Jaws Ep. 10 - Anaconda / Deep Blue Sea

We end our Jaws series with two films from the ‘90s that launched the animal attack genre into the 21st Century.    First, Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Jon Voight go up the Amazon to find a giant snake in ANACONDA (1997) and then Samuel L. Jackson, Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows and LL Cool J encounter genetically enhanced super-sharks in DEEP BLUE SEA (1999).

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Hello and welcome to Get Me Another, a podcast where we explore those movies that followedin the wake of blockbuster hits and attempted to replicate their success.
My name is Chris Ayanagone and with me are my co-hosts Rob Lemorgas,
So baby bird, are you ready to podcast?
Yes, yes, I am ready to podcast.

(00:31):
And Justin Beam.
Chris, is it just me, or does the jungle make you horny?
Honestly, it makes me sweaty is really what it really what it does.
actual line from an actual film that we are going to be actually discussing today.
It is actually true.

(00:52):
If you're sweaty, if hearing that, Chris, makes you sweaty, then you are more realistic toscene than most of the people throughout the duration of the movie in question here.
is.
Despite the fact that John.
My gosh, hair and makeup was working overtime anyway, as you were.

(01:13):
Today is the tenth and final episode in our Get Me Another Jaws series and I want to startby saying thank you to everyone out there who's listened as well as all of our guests.
This has been an incredible series for us and we just want to thank everybody who's tunedin and downloaded and engaged on social media.
We really appreciate it.
We love doing this and we love getting feedback and it has just been terrific.

(01:35):
but I will be happy when it's over and it's safe to go back in the water Chris.
Do you realize how long it's been since I showered?
This is awful.
I didn't need to know.
didn't need to.
Your poor family.
Yes, this point the strangers around me are also suffering.
So it's We need to get on to something that doesn't make me afraid of the water or hillsor the desert or

(02:03):
or anywhere in the sky, the woods.
As we usually do at the end of today's episode, we'll be announcing what's coming up forthe podcast, including some really exciting bonus episodes in September and October and
our next series, which will kick off in November when we are very excited about that.

(02:25):
Like Jaws, it's been on our list from the very beginning.
But before that,
We have two more movies to discuss as we move into the 90s for two films that set thestage for the animal attack genre to move into the 21st century.
So first up today, from 1997, this is Anaconda.

(02:48):
All right, everybody, double check your gear, make sure it's all on board.
Pray you didn't forget your bug spray.
The Rivers of the Amazon.
Wow, it's unbelievable.
This river can kill you in a thousand ways.
In the waters of the Anaconda, There's a legend, Yerisham will worship giant snakes asGod's protectors.

(03:09):
Snakes?
No matter what you see, This skin is three or four years old.
Whatever shed in its groin says that.
no matter what you hear, What was that?
There's something down there.
That's right.
I really mean it.
I really mean it, too.
Faster, come on!
No matter what you do.
Oh, my God.

(03:31):
He's not breathing.
TriStar Pictures invites you on a journey into the grip of fear.

(03:58):
There's one movie that we're not actually covering in this series because it's kind of itsown thing, but I think it's significant in terms of the movies we're going to be
discussing today, and that is Jurassic Park.
By the late 80s and early 90s, the fuel from the success of Jaws that had propelled themovies that we've been discussing during this run had kind of waned a bit.

(04:21):
The Jaws franchise itself had come to an end following 1987's Jaws the Revenge, althoughCruel Jaws was released in some markets as Jaws 5, and it seems like these types of
natural horror movies were becoming fewer and fewer.
But then, in 1993, along comes Jurassic Park, and to some degree refills the tank in termsof showing that audiences were still hungry for movies about animals eating people.

(04:50):
That film also opened up a new filmmaking technique that both of today's movies wouldemploy.
Computer-generated special effects.
With the advent of CGI, the possibilities for what one could depict in terms of creaturesin movies open up significantly.

(05:11):
93.
That's remarkable because the CG in that movie, even if we aren't just placing it when itarrived, right?
It's outstanding.
It really is.
And I remember sitting in the theater like the rest of us, just in awe because it reallywas something that we had never seen before.
And it's amazing to me that these movies came so many, these are years after.

(05:36):
like five years after that movie landed.
Right.
And the CG here is so inept in both cases from almost front to back that it's almost likethese were made in another country by some people who were just learning computer language
or something.
It's a funny thing with the nice, you're right.
Jurassic Park was not just a landmark, but it was, it was so far ahead of the curve thatit would take most, you know, most movies like the, know, that was going to, that we're

(06:04):
going to employ CGI were nowhere near what Jurassic Park.
would take like another decade for like essentially the average special effects drivenmovie to kind of match Jurassic Park.
Yeah, but you know what's funny about that whole thing, though, is that what there arestill some elements that CG hasn't nailed.
True.
I would say that blood is the most notable.

(06:28):
blood.
uh It can't erase the mustache digitally.
That's a real problem.
It did.
It can erase cat anuses.
I understand that in that movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's cats that they had a problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When they were there in post and someone at some point went, Hey, guys, there's a lot ofbuttholes in this movie.

(06:50):
And they dealt with it.
They dealt with it.
can't believe, I can't imagine being the network executive to have to give that note.
Guys, we just have too many catbuttholes here.
I would love to be that executive.
I would get the job, say that, and then quit just to have the experience of tellingsomeone, issuing that edict, like, get rid of the anuses.

(07:11):
I'd wait for my bonus and then quit.
I'd hang in for the big quarterly bonus and then...
Oh, no, no.
I have not.
I have seen the honest trailer for it, which is very funny.
Well, let's find out.
Let's find some blockbuster movie that has lots of anuses in it and we can do.
Get me another whatever that is and we can put cats in there.

(07:32):
to your god.
Well, there's always a don't get me another possibility.
That's true.
Yeah.
There's possibility.
The other interesting thing, and I think it's true in particular in Anaconda, is thatwhile CGI effects were kind of in their infancy, practical effects were sort of reaching
their pinnacle.

(07:52):
And that's so, we see that in some of these movies, the practical effects are amazing andthen you cut to the computer generator effects and they're not quite there.
Yeah, I just finished working on Freaked, which is throughout all of the interviews witheveryone, the effects people and production design, everyone, Alex, Tom, everyone's like

(08:14):
this was being acknowledged.
And that was 1993 when that movie was made.
And it was acknowledged then even as being the last hurrah of a practical effects moviebecause they didn't.
I think there's maybe only one scene that has a CG element to it.
and that had to be done, like, was something that they decided not to do.

(08:35):
Like, they made a point to make it practical effects.
But in 1993, people were already ringing the death bell for practical effects.
Right.
That's absolutely true.
then starting in the late 90s, know, Jurassic Park comes along and starting late 90s, weget this new wave of natural horror films that utilize both digital and practical effects.

(08:56):
And it really begins with Anaconda.
Like Anaconda feels like the first big one, which is why we kind of we wanted to end withAnaconda and Deep Blue Sea, which kind of set the stage for the movies of the 21st century
in this genre.
The original script for Anaconda was written by Hans Bauer and was subsequently rewrittenby Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr.

(09:18):
Cash and Epps were best known for writing 1986's Top Gun, as well as Legal Eagles, Turnerand Hooch, and Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy.
Interestingly, in 2014, Hans Bauer published a novel entitled Anaconda, The Writer's

(09:38):
What?
Based on his original screenplay and I will read the synopsis to you guys because it isquite different from the movie that we all watched.
In the dead of a Chicago winter, a 20 something middle school biology teacher, Andy Easterand six young colleagues hatch a plan to spend their summer in Brazil, hoping to reverse

(10:03):
their meager fortunes by joining a modern day gold rush.
on a tributary of the mighty Amazon.
Disoriented and increasingly isolated, the treasure hunters stray into the remote domainof three colossal snakes, daughter, mother, and grandmother.
One by one, under terrifying circumstances, the teachers fall victim to the devastatingeffects of gold fever and the relentless brutality of the primeval South American jungle.

(10:36):
Andy Easter must discover her inner Amazon to avoid becoming prey for the mother of allsnakes.
How did that become this film?
It's fascinating, right?
Like that's, like I see some common elements.
You have someone who is a teacher going to the Amazon, but everything else is completelydifferent.

(11:00):
Even the documentary crew, seeming like they're recent film school graduates, kind ofholds on a little bit to some of the school aspect.
Little bit.
So what happened to that, Chris?
I think that was the original Hans Bauer script and yeah, cash and EPS were brought in bythe studio.

(11:20):
They were, you know, well unknown commodity and basically rewrote it pretty significantly.
So what we see is really the cash and EPS version of Anaconda.
The film was directed by Luis Losa, a Peruvian filmmaker with an interesting career path.
He started out working for Roger Corman.

(11:41):
during his post-New World era, for whom he directed a number of films.
And then he made three bigger budget Hollywood films, Sniper with Tom Berenger, theSylvester Stallone Sharon Stone action film, The Specialist, and Anaconda.
He then founded a production company in his native Peru and has been there producing anddirecting films ever since.

(12:06):
that makes a lot of sense because when you watch Anaconda, at least when I watch Anaconda,I imagine the dozens of movies that should have followed in the system here.
Right.
And they just don't exist, I guess, because he went and he went and became his own uh hisown boss.
guess that was it.
He probably got well paid for a couple of big pictures and then was like, hey, I want tolive in Peru, my native country, and make movies and TV shows there, producing and

(12:37):
directing, which honestly, good for you, pal.
Anaconda stars Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson, CarrieWerrer, and John Voight.
John Voight giving one of the strangest and yet
oddly compelling performances of the 90s.

(12:59):
Let me tell you, I know that the special effects are technically the anaconda effects, butin this movie, for my money, it's John Voight is the specialist effect of them all.
uh I will be talking about Saron a lot.
I mean, let's say this, it is a performance of choices.

(13:20):
He makes choices and uh it's not leaving stuff in the tank.
He's going all in on it.
He was not phoning this movie in at all.
No.
No.
No.
revolves around anthropologist Dr.
Steven Kale, who along with documentary filmmaker Terry Flores and her crew journey alongthe Amazon River in search of a previously uncontacted tribe called the Shirashama.

(13:47):
Along the way they meet snake hunter Paul Serone, who has his own agenda of capturing agiant anaconda.
yeah, very, very distinctly different from the synopsis of the writer's novelization ofhis
his original screenplay.
And right off the bat, the concept of a documentary film crew in search of a lostindigenous tribe immediately brings to mind Cannibal Holocaust.

(14:12):
Yeah.
And it's weird because it does feel like a nod to it.
Although even forgetting the gore effects or lack thereof in Anaconda as compared toCannibal Holocaust, there's one other big difference, which is that the tribe in this film
is a MacGuffin, right?
That essentially does not play in the film.

(14:33):
Right.
I thought that was so interesting.
get to that when we get to that.
But I was honestly surprised at how the tribe was handled.
I thought they were going to have perhaps more of a significant role.
But really, it's just a reason to get these folks on a boat on the Amazon.
We start with an opening crawl that reads, tales of monstrous, man-eating anacondas havebeen recounted for centuries.

(15:01):
by the tribespeople of the Amazon basin, some of whom are said to worship these giantsnakes.
Anacondas are among the most ferocious and enormous creatures on earth, growing in certaincases as long as 40 feet.
Unique among snakes, they are not satisfied after eating a victim.

(15:22):
They will regurgitate their prey in order to kill and eat again.
Is this the first time we've had Chekhov's opening crawl?
That was exactly what I was like.
I mean, you don't bother to put a mention of the fact that anacondas regurgitate theirprey if you're not gonna do
That is not hiding the ball, that is making a promise.

(15:44):
Absolutely.
it is like here's stick around.
Here is what you're going to see.
And the movie to its credit goes for it.
It is something else.
Yeah.
Checkoffs opening crawl was my exact note.
And the opening music over this, it feels almost vaguely Conan-esque, specifically thecrawl music for Conan or opening text.

(16:10):
Which is very weird because, Justin brought up cats earlier in a much different context,did you notice in the like sad bamboo flute or whatever it is that they have in the music,
it points throughout this movie, the song playing keeps threatening to become
memory from cats.
It's like the couple notes are memory and then it and then it does it lands elsewhere sothat they don't get sued.

(16:37):
Rob, I'm so glad you said that because I was starting to think it was in my head.
I was starting to think it was like, oh, I'm imagining that this sounds like memory.
it's just, and then I was like, no, that's impo-
no, it sounds like memory.
Yeah
I feel so much better because I really thought it was like, no, Chris, you're hearingthat, you know, I mean, you know, I saw cats once on Broadway when I was like 10 years

(17:04):
old, maybe less.
I'm like, there's no way it's that embedded into my, you know, unconscious mind that I'mgoing to start hearing memory and in condom.
It's not there.
So this is all because followed by a scene that follows the Jaws playbook by setting up.
but not showing the creature.

(17:24):
Here we have a poacher played by Danny Trejo frantically trying to call for help assomething attacks his boat.
Guys, I almost didn't recognize Danny Trejo without a mustache.
And that's not his voice.
Like you're seeing Danny Trejo and he has that great iconic voice.
Was he not new at this point or something?
Because they did this over tub of this weird lightweight kind of voice over that does notmatch the guy at all.

