Lake Placid vs. Anaconda

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.

The Anaconda franchise is my favorite guilty pleasure film series out there, so when I watched this I expected some silly CGI fights with the Anaconda and the Crocodile, but I didn't really get it. The anacondas are in this film for a total of about 7 minutes, and the short fight we get between them is disappointing in every sense of the word. What really made this film boring though was the characters. They were either really stupid, really bland or mean and annoying. The characters in the Anaconda franchise are pretty much always terrible but at least they're terrible in a fun way, these characters had me bored to death. I don't recommend this film at all even if you enjoy the other films in the Lake Placid and/or Anaconda series.

Why older movies look more real is such s mystery. The first lake placid looked like a real croc. First anaconda looked like a real snake in most shots. Better tecnology years later and we get things that look like cgi and the lighting on the creatures doesnt even match the surrounding. Like its pail or looks like a paper cut out moving on screen. People getting eaten looks as fake as it actually is and acting. Modern movies should just stick to anamatronics and real special effects. Theyed lose less of the audience that way. Cant make money if everyone agrees that movies now cant even match up to the orginals in any way but the story line. Noone wants to see that its cgi. Noone wants to notice that its cgi. Noone wants to see a person get eaten or crushed and the thing biting or crushing them look like its photo shopped into the shot. How... Just how are movies so much worse these days.

Cant say its hd tvs either, jurassic park still has real looking dinosaurs on modern tvs.

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