Lake Placid vs. Anaconda for me was the worst since the second movie.

Lake Placid vs. Anaconda is saved from total doom by the good performances of Yancy Butler, Robert Englund and Corin Nemec. Butler is very authoritative and 'kicks ass' (a term I very rarely use) in her very feisty role, and Englund has indeed some funny moments and is suitably ruthless and nutty as well. Nemec is appropriately hard-nosed and is entertainingly sarcastic. The Bulgarian scenery is reasonably attractive too.

What does stop the scenery from making more of an impression is that Lake Placid vs. Anaconda does have a rather drab look, the photography is not expansive enough and is a mixture of static to rushed and dizzying. The special effects, as expected, are rather dire, looking cartoony, artificial-looking (like large bits of rubber) , inconsistently sized and incomplete, especially the anaconda. The creatures, both anaconda and crocodile on top of looking cheap, are not threatening at all and somewhat under-utilised with nowhere near enough of the anaconda.(there's also not enough of them together either). The music is not very well placed and is overbearing and not eerie enough, sometimes inappropriately jaunty.

Here, the dialogue is full of stilted gibberish, and a lot of the humour is too cheesy and sometimes appears at the wrong time, cheapened even further by some horrendous dubbing that is far too obvious. The story is a confused mess of ideas and doesn't seem to know whether it's trying to be comedy or horror. The comedy, apart from some amusing moments, is very badly written, reeks of cheese and appears in inappropriate places sometimes, and this is coming from somebody who knew not to take things seriously. The horror moments completely lack tension or suspense, is not used enough and often too brief, further disadvantaged by sloppy editing and the cheap-looking creature. The characters are basically every cliché and stereotype in the book, and with a lack of charm, empathy and apart from Butler's and Englund's are annoying and bland in personality.

Much of the acting, apart from Butler, Englund and Nemec, ranges from stiff, melodramatic to non-existent. Oliver Walker's comic relief annoyed rather than amused at the end of the day. The whole movie felt very under-directed as well. Overall, pretty poor and the worst of the Lake Placid series since the second movie, though not as bad. 3/10 Bethany Cox

A giant crocodile from "Black Lake" is captured by muscle-bound Stephen Billington (as Beach) and hook-armed Robert Englund (as Jim Bickerman). This is so a team of scientists can experiment on crocodile and snake DNA. The animals escape and begin to eat people. Six miles away, the attacks continue in "Clear Lake". Fish and wildlife officer Corin Nemec (as Will "Tull" Tully) from "Clear Lake" teams up with "Black Lake" sheriff and neighbor Yancy Butler (as Reba) to investigate...

This Syfy TV movie combines three concepts; we have the "Lake Placid" series, the "Anaconda" spin-offs and the "vs" match-ups. This story is not three times as good, however. This is average fare. "A.B. Stone" and writer Berkeley Anderson have the most fun with a couple of secondary items. First, clumsy deputy Oliver Walker (as Ferguson) is good comic relief. Second, there is a generous amount of screen time given to beautifully-proportioned young women in tight-fitting bikinis.

*** Lake Placid vs Anaconda (4/25/15) A.B. Stone ~ Corin Nemec, Yancy Butler, Robert Englund, Oliver Walker

Granted, I knew well enough when I sat down to watch the 2015 movie "Lake Placid vs Anaconda" from the title alone that this was most likely going to be a stinker. And it was. Oh, how it was.

But hey, I do enjoy the occasional creature feature, and some of the "Lake Placid" and "Anaconda" movies have actually been watchable, and with iconic Robert Englund in the movie, of course I had to watch it. Now, I am wondering why he agreed to appear in a movie such as this.

The storyline in "Lake Placid vs. Anaconda" is as generic as they come, even for a creature feature. Man is manipulating with Mother Nature and messing with the genes of animals, when something goes awry and the creatures escape to wreak havoc on the local area.

Now, the storyline could have worked, as it was generic enough to actually be essentially the same as every other "Lake Placid" or "Anaconda" movie, but it was so dumbed down by a lack of proper acting and atrocious CGI that it was such a horrible experience to sit through this movie and bear witness to such god awful CGI were even made in 2015.

I can't honestly recommend that you waste your time, money or effort on this movie from writer Berkeley Anderson and director A.B. Stone.

My rating of "Lake Placid vs. Anaconda" is a mere three out of ten stars. Stay well clear of this one, people.

The Lake Placid franchise meets the Anaconda franchise and let's be honest they are both pretty poor so no high expectations here. However, having just sat through this on TV, I actually thought it wasn't too bad - for a bad movie. Girls in bikinis, plenty of corny one-liners, cheap & silly CGI (though I have seen MUCH worse), Eastern Europe standing in for the US, Yancy Butler as the gravel voiced but sexy Sheriff and horror legend Robert Englund. Yes, it's a million miles from his Elm St stuff but I've seen him in worse than this. As Syfy movies go it's not too bad & if you want 90 minutes of simple, silly entertainment then put your brain in neutral & give it a look.