(17:55):
No, no, and that may also have been what thrown me off.
mean, aside from the fact that he's totally clean shaven, I was just like, but like he hadbeen in movies.
Like this was not like his first, he had been working for a while.
And far fewer tattoos at this point because he's much younger.
Right.
Right.
But the windows are smashing on the boat.
The floorboards are bursting.

(18:15):
Danny Trail climbs to the like the top of the mast to get away from whatever is comingafter him.
but it's still coming.
And before it can get him, he shoots himself in the head.
He takes a pistol, shoots himself in the head.
And it's honestly it's a really effective version of this kind of tease the monsteropening scene that we have seen in so many of these movies because he's so terrified.

(18:39):
He's willing to take his own life.
And it's putting us in a place that we will return to later in the film.
Yes.
And we'll be able to recognize some elements from in there.
But there's also a lot of animals in cages and they're all really angry.
Yeah, true.
The animals are all flipping out about whatever has entered that space and is coming afterhim.

(19:00):
It's a pretty intense.
It's an intense opening and it leaves you shocked.
And it is probably I don't know.
Do you think this fairly sets up expectation for the rest of the movie?
know if the rest of the movie quite lives up to it.
It does really set a mark and I like this movie, but I didn't think it was quitenecessarily the degree of intensity that the opening sequence would have you think.

(19:24):
Well, and almost by design, um because while you don't see the monster in this beginning,you do have some floorboards exploding upward and there's some big kind of set action
going on.
And obviously the end is pretty horrific to the sequence.
Yeah.
But the rest of this movie, there's a part of me that thinks that this movie is, might beeven more nineties than scream, though in a very different manner.

(19:55):
Okay.
And part of that comes with a emotional detachment.
It is keeping you at arm's length.
I don't think this movie ever thinks you're going to be terrified the rest of the way.
It wants to do cool things and wow an audience.
Right.

(20:15):
But I don't, it really, for the most part, isn't even constructed in a way to scarepeople.
It's doing another thing.
You know, even down to oh
which I, at least as far as the films we've watched in this series, one of the innovationsis the anaconda POV compared to animal POVs we've seen in all of the movies leading up to

(20:37):
this, where this is much showier.
It's they'll Dutch it.
So they'll angle it to the side, like a snake head would be going and that sort of thing.
And it looks cool.
But of course it's by making it showier like that it's
taking it further from the animal POV building tension about a strike because it's justadding in other kind of cool elements.

(21:04):
Most of the movies today do kind of, you know, stylized animal POVs.
Well, and they're also both stunt movies.
Yeah.
That's what I refer to this stuff as in the world of wrestling.
It's like contemporary wrestling versus older wrestling, where it was about storytellingthrough slow builds and big moments.
Now it's all high spots from front to back.

(21:26):
And that's really what these movies are.
They're high spots from front to back and uh rather relentless in some cases, especiallywith the second movie, which is exhausting to get through to a certain extent.
But yeah, you're right.
mean, this isn't about scaring people.
don't it's more of like a dramatic adventure movie.

(21:47):
and more action-oriented like the movie you mentioned that came out in 1993,
Yeah, although that movie has genuinely suspenseful and, and, you know, scaring momentsbecause Steven Spielberg is, is interested in, creating, you know, he is enough of a, you
know, a Hitchcockian director that he is interested in creating a heightened sense ofsuspense.

(22:13):
And you see, there's nothing in either of these two movies.
that is as suspenseful as the moment in Jaws where the Doc is coming back at the guy.
know, it's like there's nothing that quite builds in that way.
It feels like the reaction these movies intend is more, holy shit, that's cool.
Yeah, and you bring up Spielberg and Spielberg is also interested in people.

(22:37):
Yes, and neither of these movies are interested in people.
no, we don't we don't There's no connection with it with any characters in either of thesefilms.
They're they're placeholders playing caricatures of a role that needs to be played andthis one is riddled with terrible acting and It's so distracting when some of will get to

(23:00):
everybody in a moment here, but there's some I mean it's
remarkably distant from the audience.
And I think to your point, Rob, about the POV and all that and how that distracts from thereal bill that we might find in another movie that might be similar or playing some
similar notes.
I think it has ultimately more to do with most my feeling about especially Anaconda isjust the complete disconnect from any of these people and how cartoonish

(23:31):
some of these decisions are that are being made by multiple actors in the movie from frontto back, which just keeps, it's like it keeps pushing me away.
That's what I kept feeling like in my notes reflect that as I'm watching it, it's like,God, you just don't want me to care.
Now you really don't want me to care.
And they keep pushing us farther.
And by the time it gets to the end, it's like, I'm looking at my watch, like, okay, are wedone here?

(23:54):
Interesting, interesting.
We next then go to the Arawu Jungle Hotel, Brazil, deep in the Amazon.
I like that they put that caption on screen in case I'm ever deep in the Amazon and need ahotel rec.
I have one.
We then meet Dr.
Kale, played by Eric Stoltz, and Terry Flores, played by a young Jennifer Lopez.

(24:17):
Before Lopez was cast, Gillian Anderson and Julianna Margulies were both offered the leadrole, but were unable to do it because of the shooting schedules of the X-Files and ER
respectively.
that is...
that's wild.
It is!
Yeah.
It's interesting they didn't necessarily intend a Latina uh lead character.

(24:38):
It's just they changed the last name when they cast Jennifer Lopez.
Which makes sense because to Justin's point, I don't know that the background of any ofcharacters comes through or matters other than their job.
now.
So the two, get there, they discuss their upcoming expedition, they're searching for thelost tribe, and there's definitely a little chemistry between the two.

(24:59):
Like, I honestly wasn't sure if they were supposed to be a couple in this early scene, ornot.
When did you get in?
Couple days ago.
I've been out talking to some guides, hoping they might know the whereabouts of our tribe.
Any luck?
Well, looks like there's sufficient evidence to suspect that these people are out there.
Can be found and studied.
At least that's what I told the grant people.

(25:22):
My man seemed to think that the tribe was somewhere around here between these twotributaries.
He'd found one of their markers.
Well, that's good.
Yep.
I think we may have a chance.
Well, you get me there and I'll shoot it.
I'm counting on that.
That's why I hired you.
And I'm glad you did.
I really appreciate it.
Well, I wanted the best director I could get.

(25:42):
I think we'll make a good team.
You're a mess.
What happened to you?
just a small attack of piranha.
Barely escaped with my life.
And I felt like the scene cut off rather abruptly after Cale says he barely escaped withhis life from piranha.
And I was like, oh, did they just hard cut because the next moment is them making out orlike getting together?

(26:06):
Like, I wasn't sure.
And later there's a scene where they kiss and it was like, it didn't feel like they werekissing for the first time.
It's very, very strange, this early scene.
scene you're referring to here is just bizarre all around.
First of all, Stephen shows up and she says, you look awful, like what's happened to you.
And then he tells this story about this horrendous attack and all that you see on him issome, is the knee of his pants is wet.

(26:37):
That's it.
That's the extent of the damage done.
And Stoltz is really awful in the scene.
And I don't understand.
It seems to me like something maybe they had, they had like did as a pickup, like, Hey, weneed to throw something else in here, guys.
Just come over here for a minute.
Cause it just, it seems to be lacking on all fronts.
Even just the, the think through about the damage done to him and how goofy it looks whenhe just has wet pants with Piranha.

(27:04):
And we've seen that done to successfully.
we know Piranha!
We know Piranha!
We know Piranha well, yeah.
Right or wrong, I took it as him not necessarily being truthful.
thought he doesn't play it like a super joke.
It's very dry delivery, but I just took it as there's no way that he was just attacked bypiranha to that level of confusion in a scene is generally not great.

(27:34):
Yeah, it's an odd scene.
ends abruptly.
It's an odd start.
The team then journeys up the Amazon.
We have the scene where they're assembling at the boat.
Ice Cube is the cameraman Danny.
Jonathan Hyde is the pompous narrator of the documentary, Westridge.
Owen Wilson's the sound guy, and Carrie Ware is the production manager, who are a couple,although it took me a while to figure that out.

(27:59):
But I love is when they introduce ice cube, they do have him say today is a good day.
So they, drop that in there for, the fans.
Nice, nice.
And then there's also the Captain of the Boat, Mateo, played by Vincent Castellanos.
And I will say, they actually shot much of this movie on location in Brazil, although someof the action scenes were shot at the Los Angeles County Arboretum.

(28:25):
But you can tell that they're shooting on location because of Jennifer Lopez's humidityhair.
I mean, it's really good as far as humidity hair.
Chris, you need to open a salon.
This is like that scene in Edward Scissorhands when Edward Scissorhands is on that TV showand this lady stands up in the crowd and goes, have you ever thought about offering or

(28:47):
opening your own salon?
And that's always stuck with me.
That's what I think of every time you bring up hair, which is every episode.
I don't know why.
don't know why.
got an eye for it.
What I would say points to the humidity is the fact that Matteo is straight up greasy fromthe moment we see him until we stop seeing him.

(29:08):
And you know he's there to be eaten.
know that this guy, he's getting so little screen time, they're really not paying muchattention to him.
You're like, okay, so which victim number is he?
mean, in fairness, a lot of people are there to be eaten, but he is there to be eatenearly.
So they set out on their journey.
There's some very jaunty music.

(29:28):
Like it's very like, you know, hey, we're going on an adventure kind of like it's, it'sthe jungle cruise.
Well, you forgot the entrance of Westbridge.
yes, because he shows up with two suitcases.
Giant suitcases.
does, you know, he's, he is just...
They want to make the most pompous ass character in Westridge that you could possiblyfind.

(29:55):
Careful!
no!
Fragile!
Expensive wine!
Christ!
Morning!
Morning!
Fly!
Actually, was a bloody nightmare.
Ongoing, I think.
One zoom, one...
You.

(30:15):
Stow this in my room, will you?
Excuse me?
I'm not the bell hub, I'm the production manager.
Then surely you can manage my things into my room.
He is an absolute cartoon character.
Yeah, it is so over the top and so goofy like snotty snooty Englishman.
I'm sure Jonathan Hyde is a fine actor somewhere and something.

(30:37):
It's not in this because he is so distracting.
He's just this whiny bitch from the moment that he shows up.
yeah.
And every line he says is something that would be out of like, I don't know, like.
Huckleberry Hound!
Yeah, yeah an old-timey cartoon of some sort it's ridiculous and my my next note says ohshit Owen Wilson's in this and then I put a sad face on my notes How does Owen Wilson get

(31:05):
hired in movies so the this is the trifecta
I had a similar note about Michael Rapoport in the second movie.
well, I did too.
Absolutely.
But like you ice cube is good.
But the trifecta here of terrible is Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde and Owen Wilson.
You put any one of them in a movie, they're going to distract you when the when the threeof them are in a movie.

(31:29):
It's like in Ghostbusters where they cross the street.
It's the third.
Too much.
We will get there and we get there, but Westbridge, the character you described, is who heis until enough people died that they just completely change his character because they
need him to function differently for the story to work.
Right.
And they don't really explain it at all and it doesn't match.

(31:51):
Well, when that switch happens, we'll discuss it.
But, you know, with all of this early characterization and setup scenes, I always took itas the night
late nineties version of the level of character set up that would happen in a fiftiesmonster movie.

(32:14):
That's, I think that's a good take on it.
So it feels like this is the characterization level from something like them or, uh, know,pick, pick anything you or the mole people, a favorite of mine, but in any event, so maybe
I've been genre conditioned over time that I'm just, okay, you're giving me signposts andreally they're not, they're not there so much to make you feel because they're

(32:43):
it's really differentiators.
So I know who is who.
Right.
And I will say this about this movie.
All of the stereotypes are very uniquely different.
So that on a boat filled with random camera crew members who are documentary crew membersthat I may not always know what's going on.
I always know who's going to die.

(33:05):
You know, they're very distinct from each other.
Whether or not they're likable is a secondary question.
but there's no confusion.
Which doesn't necessarily explain the on-exchange between Owen Wilson and Kara Wir'scharacters about how the jungle makes him horny.
Just me or does the jungle make you really, really horny?

(33:28):
no, I think it's the jungle.
I'm serious, I've got like one thing on my mind.
Can I work please?
What's this?
That's the late 90s.
That is, and not only the line, but who he's saying it to.
This is so late 90s.
It is crazy.
I didn't realize they were a couple at this point, I was just like, well wow, that'sforward.

(33:52):
That's a heck of a thing to say to your co-worker.
And that's just something you don't say.
I mean, even if you are sexed up in the moment somewhere, you're not like, I don't know,man, this oatmeal makes me horny.
You're throwing that out there.
Well, that's the Quaker Oats commercial that Wilford Brimley never did.

(34:13):
Owen Wilson, who's dressed like he's at a corporate beach theme party event.
Yes.
He is having this very awkward conversation with her.
And that's what I'm what I mean.
Like in the hands of a capable actor, I don't think that line would work no matter who itis.
Is it just me or does the jungle make you horny that that wouldn't work on any front?
But well, just there's nothing about connectivity with these people.

(34:36):
And this must I don't know if it goes to the script or if it goes to the director.
but people don't matter in this movie and their connections don't really matter either.
So you also, Eric Stoltz as Steven also were to think he's one of the good guys here,right?
But when we meet him, Westbridge is really rude to Terry in the beginning.

