"It's a snake monster thing!" "It's some kind of unholy union between piranha and anaconda"; "you mean a Piranhaconda?", "I can't believe you just said that" goes the film at that point, and oh boy it's only going to get worse from here isn't it.
It's as fast as a speeding SUV, it can apparently hold it's breath forever, rip doors off the back of vans in a fraction of a second, is impervious to bullets, has razor sharp teeth that reduce humans to a misting of red blood in an instant and it has a particular taste for attractive screaming ladies in swimwear... It's "probably the most dangerous predator known to mankind" said Michael Madson's character, Professor Robert Lovegrove.
Yes, Michael Madson is in this film. He must have really needed the money?
Piranhaconda is one of those low budget monster movies that crops up on Syfy channel, complete with dodgy acting, and equally as dodgy special effects and I CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF THESE FILMS. I love them. I've seen a handful of them over the years, mostly during nights spent drunk round friends houses or whatever and they're great. Film's so horrendously bad they're good. So it was pretty much the perfect choice for my pilot blog post. It's is exactly what you might expect from a film titled 'Piranhaconda': an extremely long yellow snake with piranha jaws is very pissed off in Hawaii and eating lots of people.
A low budget movie crew shooting a slasher flick that is like some kind of blatant rip off of Nightmare on Elm Street meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre and stars Kimmy Weston (Shandi Finnessey) who is apparently a big deal, suddenly get abducted by token bad guys with big guns who think that a great way to make some very quick money is to ransom them off, only to discover that Professor Lovegrove who they had abducted earlier, also for money, and his crazy talk about a giant maneating lizard is actually the truth! And then they get attacked and lots of people get eaten and squashed and stuff. But our token hero, Jack (Rib Hillis) who is a stunt man, but may or may not have been in the Marines or something, saves the day by blowing it up.
Only there's more than one!... I swear there's like 5 actually? The whole premise of the film is that there are at least 2 Piranhaconda's, and they have mated. Lovegrove wants one of their eggs, despite also wanting revenge, I think? For it maybe killing his father. Or not. He's never really clear about whether or not he wants to kill it, or why he's really looking for it. But anyway, yeah there are like 5 of these things? At least 3 die, I think? And there's still one right at the end? How have they not munched their way through most of Hawaii's population yet? Given that they are about 4 miles long, but can move through grassy, deserty plains or swim upstream in raging rivers without even being visible, they could clean up the whole island in a few hours I reckon.
So yeah, unsurprisingly this wasn't a very good film, but was great for my screenshot game cos it was so fucking predictable! The snake looked alright, actually. For the most part. It looked like a snake, the face was a bit dodgy, like an evil looking Pokemon, but more real. It could move as fast as a fucking express train, but it looked like a snake. Halfway through the film this old white haired guy shows up who is apparently with the bad guys and I hadn't got a fucking clue where he came from? I think he might be the Director in a cameo role or something? Then later on, the bad dudes just seem to have more blokes with guns with them that get fed to the snakefish, despite them not actually appearing anywhere else earlier on. Madson is in the film for about a third of it and ranges from being mildly curious to being mildly inconvenienced throughout the entire film. I don't think he got an Oscar nomination for this role... He actually 'drops' the egg in the river at one point, but you wouldn't actually know that if they hadn't have panned to the next shot where he is fishing it out? Was it too high budget to drop a polystyrene egg in tuperware into the river? Oh and I fucking HATED Kimmy Weston who was just annoying, and served barely any purpose other than to be annoying, and look pretty. But they needed some kind of plot device to drive the story line I guess, so here we are.
The whole movie is pretty self aware, our buff hero Jack says "this is the last low budget movie I'm gonna be in" or words to that effect whilst being filmed for the film being filmed in the film... which got a snort from me, and the whole "I can't believe you just said that" line is obviously poking fun at itself. These low budget trashy films are supposed to be funny bad for funny bad's sake, but I felt with Piranhaconda that there wasn't really enough of that, it was just... average. So is it worth a watch? Yeah, I guess so. But there are no parts of the movie that are hilariously, shockingly bad. There's no parts that made me face palm. It's no Sharknado (which I will have to re-watch, unfortunately) but it's entertaining enough for a cheap laugh. Just don't pay any money for it. 2 out of 5 stars.