(34:59):
He's kind of rude to everybody.
We get what Westbridge is, but Steven lights a cigarette, takes a drag and then throws itin the water.
And that begs several questions.
One,
Well, not a question, just a comment.
That's a dick move in the jungle.
If they're there to find indigenous people.
But what would you be?
Why would you be polluting the very water that these people live in and around?

(35:23):
And second, what smoker does that?
Yeah.
Lights a cigarette, takes one drag and then just gets rid of it.
It doesn't make any sense.
That's not cost effective.
It's not cost effective.
is the smoking equivalent of a character throwing a gun away because they fired sixbullets.
Yes.
Before long they encounter two distressing things, Rain and John Voight.

(35:49):
John Voight plays snake hunter Paul Cerrone who the group rescues from his damaged boatand guy I mean what can we say about John Voight's performance in this movie because it is
something.
I mean, I, there's so many thoughts and feelings for me here, Chris.
I.
I there were, that's why I wanted to open it up.

(36:10):
Yeah, please do.
Cause I'm going to dive right in.
it.
so to give an analog for the folks out there who maybe haven't seen Anaconda or haven'tseen it in a long time, John Voight, amazing actor, you know, has been up for numerous
Oscars early in his career.
This guy knows the craft and I've seen him in things.

(36:31):
a professional actor who is good at his job.
He is very good and he can deliver very understated and realistic character portrayals.
He has that skill set.
absolutely.
The analog for him in Anaconda would be Pacino in the Devil's Advocate.
Oh yeah oh
Yeah.

(36:51):
An actor who has the skill set to be subtle, but has the balls to know when to not besubtle.
Like he knows, he maybe he knows what movie he's in and he is delivering for me and I, I'mloving it.
This whole movie.

(37:12):
It's got, this performance has more ham in it than an episode of pigs in space, but I findit oddly compelling.
Like it's just, cause, cause as you say, he is just swinging for the fences and it's like,it's, I mean, God, the accent is bizarre.
and comes and

(37:32):
goes that he spends so much of this movie leering.
my god, there's so much leering.
And he's basically, he's Evil Quint.
Like he is the most evil version of Quint that you could find.
Absolutely.
And don't you think that your reaction to him, that our reaction to him in this film isnot just because of what he's doing, but also because he's basically standing, he's

(37:58):
performing in front of just a bunch of cardboard cutouts.
Everyone else is so dry, so shallow in what they're doing.
It's, I mean, outside of ice
No, Ice Cube is doing good, but he hasn't got a big enough role to make it the thingthat's gonna stand.
right, right.
So I think that helps this performance.

(38:20):
This elevates what Voight is doing in a big way.
It stands in relief from most of the other people.
Well said.
Well said.
The biggest compliment that I can give his performance in this movie is that like many ofthese creature features, you don't see a lot of the monster for the first half of the
movie.
Now this one, you see a lot in the second half.

(38:41):
It showed up sooner than I thought to be perfectly on.
Well, they do give you little Reese's Pieces along the way to get me into the shed, right?
I'm all for that.
But I mean, I did not clock watch when is the snake going to show up because I didn't careas soon as they rescued John Voight, Saron from that boat.

(39:05):
I am loving this movie that just like it is not boring to me.
It is amazing.
And I
You know, you can sit here and say his performance isn't grounded and I say it's superfun.
He's the heart of the whole thing.
No, he definitely is.
definitely is.
Much more so than like, uh, Cael and Flores, cause we have that scene with them on theboat where we learn they're involved and it feels, it has, it has no spark.

(39:32):
It's funny cause one of those two characters is going to get sidelined very fast and youkind of don't miss them to be perfectly honest.
No, not at all.
Oh, my note says, thank God.
What?
We have enough boring going on among these people.
It's a movie that is not boring, which is amazing.

(39:52):
it's that that has to do with the structure of the cuts and the score, which is very good.
And in the different settings, I mean, they keep moving.
They don't hang around in one place too long throughout the whole thing.
It's.
But I was happy to see Stephen get sidelined when it happened, because I'm like, allright, enough of him.
But then it became funny at a certain point because.

(40:13):
He's sleeping through 90 % of this film.
Oh yeah.
Literally sleeping.
Not just like, oh, he's boring performance, but like he's, he's in a.
He's unconscious.
After surviving one of the most unimaginable scenarios in cinema history that we're goingto get to, you thought his piranha attack making him wet his pants was bad.

(40:36):
Wait till we get to this stuff, but anyway.
Saron claims to have seen the Shirashama tribe and he and Kayle kind of get into like apissing contest about the legends and where they might be located.
All of this is just that Saron from the get-go is trying to steer the boat in thedirection he wants it to go.

(40:57):
Snake totem.
This totem is Shire Shama.
Shire Shama worship giant snakes, anacondas, as gods, protectors.
There's a legend that passed down of a journey to a sacred lake.
First you must pass a waterfall protected by warrior snakes.

(41:19):
Once you pass those guardians, you travel through the land of the Shire Shama until youcome to a wall so high, lots of the sun.
Follow that wall for five days.
finally reaching its end, the head of a giant anaconda.
You know the story?
Of course.

(41:39):
Beautiful.
Beautiful legend.
I believe, however, it's a legend of the Maku.
Also the Shire Shama.
Not to my knowledge.
The war is high now, but the village was right here.
You'll find them down this fork.
I know.
I trapped snakes for a living.
And I'm sure you're very good at it.

(42:00):
I locate tribes for a living, and I'm very good at that.
The water level is high, which by my calculations means that the areas to this side willbe flooded, which would force our tribe, if they want to eat, to seek out higher ground.
over here.
Now, which way?
We'll go this way.

(42:21):
Westridge, come on, I want to get a shot of you with the totem.
Gary, you're roll sound.
Camera rolling.
Action.
Our first piece of luck, a Shira Sharma idol, although this is the subject of somedispute.
I know what I know.
You can accept or reject it.
Leave me at the next village.
m
And I'm going to just because I will forget to say it at the end, I won't totally spoilit.

(42:45):
But what I love is that in retrospect in this scene embodies what the famous Audubon quotethat I'm going to not get 100 % correct.
If the bird that you're seeing doesn't match the book, believe the bird.
And so
Right.
oh

(43:05):
book learning.
Maybe he should have listened to the guy who actually was in this jungle, even though he'sa murderous weirdo.
An obvious weirdo.
uh And actually get some background here on him, which we don't get from anyone else,which I think further elevates that character.
In the story, we learn that he, well, he says that he had been living in Paraguay.

(43:30):
He wanted to become a priest, but then he decided to see the real world and ended up inthe jungle.
And then he has this line where he says, his calling is now snake, is now snakes.
It's no longer God.
I'm paraphrasing there, but that's basically it.
Paul's calling transitioned from being into God to being into snakes.

(43:50):
And it's interesting to have that kind of depth there because the priest thing neverreally comes into play.
He does occasionally give a little, you know, the blessing thing when he knocks somebodyinto the, know, Anaconda invested waters and kicks him off the boat and be like, you know,
he gives him a you know, little blessing there, you know.

(44:12):
And I like that one of the characters mentioned, like refers to him as a failed priest.
And he's like, he takes Umbridge at the failed thing.
So Gary and Denise wander off one night into the jungle to quote,
get sound.
In what just seems like the stupidest idea, like these two, my God, are just, I mean, Iget it.

(44:36):
You know, you want to make out.
mean, I'm not getting frisky in the middle of this jungle.
Like, forget about
To be fair, they do need to establish Gary as a Lunkhead so that Saron can very easilyjust manipulate him very, very not too far from now.
And as they're getting frisky in the middle, something is watching them and leaps out andchases them.

(44:57):
They're saved at the last minute by Saron showing up with a rifle who shoots the creature,which turns out to be a wild boar.
So they have this moment, which is kind of a fake out of, you think they're being attackedby the Anaconda, but it's a wild boar, which they, which Saron dispatches with no problem.
And this is actually one of the, start of the sequence when they are going to leave theboat to go get the sound ostensibly.

(45:21):
It's one of my favorites where it's, you know, at night they're on the boat, they're goingto go get the sound and as they're leaving, the camera just moves down and it shows John
Voight, Saron in the foreground, you know, close to camera.
oh he's, and he's just sneering straight to camera.
straight to camera.

(45:41):
You know that he knows and it's so it is less of a surprise that he comes in at the end,but you do wonder ah why was he going out there?
Did he do it because he thought they would need protection or for perhaps another reason?
Well, we jumped, we jumped over something here.
You mentioned earlier that Chris, you were surprised when the snake showed up and we sawthat earlier.

(46:03):
We see the, I don't know, Jessica Tandy POV.
Snakes don't lean their heads to the side.
They don't do that.
It just doesn't make sense.
But we, every time we see the POV, it's like it's Michael Myers doing the head tilt.
And we see a snake, we see a panther and then a snake and panther fight.
That all occurs before these two wander off into the jungle.

(46:24):
And then we get to enjoy Westbridge playing golf on the boat because wealthy people playgolf, right?
and also he hates rap.
And he says that he could have Danny killed for $1,500.
And then Danny offers to have him killed for free.
And then there's a couple of Yo Mama jokes and then the scene wraps.
then Paul says that they are close to where they want to be.

(46:46):
And I'm like, what was their plan before Paul?
So, Serone, Paul.
Yeah.
What was their plan before they got him?
Like, was there no map?
Was there no, did they not know where they were going and they were just going to toolaround for a while?
Cause it seems like they're on a schedule.
There is discussion about delivery in a schedule here several times about, we don't havetime.

(47:08):
We need to get this thing done.
So I'm curious what their thing was.
They were not going to succeed in finding the, the, the sheer Shama tribe.
I could tell you that is that without the sarone coming in, this would have been, theywould have just gone down the Amazon and then gone back and they would have been like, you
know, cause he got what Eric Stoltz says, I'm good at finding lost tribes.

(47:32):
That's what I do.
And I'm very good at it.
And I'm like, are you?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
lay out what we're going to do on this trip.
This is like day of the animal where these people wander off into the wilderness andhopefully things work out.
We should have some food delivered at some point.
oh

(47:54):
What he's not good at is fixing the boat's propeller when it gets jammed underwater and heputs on scuba gear to go underwater and fix it.
And while he's down there, he's attacked by something and they pull him out of the water.
they, and in one of the more like upsetting moments, they discover a wasp in his mouth andlike they pull it out.

(48:18):
What I didn't understand is how the wasp got there.
because he was wearing like a scuba breather.
Yeah.
And he just starts flailing around underwater.
Yeah.
But, and this is just a few moments after, after Steven talks about there being a catfishthat swims up your urethra.
At which point, at which point Danny says he wants to get the hell back to LA and thenSteven jumps in the water in a full scuba gear and then just starts like flailing around

(48:45):
like, like he's in crocodile.
And they don't have the money to show the crocodile.
So they just have the ladies flail around in the water.
That's really what it was.
Right.
And Paul is just leering at every girl in this movie.
Every girl.
I mean.
predator eyes.
He's trumping it up and just creepy, awful.
And then there's an insect, what?

(49:07):
Which ends up being credited to someone else's doing later.
Right, and I didn't understand that.
We'll get to that later.
I mean, I was like, is he stung through the wetsuit and then he lost his breather and thenthe thing crawled in his mouth?
That seems cumbersome, which is maybe why they didn't show it.
just like, hey, we need to have this guy sidelined.

(49:28):
ah And then Saron has to do an emergency.
It's like a tracheotomy, but it's got a different word that I will struggle to pronouncedespite writing it my notes phonetically.
I think anyone who's seen enough movies will know it as a Bic pen octomy.

(49:49):
for, for you Europeans, that would be a biro.
ah
We have international listeners and we want them to know what it is.
Yeah, it's the pick-pen bit and that saves his life.
But it takes Eric Stoltz out of the movie for the rest of the picture.
He is lying in bed on this boat as they try to get him back to civilization.

(50:13):
And I don't under, I don't understand what this procedure even did for him because theyshove, they get a tube and they shove it in his neck and then the tube is never seen
again.
Like just putting the tube in there, apparently did whatever needed to be done.
Right.
And he's fine.
It didn't stay in there.
And then they just got away with the old bandage trick back to wrestling gimmicks herewhere someone, they kicked me in the ribs.

(50:37):
And so next time they show up with like a band, an ACE bandage around there.
midsection.
that tells Or on their ear.
We need to know.
Yeah.
Or on their ear when things are fake.
so it's curious how he survived this.
They cut him open with a pocket knife and shove a tube in his throat and he's fine.
Right.
He just needs to sleep.
Well, here's the thing is, and this speaks to what you're saying, after this initial scenewhere like they, you know, the pulling the wasp out of the mouth is, is, is a gruesome

(51:06):
moment.
And then I never, after that, I never felt like he was in any real danger.
He's just resting comfortably in the cabin.
Like you could have made more of a meal out of, is he going to die or not?
Right.
But in order to get him now, they have to get him back to a proper medical facility.
So in order to do that, they end up taking the shorter route, which happens to be thedirection Saron wanted to go in the first place, because it could be this guy is up to no

(51:32):
good.
Like, this movie is not subtle about who the bad guy is.
And it's at the point where there's no doubt.
This is the moment that I, in my notes, realized this character is the Vic Moro characterin any exploitation movie.
oh Had he been around, I would have loved to have seen his take on this.

(51:54):
my god, Vic Morrow would have been amazing.
Yeah, not that, not that voids lacking for me in any way, but it is that kind of characterfor sure.
They should have named him Paul hammer in honor, but even without the name, it is, it is,I just love it.
I mean, uh there's one scene of him eating.

(52:17):
Did you like he's eating something, I even know what it was, but there's a scene of himeating and it is just disgusting to watch.
It's like it's like Denethor in Return of the King bad as far as like just it isunpleasant to watch this person eat.
Even those little details, uh you've talked about the idea of the platonic ideal of acertain type of movie.

(52:40):
This to me is the platonic ideal of big budget exploitation.
Jaws is a better overall film, but this movie is exploitation in with a big budget in,every sense of the word.
And they are, I mean, that's what they're going for.
Well, it's interesting because in a lot of ways, both of the movies this week are kind ofreally following the Jaws model more than some of the movies that have come previously in

(53:09):
the series.
Like Jaws was a B picture done, you know, produced at an A picture level.
And what happened, what we saw throughout the series is very quickly they go back to sortof B picture.
uh budget levels.
I'm not talking about the quality of the movie itself.
I'm talking about the budget level that it was produced at.

(53:29):
know, mean, movies like Grizzly and Piranha are much more, you know, lower budget affairs.
Whereas here you have big studio money doing ostensibly what, you know, the comparison toa 50s, you know, creature feature is apt.
It doesn't feel that far away from something like the creature from the Black Lagoon.

(53:53):
It's not as cool as the creature from the Black Lagoon, but you know, it's, know, thejungle setting, the boat, you you get, you get a vibe.
Absolutely.
Both being centered around a boat trip down the river.
You can't help but see those comparisons between the movies.
Right.
Right.
So they go in the direction Saron wants and they soon come across a wall barring their wayup the river.

(54:17):
So rather than go back the way they came and risk not getting Kale the medical attentionhe needs, they decide to blow up the wall.
They don't.
okay, Saron has dynamite.
Saron has dynamite.
And so he's ready for anything.
And his immediate reaction is let's blow this thing up.
Yeah.
And it doesn't take long for him to bring everybody else on board with him in thisdecision.

(54:39):
Again, these are documentary filmmakers going to capture lost people to not lost, but tofind this mythical tribe that
may exist, that should exist.
And so, if you're dedicated to that kind of mission, no one stands- up?

(55:03):
Why would you blow something like this up?
That could be something very important to them culturally.
It could be any number of things, but within about 30 seconds, everyone's like, all right,yeah, go ahead.
blow it up.
And what is amazing is that they don't even like take the time or trouble to get the boatfar enough away from blowing this thing up because they blow up this wooden barrier.

(55:27):
And not only does the boat get covered with debris, which knocks all of their gas drumsinto the river.
So now they're low on gas on top of everything.
They also get covered with hundreds of little tiny baby snakes and the snakes.
And I need to make a point about this gas situation here because it popping up in my notesfor the rest of the movie.

(55:49):
The gas becomes very quickly becomes a problem for them.
In fact, stops they're making along the way are an effort to find more fuel.
All they had to do was bring those barrels back on the boat.
That's literally all they had to do.
at the
there's, I mean, it may even be the next stop.

(56:10):
I can't remember the order of things here, but they end up getting off the boat, goingsomewhere, hoping that there's gas there, and they come back with this giant trunk with
them.
So they're more than happy to make the trip and whatever it takes to get some enormoustrunk back on the boat.
But the simple act of retrieving the fuel in these sealed cans, by the way, that wouldhave floated because they're not, there's no way there wasn't any air inside these things.

(56:38):
And they just decide to just leave them behind.
But then that immediately starts causing a problem for everybody.
But they keep talking about it like there was just no choice.
And I'm thinking there was a choice.
A choice was made not to get the fuel you need.
Honestly, you could have just backed up the boat another 20 feet or
But it does give us the chance for Paul, Saron, to grab these baby snakes and just startthrowing them back in the water and he goes, back to your mama.

(57:03):
oh
he says babies, all of them babies, it's really unpleasant.
Babies, all of them babies.
Well, how do we get them off the boat?
Come on, Thank you, my mother.
Yeah, John Voight, anything he says in this movie is kind of really unpleasant.
I mean, again, he goes all in.

(57:26):
You can't say he is going half measures with this character.
It's in this very scene where Westridge ends up with a little snake stuck on the tip ofhis finger.
This scene is given more time than almost any other injury in this film.
And then Saron says, so young and yet so lethal before taking the snake off of Westridge'sfinger.

(57:51):
And I'm like, yeah.
You know, you talked about the failed priest thing and a character who has that and sethis given lines like so young, so lethal.
Yeah.
Constantly calls someone baby bird.
I mean, this is the character he is performing.
Yeah.
Like, Kind of creepy.

(58:11):
Definitely not hiding the ball and dangerous.
It's like, this is the guy.
This is the guy.
They next come upon an abandoned boat and they go on board now looking for more fuelbecause they have to get they just left the drums back in the river.
And we come to realize that this is the same boat from the opening and there's a picturewith Danny Trejo, Matteo and Saron.

(58:34):
So they were apparently all some kind of team.
And isn't that picture a newspaper article?
It's so weird that they the bad guys have like a souvenir newspaper article of them beingbad guys like snake poaching.
Somehow this was newsworthy and they're like, we got to save that one.

(58:54):
Put it on the fridge, baby.
if I was in the paper, would still, clip it out.
The three of us were there for podcasting, you know, whatever it is.
I'd put that on the fridge.
But Sarone and Danny, as you said, they take this big box back to the boat, which I don'teven remember what was in it.
was
like a missile looking thing.
That's what it looks like.
It looks like a rocket launcher, like a disassembled rocket launcher or something.

(59:17):
Am I wrong?
No, you're not wrong.
It's strange that it feels like it doesn't, like it feels like they make such a thing outof taking this giant ass box and it takes like, Saron and Danny are carrying it through
the water back to the boat and they make such a thing out of it that when I was going backand watching scenes for ass like, wait, what was in that box?

(59:38):
Like that they made such a big deal of getting.
But Mateo lags behind and he falls in the water and that's.
when we get our first real anaconda appearance.
And it is surprising.
mean, it is a jump scare for sure.
And again, this is where we get the contrast, as I mentioned earlier, between the digitaleffects which are in their relative infancy.

(01:00:03):
In some shots, the anaconda is digital.
And in some shots, the anaconda up close is practical.
The practical anaconda is amazing.
Yeah, especially at the end.
Especially at the end.
And the snake wraps around Matteo, it constricts him so he can't even scream, even thoughhe can see the others in the distance.
um And then, you know, we don't know what happened to Matteo, but we're not looking good.

(01:00:28):
No, we see it.
We see it break his neck.
see him break his neck.
We don't actually see it consume him, think, this point.
They hold that guard.
But then they're back on the boat wondering, like, hey, where's Matteo?
And while we didn't see the newspaper article connecting the three, you know, DannyTrejo's character who died at the beginning, Mateo and Saron, it's been clear this from as

(01:00:51):
soon as Saron came on the boat.
He and Mateo are giving each other.
It's a lot of looks.
Not subtle slide.
The entire time Saron talks to Mateo and Mateo just follows Saron's orders as if Saron isin charge.
No one comments on that.
It's been set up this whole time.
now that Mateo has to be one of the first of this boat crew to die, the movie decides itneeds someone else to be Saron's number oh two.

(01:01:20):
And Mateo's death is what triggers really several Mr.
trademark changes of heart for multiple characters who just become a completely differentcharacter because, well, the story needs them to be.
So we're starting with Owen Wilson, who was just a guy made horny by the jungle.

(01:01:42):
And now is, when Saron uncoils his big snake skin and reveals that he's trying to capturea giant anaconda alive for what could be worth a million dollars.
Well, he says that and Owen Wilson will do whatever that Saron wants.
Well, first Danny goes, the only compassionate person on this boat, apparently Danny'slike, no, we got to go see what happened to him.

(01:02:09):
Right.
And Danny goes out in search of Mateo and he, Danny gets in the water.
He's wading back through this filthy water.
And then at one point you see him walking down these stairs in this building.
after he presumably just stepped out of this swamp water,

(01:02:30):
And he's wearing these pure white, absolutely clean Converse All-Stars that look as thoughthey were just pulled out of the wardrobe department out of a box as he's making his way
down the stairs.
And I'm like, man, and we, was the same thing when we were watching Crocodile Fury wherethe guy, the pointless military guy.

(01:02:53):
that was being shot for a different movie.
He's wearing Converse All-Stars too, and he's through mud and being attacked by all thesethings.
And they show his feet entering a scene at one point, going downstairs, same thing, justthe purest, cleanest Converse All-Stars.
Now, maybe this is a testament to the ability of Converse All-Stars to repel filth.

(01:03:14):
that's, maybe I'm missing the point on that one, but I thought that was.
very funny and to choose to shoot his feet first in the next shot was very, very weird.
you know, Westridge, he freaks out saying, Mateo is certainly dead.
gotta get the hell out of there and that sort of thing.
they, they, they, know, Mateo is a coming back and they move on, they move on down theriver.

(01:03:39):
so Saron, you know, he, he's going to have, he's going to try and capture an anaconda.
He, he uses a dead monkey as bait to attract it.
Um, which there's too many dead monkeys in this movie.
It's kind of upsetting for those of us who love monkeys.
And he's, shooting them to use them as bait.
It's not like, I found this monkey.
Let me put it to use.

(01:04:00):
It's no, it's I'm going to kill a monkey to use it as bait.
Um, and he's got the line going behind these dragging the line behind the, behind theboat.
And, know, in, in, you know, it's kind of like a, uh, similar to Quint and jaws with the,with the real.
And in Jaws, book, Quint actually has a dead baby dolphin that he uses as the ultimatebait.

(01:04:22):
So it's a little reminiscent of that.
I don't know that.
uh
plan works because the anaconda shows up and we have this whole scene where the anacondais you know is on the line and there's a whole there's a whole battle with the anaconda um
before it frees itself you know from the from the line and then spits the monkey out atwest route

(01:04:44):
That was funny.
And the sounds this thing makes, it's so like, like I don't know if snakes actually makesounds like this, but it is awesome.
The snake noises were done by prolific voice actor, Frank Welker, who was also the voiceof Megatron in the Transformers.
So weird.
I just thought that it sounded like a raptor or something.

(01:05:06):
It sounds like a bird Squawking when it's going
Perhaps like a baby bird?
Baby bird, baby bird, baby bird.
Denise gets knocked into the water.
Gary jumps in after her.
And while she gets back into the boat, Gary is not so lucky as the anaconda grabs him bythe face and pulls him into the river.

(01:05:31):
So we got rid of Owen Wilson.
This is one of the CG, big CG shots in the movie.
And look, the motion in the snake texture on the skin aren't absolutely terrible.
They're, you know, they're decent.
The depth looks all wrong.
It looks like a one dimensional CG thing is overlay.

(01:05:54):
Yes.
With the 3D live action footage.
So that part, the, the melding of the two, they clearly just didn't have the horsepower.
you know, because that cost a lot of money back then, not running, it still does, but Ithink you could do better now for on a cheap budget.
But considering that this is at the lower budget level, one year removed from spawns Cape,this is like light years better than that.

(01:06:19):
So you do see even at the lower budget level that the, I mean, exponential growth in howthe CG can look still on a low budget here, you're not getting Jurassic park results.
But it's getting better.
even just the conception of the shot, because what happens is at the end of this bit, wesee the snake going through the water, moving through the water, we see it's got a big

(01:06:42):
bulge in it where it's got Owen Wilson inside of it, and you see his face, that's upagainst the snake from inside.
And just to conceive of a shot like that, because there's no way to do that with practicalin a way that like that had to be a digital.
I think it's cool how the snake bites Gary in the face and then spins him around kind oflike twists him in half and As he's crushing him and then they both fall into the water

(01:07:08):
with like a uh post on the pier Yeah, I thought that that was very interesting way to Punintended I guess wrap that whole thing up.
My next note is Denise is sad.
I am NOT And then there's that shot of the snake with Owen Wilson inside of it, which is awelcome sight
I'm going say when a snake, when a snake eats a meal, especially a large one, like if itconsumes a buffalo or gazelle or whatever, they just sit there and digest because they

(01:07:42):
need all the energy they can do.
Exactly.
This thing in this shot in this movie is booking through the water.
It is like flying away from us.
You could tell they were excited to get that shot in there of the face poking out frominside.
I think that it might be because when it comes to man eating anacondas, I heard thatthey're unique among snakes, that they are not satisfied after eating a victim.

(01:08:11):
They will even regurgitate their prey in order to kill and eat again.
I think I picked that up in my research.
Maybe the only opening crawl in movie history about regurgitation too.
Honestly, I'm looking for another and I can't find it.
Flores tries to seduce Serone so Danny can get the jump on him.

(01:08:32):
They do do an interesting thing here where like Serone sees Danny coming, but he doesn'trealize is that Westridge is in on it too and they knock him out and tie him up.
But he takes a, did you notice that kiss that he stole?
so they burst, everybody burst, basically comes in the room, like rushes the room, like asquat team.
And he looks and he sees what's happening before throwing Terry away, he grabs her andforces her to kiss him.

(01:08:57):
And then he throws her away.
I'm like, what a creep to get every inch he can.
Absolutely, absolutely.
But his face when fake Richard Attenborough tire irons him in the back is, just, like itpowers my soul.
It's amazing.

(01:09:18):
Paul in that scene when she's seducing him, when Terry, Jennifer Lopez's character isseducing him, he has this great line that where he's like, he says to her in this like
sultry whisper, he's like, it has been a long time since I had a woman.
Oh, that's just what every woman wants to hear.

(01:09:40):
Add a woman.
Yeah, Ed Gein.
Moving on.
uh Yeah, but here's the mistake they make is that they get they they get uh Sarone tied upand everything and they don't just immediately throw them overboard for good measure,
which is what Danny suggests.
And he's tied up like a bad guy in Scooby Doo.

(01:10:02):
They have one rope wrapped around his midsection and the rest of him is free to dowhatever.
And he's sitting there like, man, they really got me.
And you're looking at it going, well, just stand up.
And he does eventually just stand.
Eventually, he does a kind of like, he does a kind of Ethan Hunt move to get out of there.
But they come across a waterfall which matches this year's Shama legend and the boat runsup on the rocks and they get stuck.

(01:10:28):
now they, Flores, Danny and Westridge all have to leave the boat to free it.
And by this point, Westridge has taken a turn to be not an asshole.
He's the most competent one of all about how to survive in the jungle.
All of us.
And now he knows how to drive a boat!
how to drive the bus giving Danny lessons on how to drive the bus.
This is what Rob was talking about earlier.
like transformation in this character, it's as though literally they shot this first andthen they went back and realized, oh crap, we gotta make you a dick.

(01:10:54):
And so we need to restructure your performance here.
He's so nice to Danny in that scene.
And he's talking and they're joking back and forth.
He has been so mean to Danny the whole film, absolutely dismissive.
now they're like, Westridge is like, us back to Chris.
crisp sheets and hot showers and Danny's like, I'd even take the LA traffic.

(01:11:16):
And they're like, ha ha ha, laugh, laugh, laugh.
And only when Danny's driving the boat, by the way, does it run a ground.
Yeah.
When everybody else is driving it, we're fine.
I did think it was funny too, how when they see the waterfall, Sarone goes, there's awaterfall.
Yeah, we know there's a waterfall, Paul.

(01:11:38):
It's right in front of us.
It's the only thing that we can look at here.
And then he goes, the legend was right.
And then they get stuck.
noted that the legend was right and I thought like oh the the sheer Shama are gonna play abigger role in the last act of this but it didn't really happen.
But Westridge does make a valuable comment here.
He says the last time he was in water like this, he was up all night picking leeches offmy scrotum.

(01:12:04):
It's a long time to be picking leeches off your scrotum.
Why would you need a whole night?
Honestly, I'm getting those things off as fast as possible.
That tells me that Westridge is into some weird shit because he didn't give any kind ofcontext to why he was in them, whatever water he's referring to or where the leeches came
from.
But the fact that involved is his scrotum that he specifically says also how many moviesthat we've had in the series have had the word scrotum in them.

(01:12:30):
None.
Just one.
Anaconda, which also is a name that makes sense when you're thinking about thesereferences and all night.
My notes say in all caps, all night question.
I think they were Tontric leeches.
They could go all night.

(01:12:52):
Put on another one.
that's not even his voice.
I did the wrong voice.
That's my, that's my sarong, I'm sorry.
But it's not going to be the least of his problems because as he's climbing around, theanaconda is going to show up and attacks Westridge.

(01:13:14):
And Westridge, again, because his character has entirely changed, know, heroically climbsup the waterfall to try and like lure the anaconda away from the boat and from Danny and
Flores and everything.
But that anaconda is coming for him.
it, like it climbs up the waterfall too.
Like, guess it's a nearby tree.

(01:13:35):
There's a great shot where the snake head comes through the waterfall at Westridge andthen Westridge jumps off of the falls, which again makes sense to jump.
And then the super snake anaconda catches him in midair.
It's amazing.
Really is.

(01:13:55):
poor Westbridge for being in the industry has clearly never seen a horror movie becausethe waterfall is not a good place to hide.
is never a good place.
Man.
We got to get in Grizzly.
Well, I she wasn't hiding.
She was just sort of wandering.
Wander
But even with the final terror or oh gosh, there was a back on the Friday.

(01:14:19):
For that's it.
That's it.
That's a great scene.
That is one of the greats all time great scenes in slasher horror.
So when they're messing around by the water and he she feels him under the water.
mean, that's incredibly effective.
What's not effective is that in this scene where Westridge gets caught by the snake inmidair, like it's he he's caught like a baseball and crushed a tree also falls onto the

(01:14:44):
boat.
Yeah.
And this is the first time that our friend sleeping Steven is stirred from his slumber.
He wakes up a little bit because naturally a tree has come crashing through the top of theboat.
Danny gets stuck.
Well, you'll get there.
But my point about this tree, when they show the tree hitting the boat, it looksdevastating.

(01:15:05):
It looks like it destroys at least the upper deck on the boat and you never see or hearanything about that damage again.
It's like they did this shot and then realized we can't roll with this.
We can't like, just needed to wake him up.
Cause cause what happens is what all of this is going on with the anaconda and thewaterfall.
Sarone frees himself using an Ethan Hunt move up the pole.

(01:15:29):
And, he, he, you know, he kills Denise, you know, cracks her, her neck, whatever breaksher neck.
Which is straight out of Tank Girl.
Like Tank Girl did the same thing when she's with those creeps in the transport vehicleand she kind of lures that guy in and says, you want to come closer or something?
And she wraps her legs around his head and snaps his neck.
That's such a great moment.

(01:15:50):
It is.
It is.
It's much less enjoyable to see John Voight do it.
So, mean, so he's on the boat, he's got the gun, there's a struggle for control of theboat and, you know, he's got the gun, he's going to shoot.
But then Kale, who has woken up, stabs him in the back with a tranquilizer dart.

(01:16:10):
And then Danny punches him and knocks him into the lake.
At least they left him for dead.
Although, spoiler, he ain't dead.
Well, and that shot of him going into the water, it seems like it's ADR after the fact,probably off of a note from someone where you get the line, damn, the dark came out his

(01:16:30):
back.
so that you like, you know, he's coming back.
They, they want you to know he's coming back.
And they were in post and they realized we didn't get that.
Yeah, for sure.
How can we cover our asses?
And they need to, there is an interesting shot in here of the snake.
When it wraps around Danny, it bites into Denise's dead body, like bites into Denise'sbody.

(01:16:56):
And then Terry shoots the snake a few times as, it swims away.
Paul is just punching everybody.
And yells at Terry, you killed my warrior snake.
He's so upset.
He's-
I mean, I don't know how many, if I had a nickel for every time I said that.
He yeah, this is before all before the tranquilizer Paul goes on a punching spree and thentalks about his warrior snake and all that stuff and then we get all the dark came out of

(01:17:24):
his back and then Terry gets Stephen back on his bed That's enough stolts for now and thenand then he just is now put back into his hibernating state for the remainder of the film.
Yeah
Yeah, yes.
And the snake is killed.

(01:17:46):
It's shot and killed.
They keep going down the river and they get to like a foundry or something.
It looks like a factory in the middle of the jungle.
And I think this is the part of the film that was shot at the Los Angeles County Arboretumbecause you could kind of see palm trees in the background if you look closely.
And again, they have to go look for fuel because they lost all the fuel drums.

(01:18:10):
And Saron very quickly pops up and knocks both of them out.
He ties uh Danny and Flores together again.
know, John of it is he's back on this.
He's back asleep.
You know, he's, he's, he's out for the count and he ties them together, drenches them inmonkey blood to attract another giant and a condom.

(01:18:33):
And the second most disturbing shot in this movie is when you just see like the littlemonkey's hand hanging down from the table where
Sarod is draining the blood.
It's like, it's really upsetting.
It's a lot of blood from a
monkey.
And then they cut to a shot of the two of them tied up Scooby-Doo style.
Back to back.
And Danny has almost no blood on him at all.

(01:18:55):
It was a full bucket of Carrie blood.
It was a lot.
It was exactly that.
was the bucket from Gary full of blood.
And then Paul goes starts describing the scene.
This dust is all made from human bones.
This is what you get after.
All that dust is from human bones?

(01:19:17):
What are you doing in here?
What is this foundry doing?
What are you making paper out of?
leaves behind after it's digested.
That's the, that's the, it's all this, this is what's left behind.
It's just.
When in reality the production used the dust created by the prior scene chewing and strewnit about.

(01:19:40):
But like, so he's got this plan to attract another giant anaconda, but holy shit, Saron isa pretty damn good snake hunter because every time he tries to lure an anaconda, he does
it almost immediately because immediately another anaconda shows up and comes down fromthe ceiling in a shot that was clearly a CGI shot, but I really liked where the snake is

(01:20:02):
hanging down and kind of facing uh Terry and Danny.
It's a good shot.
Again, the CGI, you know it's CGI, but it's still a good shot.
Yeah.
When the CG works in this movie, it's kind of like your Margaritie miniatures.
Right.
Does it look real?
Maybe not, but does it look good enough?

(01:20:23):
Yeah.
And have like a cool design for some of them, not every CG shot in the movie, but
there's a few, yeah, there's some that are less so.
Saron traps this thing in a net along with Flores and Danny, but the snake busts loose andthen he goes up.
Saron starts trying to climb away from it, but like, you know, it goes up to the ladderand grabs him.

(01:20:44):
And I mentioned that the little monkey's hand was the second most disturbing shot.
The most disturbing shot is when the anaconda at last eats John Voight.
and we get the shot from inside the animal's throat as it swallows him?
Yeah.
Oh, and this is practical and
This is practical and it's amazing.

(01:21:05):
is amazing.
If you want to talk about the, is the ending worth the wait?
This shot is, is, it, is that it's gold.
It really is.
It really is.
And then we have like an ending chase with the anaconda that probably goes on a little toolong.
We get the moment prophesied in the opening crawl where the anaconda regurgitates a stillalive John Voight who lives just long enough to wink at Jennifer Lopez.

(01:21:34):
And then be eaten again.
I think Saron embodies to thine own self be true because he knows he's going away, butwhat does he want to do?
Be creepy one last time to Terry Flores.
steal that last kiss
Yeah, you know, Flores climbs up the smokestack or whatever this this building is.

(01:21:55):
The snake is following her.
Danny lights it on fire.
And Flores does like a diehard with the rope off the top as it blows.
And then everybody lands in the water and the snakes on fire and it's still coming afterthem.
I the snake looks so cool.
The practical snake when it's on fire here, it's like, it reminded me of Christine.
Yeah.

(01:22:15):
You know, when she's burning and driving, I mean, what an iconic image.
It is the coolest.
I think the snake looks in this movie.
It's it's on fire.
And then like it slinks like it was like, it's dying.
It's it's slinks back in the water.
But then just when they need it to, it pops up one more time straight through the dock.

(01:22:35):
Like Jason Voorhees style comes up straight through the dock and then Danny kills it withan axe.
And, uh, and then, there we go.
and then Cole wakes up after sleeping through most of the movie and they, in the end, theyfind the Shira Shamatran in the most anticlimactic.
Like I thought, Oh,
They're going to get into a thing and the snakes going to be there and then the tribesgoing to save them at the end or something because they know these snakes.

(01:23:01):
They've lived with them.
but instead they find the tribe.
Yup.
They mentioned, Oh, I the run was right.
We should have gone this way to find the tribe.
Yeah.
Danny says he's going to get the camera and then you just roll credits with sad musicplaying.
oh
about three seconds.
It's about the duration of my cameo in Sharknado.

(01:23:23):
The length of the scene of this tribe that has been kind of at the heart of the mission,the entire movie.
They show it real briefly, not ever in the same shot with these actors, by the way.
Right.
And then they hard cut to the boat driving off into the sunset.
Well, I guess they got they got what they came No, they're done now they're gonna they'regonna die on the way

(01:23:45):
How did they keep?
Well, anyway, we're asking too many questions.
Push through with willpower.
Yeah.
Well, I don't think I don't think Jennifer Lopez or Ice Cube showed up in the sequels andthere were sequels because this movie did pretty well.
Like it did like one hundred and thirty six million dollars worldwide.
And there was a whole series of Anaconda direct to video sequence.

(01:24:08):
think like the second movie, I think it's like Anaconda, The Hunt for the Blood Orchidmight have been a theatrical release, but then the rest of them were all direct to video.
apparently, guys, I don't know if you knew this, there is a reboot.
of Anaconda coming this year.
Now, the reboot will apparently have more of a comic bend, but because it stars JackBlack, I think, and Paul Rudd.

(01:24:35):
I think I have that right.
But the premise is a group of adults who journey into the jungle to shoot a remake oftheir favorite film, Anaconda.
So that's the thing.
I'm just, I'm just going to go into my hyperbaric sleep pod.
I'll set the date for opening the opening of the Anaconda.

(01:25:00):
December 2025, opening for Anaconda.
No one needs me until then, it's fine.
yeah.
Again, but this did, this was sort of the beginning of that wave of creature features fromthe late 90s into the present day through the 21st century.

(01:25:22):
And a lot of them direct to uh video, and a lot of them sort of sequels to Anaconda, aswell as our second film today, which also utilized CGI to realize it's man-eating
creatures.
As we go back into the water,
final movie in our series, least for now, 1999's Deep Blue Sea.

(01:25:46):
Tell me, Mr.
Franklin, have you ever known anyone without timers?
What if you could end all that suffering with a single pill?
Give me till Monday morning, 48 hours.
I'll give you a result that'll skyrocket your stock price.
In the most advanced research facility in the world.
Beneath its glassy surface, a world of gliding monsters.

(01:26:10):
team of specialists is working against the clock.
Did someone order the fish?
On an experiment to benefit mankind.
Sharks never show any loss of brain activity as they age.
We're close to the reactivation of the human brain cell.
But before they can save millions of lives,

(01:26:31):
I didn't
impossible.
Sharks do not swim backwards.
can't.
They'll have to find a way to save their own.
Released in the summer of 1999, Deep Blue Sea was written by Duncan Kennedy and Donna andWayne Powers.
Kennedy was an Australian screenwriter who was prompted to write the original script afterwitnessing the aftermath of a shark attack on a beach near his home.

(01:27:00):
And the recurring nightmares that that inspired made him want to write a shark attackmovie that was, quote, different from Jaws.
And I think in that regard,
This movie is different from Jaws, although it certainly does acknowledge Jaws a number oftimes.
Apparently the original title for the film, get this, was not Deep Blue Sea, it was DeepRed.

(01:27:28):
Interesting.
yeah.
And I, cause I have to say, obviously you can't do that, but also that would have deprivedus of a great title drop.
We get a sweet title drop towards the end.
we'll get there.
The film was directed by Finnish director Renny Harlan.

(01:27:48):
Now Harlan had a very successful run in the late 80s and early 90s with movies likeNightmare on Elm Street 4, The Dream Master, Die Hard 2, and Cliffhanger.
He also directed the Andrew Dice Clay vehicle, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, which Isaw in the movie theater.
In fact, I saw all of those movies that I just mentioned in the movie theater come tothink of it.

(01:28:10):
which if my memory serves correct is your only chance to see Ed O'Neill singing bootedtime, booted time across the USA.
God.
I can't remember.
his disco song that he did?
You know, honestly, I saw it in 1990 and then I haven't seen it since.
I have been wanting to revisit it because I'm kind of curious as to what it might be.

(01:28:33):
I have not seen it since then either, but booty time was I think seared into my memory.
So there you go.
at O'Neill, how could it not?
Harlan then had a bit of a career downturn following the significant commercialdisappointment of the 1995 pirate adventure film Cut Third Island, which I did not see in

(01:28:54):
theaters and have not seen.
A film that was a very expensive bomb that was basically the final nail in the coffin forCarolco Pictures.
Deep Lucy features an amazing cast.
Like it's got a terrific cast.
Thomas Jane, Saffron Burroughs, LL Cool J.
Michael Rapoport, Jacqueline McKenzie, Stellan Skarsgård, and Samuel L.

(01:29:15):
Jackson.
And it feels, I think even more so than the first film this week, it feels very 90s to me.
my goodness.
This is, uh, this is like the Conair 90s.
Yes.
It has that feel.
Absolutely.
What I think is interesting about Deep Blue Sea is that it's one of those movies that isclearly evocative of other movies, but it's drawing from so many sources that it doesn't

(01:29:43):
necessarily feel derivative of any one of them.
Like there's obviously some Jaws here.
There's quite a bit of Jurassic Park, a little Alien, a little Titanic.
Honestly, there's a little Day of the Animals too, because like that film, Deep Blue Seafeels structured like a disaster movie.

(01:30:04):
Yeah, absolutely.
And another thing that kind of sets deep blue sea apart.
asks the question, what if Quint and Hooper were the same person, but also a model?
Yes, that would be Carter played by Pytomus James.

(01:30:25):
oh, I'm talking about Dr.
Susan McAllister played by Zephyr.
They are both models, but I think he's he's not as much of a hooper, I would say.
He's kind of like your Quint Brody.
You're quit Brody and she's your quit.

(01:30:46):
So we open with a scene that is very intentionally reminiscent of the opening of many ofthese movies we've talked about, including Jaws, people making out near the water.
We know from all these movies that horniness attracts danger and we have here two coupleseach hooking up on their own side of a two-hulled boat.
Guys, if you have more than one horny couple in your group, it's nice that they each gettheir own hull.

(01:31:10):
to make out of.
But did you notice how the two couples are vampires?
Because they clearly have blood in that wine bottle, given what it does to the shark.
They knock over the wine glass and the wine goes in the water and the shark, the shark'son its way folks, is going to react as if it was pure human blood.

(01:31:35):
I just assumed the shark was a drunk.
Do you know what vintage that is?
I'm coming.
My piece of advice to these couples is if you're going to go out on a boat to hook up,maybe leave the stuffed bear at home because you know that that guy is going into the
water and it's going to happen.

(01:31:58):
What these couples don't know is that what the audience knows is that a shark is watchingbecause we've seen enough movies at this point.
We know that a shark is coming and it wastes no time in smashing through the hull of theboat, knocking not only the bear, but
both couples into the water, one of them with a comic head bump where the head goes back,bumps the other one, and they both go off.

(01:32:20):
And we see that shot of the stuffed bear sinking.
Bottom.
Why is it sinking?
Wouldn't it just float?
Wouldn't it just float at the top?
Why is it going down to Davy Jones Lock?
It's about the loss of childhood innocence.
It is, it is.
It's about our collective loss of childhood.
And what it's interesting to me is that Deep Blue Sea seems to be deliberately startingwhere Jaws ended.

(01:32:46):
Like that movie begins with an attack on a lone swimmer and then ends with a boat beingtaken apart by a shark.
This movie is saying, no, no, no, we're starting with a boat getting smashed up by ashark.
And the sequence as you're about to go right from the get-go, this movie messes with thebeats that you're expecting.

(01:33:07):
Exactly.
Exactly.
is, it is, this is right from the beginning starts subverting expectations.
So the shark is headed right for one of the couples in the water and just as it's about tochomp down on them, it gets hit with a harpoon line and stopped dead in its tracks because
Thomas Jane is the shark punisher.

(01:33:29):
He is there to stop the sharks.
And it's a great intro for his character.
We don't know who he is, but we know this dude can stop sharks.
He's bad, Carter Blake, by the way.
He's a badass until he speaks.
Because he looks great.
He's doing tough guy stuff.

(01:33:49):
But in a minute when he comes up and he has a conversation with somebody, he's like, Idon't remember what his line is, whatever it is, he's like, there's lots of sharks in
here.
You're like, is it Owen Wilson?
His voice just does not match how he looks.
It's like Danny Trejo in the last movie where you're hearing it, you're seeing it, but thetwo aren't connecting in your brain.

(01:34:13):
Thomas and I have to confess, I haven't seen Thomas Jane in anything else.
I think I saw part of Meg, which isn't he the main guy in Meg?
thought he was.
that?
the man!
He punches out the man!
Okay, I've never seen that I've never seen a movie with this guy in it, but I know he's inlots of movies
He was in the Punisher, he was a Punisher.
He was one of the Punishers.

(01:34:35):
m
probably did something with his voice if they made him sound tough.
He does get a cool introduction here though, and it's one of several that his characterwill get.
Like they keep introducing it, like they keep having moments that would be theintroduction for a character, but it's just like, it just kind of keeps.
That's true.
And then throughout the movie, he does everything.

(01:34:57):
everything.
Anyone who's saved, it's because of him.
Any door that's shut, it's because of him.
Any insert scene here, he is like the motivator for almost 100 % of the action in themovie.
Almost, and yet Justin, there is another.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, there it is.

(01:35:19):
We then cut to Los Angeles with a helicopter landing on a downtown skyscraper at what Iwould call Michael Bay magic hour.
Like it's just, it's the perfect lighting.
The helicopter carries Dr.
Susan McAllister, played by model Saffron Burroughs, the head researcher at a sciencefacility in the Pacific Ocean called Aquatica, where she is using sharks.

(01:35:45):
to find a cure for Alzheimer's.
And what we saw in the opening is one of those sharks escaped, nearly ate some people, andnow she has to answer to the company funding the research, who are justifiably worried
about their corporate image.
That company, by the way, is called Chimera Pharmaceuticals, and it is run by executiveRussell Franklin, played by Samuel L.

(01:36:06):
Jackson, as well as an uncredited Ronnie Cox.
And this whole scene where she goes to see the heads of the company,
Samuel L.
Jackson is standing behind the desk, Ronnie Cox is sitting behind the desk, and Ronnie Coxdoesn't say a single word.
It is bizarre.
It feels like half the scene and three additional scenes were cut from this film.

(01:36:30):
Yeah.
And that shot, they just could not get rid of Ronnie cut.
Like they had to have, they had to have that.
Yeah, totally.
But listen, they're worried about publicity, the sharks, all that, but McAllister is sodetermined on account of losing her father to the disease that she tells them she is going
to cure Alzheimer's in 48 hours.

(01:36:53):
Yep.
And she doesn't even need all 48 of those hours.
She's much like Scotty from Star Trek, under promising and over delivering.
Always multiply your repair estimates or in this case your cure estimates by a factor off**k.
Side note guys, if you're starting a pharmaceutical company, don't name it after afearsome creature from Greek mythology.

(01:37:19):
Chimera Pharmaceuticals, it just sends the wrong message guys.
I mean, that's the deadly virus from Mission Impossible 2 which would come out a yearlater.
Yeah.
It's like my Hades bedding company or, you know, hell sunscreen or just take your
Exactly.

(01:37:41):
It's my liquor company with a skull and crossbones on the label.
Honestly, I know that I say that would probably sell really well.
ah They have the liquid death sparkling water that is pretty much exactly that.
But to make sure that she can cure Alzheimer's in 40 hours, Franklin is going to go outwith her.
So they fly out to this facility in a sea plane and we get a little expositional talkabout a mountain climbing exposition that Franklin was part of.

(01:38:09):
read that article on you.
The thing in the Himalayas.
Right.
We were just trying to do something together.
Having fun.
Things went bad.
you saved all those people.

(01:38:29):
at all.
Honestly, they give no context for this.
have no idea what they're talking about.
I actually wrote down a line.
What are they talking about?
It's cleared later, but in the moment I was like, what is going on?
We get some sweeping music as the plane approaches Aquatica, reminds me of the helicopterapproach from Jurassic Park.
And Thomas Jane is in the middle of putting the shark back into its pen.

(01:38:54):
ah It's got a license plate in its mouth.
I guess it must've gotten that off the boat.
they need license plates or both.
I don't know how that works, but I want to point out that the license plate that is in theshark's mouth is the same one that Hooper pulled out of the tiger shark in Jaws.
I noticed that too.
Yeah, they show it several times like they hold on it saying wink.

(01:39:15):
Yeah
want you to know they want you to know that they
And again, to your earlier point, this is a second character introduction awesomeness.
Yes.
It functions.
Yes.
And I gotta say, I think the shark in some of the wide shots is digital and it lookspretty good.
I think that, again, there was a mix of practical and digital, but the shot where likethey're first lowering the shark into the pool, uh like the CGI effects, I mean, there's a

(01:39:41):
pretty big jump from Anaconda just two years earlier.
And there's a pretty big jump within this own within this movie between, cause when likethat shot in particular, where they're lowering it down in the net in the water, the shark
with strange tiger stripes on it, cause it's a tiger shark they explained, it has likestraight up tiger stripes on it.

(01:40:03):
I'm like, what kind of shark, what kind of mutant is this?
And that's never really explained, but the shark looks really good there.
then later any underwater scene.
when the shark is like swimming toward camera is straight up hilarious in this movie.
there's, anytime the shark has to interact with a person.
It's amazing.

(01:40:23):
Like it's, yeah, it is, is, it is something.
We meet some of the other members of the lab, including Stellan Skarsgard as Whitlock,Jacqueline McKenzie as Higgins, Michael Rapoport as Skoggins, and LL Cool J as the
facilities cook, Preacher.
LL Cool J is fantastic in this.

(01:40:44):
Yeah
And I'm going to say the most useless thing, but during all of these introductions, whenyou get the scientists, I was so excited to see the jazz disc drive hooked up to the
computer, those giant blue, like floppy disc things that more than a regular floppy disc.
I just jumped out of my seat.
my God, jazz discs.

(01:41:05):
Amazing.
And really they, it's just, they're there.
I shouldn't have even said this.
Also worth noting is that similar to what we experienced in Crocodile Fury, it's as thoughLL Cool J's entire time in this film, short, save for maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes, was
shot completely separate from anybody else because he is on his own in his own worldthrough most of this move.

(01:41:29):
He is on his own track.
Absolutely.
Oh, also, Janice Soprano runs the radio tower.
Yes.
When it comes to LL Cool J, he's in all those scenes alone and he carries them.
He needs no one to play off because his charisma as always is just like leaping off.
shares most of his scenes with a pair

(01:41:50):
In Halloween H2O, it's the same thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where he plays the security guard in that movie and he is so fantastic in every one ofthose scenes.
Yeah.
That he's in that you just want more of him.
And that's a special kind of mojo that few actors possess.
But I would say, although Coolidge absolutely has.

(01:42:11):
But a certain kind of musician who has that real performance streak and they have, theyhave their performance persona.
Right.
Cube in the last movie, I think was doing his thing there.
LL's given more in this movie to do than Ice Cube was given in the last-
and because he's, he's, you know, further along and more comfortable, I think, with thecamera.

(01:42:34):
But not every musician has this.
There are plenty of musicians that are not good in roles because they, they just don'thave that kind of performing persona.
For sure.
As soon as Samuel L.
Jackson is on board the Aquarica, he immediately makes a Fantasy Island reference becauseit was the 90s and pop culture references were mandatory.

(01:42:59):
Where's Tattoo?
You know, short guy.
The plane, boss, the plane!
Right.
getting old.
Mandatory guys, you had to make some kind of pop culture reference to a TV show from the60s or 70s and Fantasy Island, uh you know, drew the straw this time.

(01:43:23):
And he says the thing that everybody says in relation to Fantasy Island.
Where's tattoo de plane boss de plane.
And then she's like, what, he's like, I'm too.
is honestly how I feel all the time when I say things that I say.
I'm like, oh, that's my cultural knowledge has outlived its usefulness.

(01:43:45):
This is a continual problem.
Thank goodness for the show or else what would I just, I'd be a guy wandering aroundreferencing BJ and the bear.
Like that would be my whole life.
We get another cool intro to Thomas Jane's character, Carter Blake.
When he swims uh through like the, they swims with the sharks and the shark is going tolooks like he's going to eat him, but he's the shark whisperer guys.

(01:44:12):
He's like, he gets on top of that shark and he calms it down and he is basically theprototype for Chris Pratt's character in Jurassic world.
And, and he is going much like in that film in this one, he will be doing this move muchlater in the movie.
Oh, for sure.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
And, you know, we get some stuff with, I didn't, I will say the science in this movie,confusing.

(01:44:36):
Now I'm not a science guy, but like here I thought was particularly like, wait, they'redoing a thing with shark's brains and they're going to extract something and that's going
to cure Alzheimer's.
Is that what it is?
But here's the thing.
It doesn't matter.
Movie doesn't care.
It's not about like, there's no Mr.
DNA sequence, like in Jurassic Park.

(01:44:56):
where they go to lengths to establish, okay, here's how this science works.
It may not be real science, but it has an internal movie logic that we want you tounderstand.
And that logic is syringe goes in the shark brain.
I squirted in a Petri dish and instantly know I've cured all time.

(01:45:20):
And we jumped over a little bit here with the introduction of preacher work.
Oh yes, because we get him in the kitchen.
Yeah.
And, and when you're seeing him, you hear this voice off camera, kind of yelling at himyou're like, Whoa, who's, who's really being rude to him.
And it turns out it's his bird who tells him you got a big fat.

(01:45:41):
Yeah.
So he's kind.
Yeah.
That's like his scene mate throughout the majority of deep blue sea is this bird that he'stalking to.
he risks life and limits a certain point for the bird.
It's like, what's that book?
The book that, the writing book, Save the Parrot.
Yeah, that's it.
And just since we're in his introduction, just to talk one moment about, cause RennyHarlan is a fantastic visual director.

(01:46:07):
Absolutely.
So, you know, preacher is alone in the kitchen except for his, uh, you know, bird, but inthat introduction, there is a lot of, business and camera movement.
You know, the camera preachers that one of the kitchen prep tables.
he's going back to the oven, then back to the table and you've got the camera moving inand back out.

(01:46:31):
I mean, you're essentially making the but it really is just really interesting visualbusiness.
Uh, you know, reminiscent of, uh, you know, even, what is it that shot in Raiders whenSpielberg, when India is packing, Yeah.
Yeah.
That kind of thing where, you know, it's,

(01:46:52):
It's a static kind of location and you're just gonna do some things to liven it up.
It's even more static than in Raiders, because in Raiders at least Harrison Ford had ascene partner in Den Hall-Melliot who he's talking back and forth with.
Here it's LL Cool J and a parrot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, well done, you know?
So we watch as they feed a shark to some of the bigger sharks and the bigger sharks devourthat shark very aggressively.

(01:47:20):
My goodness.
uh The bigger sharks are really kind of going for it.
I would be troubled by that because, uh you know, because that seems upsetting, but theyhave other things to worry about because Dr.
McAllister is called over the PA system to the surface level.
And it turns out it's because it's her birthday and they're having a surprise party.

(01:47:43):
Not only is she going to, she's going to cure Alzheimer's on her birthday.
Wow.
That's something.
You can't cure Alzheimer's on an empty stomach.
No.
Why not cake?
Why not kick?
And as these people are sitting around too, people who are dealing with sharks as part oftheir job all day, in their off time, when they're just chilling out, they're talking very

(01:48:07):
seriously about sharks.
Well yeah.
It just doesn't stop.
get Stellan Skarsgård pontificating about sh** like telling us that their mind is asunless space.
Sharks never get cancer or go blind or show any loss of brain activity as they age.
Unlike some people I know.

(01:48:28):
Sharks are the oldest creatures on the planet from a time when the world was just fleshand teeth.
Like, Stellan's...
bluest
The Stellant Scar is another one those actors, it's like David Warner in Nightwing, whocould say any kind of bullshit and make it sound compelling.
Like, he's just, that's what he can do, like anything.

(01:48:51):
And despite the fact that the sharks are engaging in some very advanced behavior, thescientists insist there's been no genetic tampering or engineering that's been done.
After all, that would go against the Harvard Genetics Compact.
You don't want to violate that.
Russell Samuel Jackson's character even says that at one point.

(01:49:12):
This is just amazing and all of it without genetic tampering
As people do in every day.
That's, that's a totally normal thing to say.
Now guys, uh I want to just say this, I did try and look up the Harvard Genetics Compactand you guys are to be surprised uh that there is, they could not find evidence of any

(01:49:33):
such agreement.
was going to say those words never stuck in my mind after all of those Dolly the sheepstories when that happened, when they cloned the first sheep.
And, yeah, I'd never, never heard of the Harvard, but any, know, we should, uh, we shouldbring that back.
I mean, it's going to be a, that's going to be a thing before too long.

(01:49:55):
Uh, but also a tropical storm is, is showing up.
That's going to complicate things in a way very similar to that in Jurassic park.
I think basically you got to stop doing like genetically engineered super animals inplaces prone to giant hurricanes.
Like maybe just find a better place to do it, but they're going to go ahead with their bigtests.

(01:50:17):
Cause despite the storm and some weird shit going on with the sharks,
like swimming in pens backwards, they are still going to go ahead because they got to cureAlzheimer's by Monday morning.
There's a few tense moments in the lab as Carter sedates the shark and brings them intothe wet lab for tests.
And it's a cool, like this is cool set.

(01:50:39):
Like it's a big, you know, and then there's like a pool in the center and they raise theshark up into the, into the lab and they, they run some tests.
I don't understand what they are.
It doesn't matter.
And they work!
And they cure Alzheimer's!
Hey!
But then, Stellan Skarsgard's character has to light up a cigarette right next to theshark, because the 90s, the last decade of casual smoking in movies, and the shark is

(01:51:08):
like, fuck that, chomps his arm right off.
It's amazing.
I gotta say the movie has been good up to this point.
Yeah.
But as soon as that arm is bitten off, this movie is in fifth gear like the rest of theway.
It in overdrive and it just keeps going.

(01:51:31):
From this point, it is the fury road of shark exploitation.
is just, it does not stop.
Yeah.
yeah.
So things, things get insane.
Not only does it bite the arm off, it breaks loose from its bounds.
it's a Carter, Carter Hayes is going to shoot it.
Uh, but McCallister releases it back into the water, which is a mistake.

(01:51:54):
And then one of my favorite sequences in the movie, like, Stellan Skarsgård's characterWhitlock is, you know, he lost an arm.
So that's a problem.
And, and they don't really have medical facilities for arm loss.
So.
despite the fact there's this amazing just giant storm, helicopter arrives to take him tothe mainland and they have him in one of those stretchers that keeps you immobile and they

(01:52:20):
attach a cable that will lift it up to the helicopter.
And guys, this goes very, very badly.
And I couldn't tell was this the reused footage from the last shark also, or did theyshoot this?
I think they shot a new helicopter.
didn't see Wells Corporation on the side.
And look, I'm going to pick a nit that I know I should not.

(01:52:44):
But frankly, for all of the ridiculous stuff in this movie, it is of a piece and makessense for Deep Blue Sea.
The thing that they have go wrong is the the winch or the first thing that goes wrong,like the winch that's lifting him up.
And just it's it's at least as presented completely coincidental.

(01:53:06):
Right.
And like there are a million other things you could have had happen to have it go haywire.
Right.
The shark didn't do like our, our, our sharks weren't respond.
That's the thing they're not responsible for.
It's yeah.
So the winch, the winch, like, you know, cable jams, Whitlock goes crashing down into theshark pen where one of the sharks grabs him and pulls the entire helicopter down.

(01:53:35):
It's amazing.
On that section there are no notes.
There's no, no, no.
like it explodes.
This sequence is incredible.
It like it's this cascading series of things go wrong that the helicopter crashes andblows up and you have just, causes like a massive series of explosions over.

(01:53:55):
it honestly, it hit the exhaust port to almost basically destroy the station.
No more DJ, that's gone.
No.
Janice Soprano gets blown to smithereens, like the seaplane that they came in gets blownup.
then, so like they all go back down into the, into the aquatica underwater.

(01:54:17):
And like, there's like this giant window looking into the shark tank, which is huge.
And they see something coming towards it.
It's getting closer and it's Whitlock still in the stretcher, still alive.
being carried by the shark in its mouth.

(01:54:40):
And what does the shark do,
knocks on the door, on the window.
He throws the shark, throws Whitlock still in the stretcher into the window and basicallycracks it open.
And I'm just like, that is cinema right there.

(01:55:01):
It's amazing.
And the explosions just keep happening throughout this too.
keep cutting topside shots of just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, it just neverends the explosions.
And when he somehow sticks to the window and he's looking around, like you see his eyeslook like darting back and forth like what?

(01:55:22):
His eyes.
no.
And then this scene from Jaws 3 where.
The shark slowly comes toward camera.
And actually there is a shot in this movie that replicates the accuracy of the sharkmovement in that scene too.
But then, you know, the shark comes through the glass and here the water comes bursting inand oh speaking to practical effects.

(01:55:46):
One thing I will say for this film is that they had some tremendous sets making use ofwater from this point forward in this movie.
Oh, this movie must've been hell to shoot.
It was actually shot at the Fox Baja studios in Mexico using the tanks that had been builtfor James Cameron's Titanic.

(01:56:07):
And it's just like, mean, there's so this podcast, they spend so much time in water fromthe rest of this movie that day in and day out, must have been, it must have been a tough,
tough movie to shoot.
And particularly, think Thomas Jane is wet in much of act one as well.
So he was, he must've been in water like what?

(01:56:31):
80 % of the movie.
Like the party is the only time he's really kind of not.
And hey, he's cool because his wetsuit has no sleeves.
You know he's a badass.
Everybody else has got sleeves on their wetsuits.
But he's got no sleeves because he's a cool dude.

(01:56:56):
And also, as you mentioned, that Preacher spends, he also survives these explosions and hespends
most of this movie kind of on his own journey.
And LL Cool J is great.
There's a great bit where like, guess the character is, you get the impression is areligious guy.
He's called preacher, but like he had quit drinking.
and, but then the only thing in the kitchen that survives that initial set of explosionsis a bottle of wine.

(01:57:21):
he opens it up.
Tiny bottle.
Cause that's like cooking Sherry or something.
That is, yeah, not, good wine.
But then he's walking down the hall and like the hallway starts to shake because thisthing is like structurally coming apart and he throws the bottle down and is like, if this

(01:57:42):
is a lesson about drinking, I've learned it.
He keeps cracking jokes about, like jokes to God.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, that's his, yes.
He's got two scene partners, the parrot and God.
And this is where the movie becomes that sort of classic model disaster movie because theAquatica is slowly coming apart.

(01:58:06):
Maybe not that slow, it's coming apart.
And if they don't get out before it does, they will get taken down with it.
But unlike classic disaster movies like Poseidon Adventure, for example, in this one,seems like everyone always has some kind of plan to offer that there's no way they could

(01:58:27):
know.
They're constantly making suggestions about, like at this point, at this point where we'reat in the movie here, someone says corridor B is dry.
They need to climb down to level three, then take the sub to top side two at a time.
That's their plan.
So how do they know anything about corridor B?
How did the communication tower is no longer in play?

(01:58:49):
There's no way they could be aware of anything else in this building because they'reclearly not the rest of the movie.
They're feeling their way around in the dark, essentially.
But this happens numerous times between now and the end of the movie where someone's sure.
Superest times and every time the plan gets fucked.

(01:59:10):
Yeah, but every time they're right, too, because they never say, let's go to corridor B.
It's dry.
And they get there and like, man, it's not dry.
Everything they say ends up being real and being the case.
Right, and then something else comes in to screw it
So really what we learn is that these are all clairvoyant people who work on this littleisland shanty and play around with sharks all day by poking stuff in their heads to cure

(01:59:36):
Alzheimer's.
what I love, like they're walking down the car, as you said, like, uh I forget who it is,says, this door will take us to this place, like whatever.
Yeah.
And they come up and they hear banging on the other side of the door.
And at first they think it's preacher, they're like, oh, great, you great, you survived.

(01:59:57):
But then they realized like the banging is too heavy.
It's a shark.
Guys, this movie literally has a shark.
knocking on a door like it's delivering a candy gram.
Andy Graham.
smarter.
It's amazing.
It's great.
And also we get something very rare here.
And I think this is the first time in this series that we've had it.

(02:00:19):
We get a water POV shot.
So we actually step into the character of the water at this point in the movie, as we'reseeing ourselves, the water move through a corridor.
eh Remarkable.
It is remarkable.
McAllister eventually admits that she and Whitlock did genetically engineer the sharks tomake their brains bigger.

(02:00:44):
Well, no shit.
Like, you know, these are clearly genetically engineered sharks.
And then Carter says, what you've done is knocked us all the way to the bottom of thegoddamn food chain.
He says that to Susan.
And then Russell's like, these sharks are thinking hard and clear.
He's trying to encourage everyone to think about what a shark might want to do.
What?
Dude, what's the shark?

(02:01:05):
What is the shark's motivation?
put our heads together here, guys.
Let's think like sharks.
specifically, what does an 8,000 pound Mako think about?
Question is posed.
And this is where I want to stop for a moment with the revelation of Dr.
Susan McAllister's, uh, villainy.
And I, I think one of the story and character mistakes and I don't, for me, this is not aproblem with Saffron Burrows at all.

(02:01:33):
It's she's playing the character that's there.
Right.
I think Dr.
McAllister is stuck in this gray area between, I guess, a flawed hero protagonist.
Obviously, Carter Blake is the hero hero.
Right.
You know, eventually.
But Dr.
Susan McAllister, I think it was a mistake to just not go bigger on the villain side ofthis thing.

(02:02:02):
To get her...
doing things to stop them from killing a shark because she still wants to keep like, Idon't know what I'm not pitching on it now, but it, it just puts the character in this
gray zone where it just feels like neither fish nor fowl.
Well, it's hard because she's ultimately driven to cure a disease.
So it's not like she's out to rule the world or whatever.

(02:02:24):
She's just trying to help, ultimately help people.
She's trying to achieve a noble goal.
Imagine if they could wipe out Alzheimer's with a pill that's even sensible.
that.
don't reveal any other reasoning.
Oftentimes if there's something altruistic like this, that'll be sort of a cover for theulterior motive, right?

(02:02:44):
That doesn't ever occur.
This is, this really is her mission.
And so how do you make that person just pure evil?
Victor Frankenstein would be my example.
Like, you can still have them go a little crazy about trying to do a good thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Right, and she doesn't really go.
No, and I think because they want, they want kind of still the group hero as you're goingthrough the movie.

(02:03:07):
So I think they just are afraid to make her not be likable.
I don't know, but it just, it, it doesn't quite work for me.
And I think it's just the design of the movie.
Well, and there's a hero moment for her later too.
interesting one and we'll talk about that because there was the movie as originally shotand then there were some reshoots that changed the ending of the movie a little bit and I

(02:03:30):
think it's a curious thing.
uh What I think I appreciate most about this movie is that, you know, by playing, we've,throughout the series, we said early on we went to mutant versions of creatures from, I
forget what the first one was, was it, uh
I think it might've been piranha was the mutant piranha.

(02:03:50):
So they can do things that ordinary versions of these creatures would not do.
And we've seen it numerous, numerous movies.
And this movie is basically saying, Hey, listen, they're genetically engineered sharks.
We are throwing out all sense of realism in regards to that.
So they aren't even pretending like these are sharks you'd find in the real world.

(02:04:14):
These are movie monsters and the movie is being upfront about that.
So when a shark chases LL Cool J down a hallway and into the kitchen, I'm going along withit.
Well, yeah, and on the preacher front, LL Cool J's character Preacher, we're also learningabout God in this movie, It's true.
Because Preacher had that moment with his Sherry, his cooking Sherry, where, okay, lessonlearned.

(02:04:38):
He finds a copy of Playboy floating in the water.
That magazine's not gonna be good anymore after floating.
Paper and water don't go together well.
Right.
But, but a bear will sink like a missile.
A stuffed, a stuffed bear.
So he finds a copy.
He finds a copy of Playboy and as is the old cliche with Playboy.

(02:04:59):
What do people in movies do with the Playboy?
They hold it up sideways and the centerfold, centerfold flops out, which okay, if it's wetpaper, that's not going to happen.
But then a shark comes swimming down the hall.
Carter holds onto his crucifix as he's shivering.
Yeah.
He cast the Playboy aside in favor of his crucifix in this moment.
And if you think this is the last time his love of God is gonna come into play, you'rewrong.

(02:05:23):
Because it's definitely gonna continue happening in the movie.
Big time.
But this sequence here is pretty wild.
The sequence where he gets chased and he hides inside the oven?
Amazing.
would you go in an oven?
mean, out of all the places to go.
suppose if the choice is between in an oven and in a shark, you know, what he doesn'tpresume and he's wrong in this, he presumes that the shark is not going to turn on the

(02:05:52):
oven and that was a mistaken presumption.
What an amazing thing when the shark uses its nose that it was using to knock on doors afew minutes ago.
Candy Graham.
To turn on the oven and he goes, Oh no.
He's like, Oh man.
And then the gas starts to come out while he's in there and he punches his way through theroof.

(02:06:15):
But then Preacher killbills his way from the bottom oven into the top.
my God.
And to Renny Harlan's credit, he shoots all of this with a propulsiveness that you're justkind of along for the ride.
yeah.
It's relentless.
Yeah
Cause as you often talk about things seeming like that are ridiculous, that are shot in away that makes them feel they could have been in, you know, the Batman sixties television

(02:06:42):
series.
This is not that like you in the moment you buy it all the way.
You know, it's ridiculous.
And when you think about it, you go really waterproof oven and all of the above, but youdo not care when you're watching it.
And of course, now that the gas is going, he escapes to the top of it, which is like thesmaller door, and he gets out there.

(02:07:04):
And in the end, he's got a lighter.
He sets off the gas like uh he's Dr.
Loomis facing off against an aquatic Michael Myers.
Boom.
the group, they reach, their plan is to go to this mini-sub.
They have a mini sub that's at like the bottom of the thing.
And then they're to use the mini sub to go up to the surface.

(02:07:25):
They change into wetsuits, as I mentioned.
And they start like, they get there and the sub is just wrecked.
like their plan is out the window and the group starts kind of fighting amongst themselvesabout what to do.
If we open this door, it could cause a thing and do this and the other thing.
And Samuel Jackson steps in and gives this terrific.

(02:07:50):
motivational speech and he reveals what happened during the mountain climbing expeditionand it is fantastic.
You think water's fast?
It moves like it has a mind.

(02:08:12):
Like it knows it killed the world once, it got a taste for murder.
When the avalanche came, it us a week to climb out.
And somewhere, we lost hope.
Now don't know exactly when we turned on each other.

(02:08:32):
I just know that seven of us survived the slide.
And only five made
Now we took an oath that ain't breaking now.
Swore that we said it was the snow that killed the other two.

(02:08:53):
Nature can be lethal.
channel.
Now you've seen how bad things can get, and how quick they can get that way.
Well they can get a whole lot worse.
So we're not going to fight anymore!

(02:09:14):
We're going to pull together and we're gonna find a way to get out of here!
First, we're gonna seal off this-
So mid-speech the shark pops out of the pool, grabs him and holy shit, that is one of thegreatest things I've ever seen in a movie.

(02:09:35):
want to talk again about subverting the expectations.
You have Samuel L.
Jackson at a moment where the characters are battling each other, delivering this movie'sversion of an Indiana USS Indianapolis speech.
You expect that it will get bring the characters together and it does, but not because ofhim.

(02:09:55):
But also they keep framing him real wide.
Like they keep showing the water intentionally behind him and around him, because he'skind of standing on this little outcropping right near the pool and he's staying there.
He doesn't walk around.
He doesn't talk.
It's not an animated speech.
He's just stationary talking in the most dangerous place to be in this room.

(02:10:17):
And so you know what's going to happen.
did not know the first time I saw that it was going to happen.
was completely, I was like, when that shark jumps, I mean, and again, this is where theCGI is a little janky whenever a shark has to interact with a human, but holy shit, it's,
it is like, it's, it's fantastic.
Like I was, it was the thing that, cause I saw this, like I didn't see this in thetheaters, but I saw it on video not long after.

(02:10:42):
And, and that was the thing that stuck in my mind.
I didn't remember a lot, but I remembered that.
It wasn't the sharks then pulling him in half.
It's a pretty funny, cartoony...
dude, they do pull them in half
The direction in editing for this ah bit is so great because Justin is, you are thebeginning of that speech.

(02:11:06):
You're very wide for a long time, but they are cutting from him to the other characterslistening.
Right.
And as you get close to the scare, when you're cutting back to him, you're getting closerand closer.
So that when, you know, and not dissimilar from a slasher movie or something that by thetime the scare happens, you're pretty claustrophobically close on him, much, much closer

(02:11:34):
for when the shark gets him, I believe.
Yeah, no, it does.
It does.
It does do that.
And then it's then it widens out.
So you get to the shark take him and.
Yeah.
And then the group proceeds to make this sort of long, dangerous climb up to the surface.
They have like this this area, I think it was like an elevator shaft is very wide.
But of course, the water is filling up below them.

(02:11:56):
And with the water comes the sharks.
One of the Kehiggins is taken out by the shark.
But the group eventually meets up with Preacher.
There's a great moment where the door opens.
and preacher appears and helps them up.
It's a terrific moment.
And then they reach kind of a point of relative safety for a Brit.
This is where the movie takes like from the time the arm gets ripped off, it is go, go,go, go, go.

(02:12:21):
And then we kind of reach this point where we take just a little bit of a breath as, youknow, like they're forming their plan and they, know, Michael Rappaport knows everything.
And so he's like, he's just, to get to the service, we can go in the control room anddrain a staircase.
And he's also yelling at God and which is, there's a lot of God in this movie and a lot ofpeople like communicating with God and something hits the building right after he sort of

(02:12:50):
scorns God.
And then preacher goes, he always answers.
Sometimes the answer you get isn't the one you wanted.
It's true.
It's true.
know, I guess it's all true.
Um, they, go into, to, to Jan's room, Higgins room to look for batteries for theflashlight and Michael Rappler, what I thought was the weirdest line.

(02:13:11):
This is like the equivalent in this movie to the, the jungle makes you horny.
Jan was a healthy girl.
Something in here has to run on batteries.
They're talking about a vibrator.
Just to help.
uh
Thanks, buddy.
And then, and then Preacher has a moment where we're like, OK, you're presuming they'renot going to have much food.

(02:13:33):
find some power bars.
Power bars.
And Preacher says, I have standards.
And he throws it, the bag of power bars into the water.
Dude, you're being menaced by genetically engineered sharks.
Eat the freaking power.
And maybe someone else would have liked that.
Maybe someone else would be okay with some nourishment in this moment, you jerk.

(02:13:56):
There's a lot of 90s meta kind of talk in this movie.
Well, and there's also discussion of Einstein's theory of relativity.
There is a discussion of which, which, you know, the preacher, uh, like, makes the analogyof touching a hot stove.
A second can feel like an eternity, but if you're touching a lady, you know, it can govery quick.

(02:14:18):
It's, uh, and, Michael Rababort says, you know, I was at, you know, Caltech or whateverfor four years and I ever heard anything explain that clearly.
Well, okay.
I, I like that, that preacher remarks.
how brothers never make it out of situations like this, not ever.

(02:14:39):
Like, okay.
But like it was then that I realized what this movie is.
This is the scream of animal attack movies.
Because all of the characters have seen Jaws and Piranha and all these other movies we'vebeen talking about this whole series.
And not only that, like the killer in scream,

(02:15:03):
The sharks seem to have also seen those movies.
So they know what to do!
At the very least, I think these sharks have seen orca because they are planners.
play.
They are.
so McCarter Burke and Michael Raboboruch go in to the control room to drain the staircase.

(02:15:25):
And McAllister at the same time goes to her quarters to get copies of the data from herexperiments because yes, she probably shouldn't have genetically engineered super sharks,
but that's water under the bridge at this point, guys.
At least get the Alzheimer's cure while you're there.
Like make the lives that have been lost mean something.

(02:15:47):
And she says as much to Preacher that, you cause he's like, is it worth going back forjust some numbers?
And she replies, without that data, everyone dying isn't just tragic, it's useless.
And Preacher replies, death is always useless.
And I'm like, is it though?
Like some deaths have meaning, like people give their lives to save other lives.

(02:16:10):
Like that is a death that might not be useful.
Which is better?
A bunch of dead people or a bunch of dead people and no more Alzheimer's.
I mean, I'll take what's behind door B.
That, that, that I give her like, I'm with her on this.
I'm like, yeah, she probably shouldn't have done it, but it's already done.
At least get the data.
least get the cure.

(02:16:31):
We have a great fake out as McAllister goes into her quarters and we see a shark's fincoming silently behind her, but it turns out to be the model that they were using for like
research, like the physical model of the shark.
And then we get the real thing appears immediately afterwards and McAllister, Alzheimer'scure in hand is trapped in her flooded quarters.

(02:16:52):
So guys, she's trapped in the quarter.
She's like, I'm on a bookcase or something, a desk and she's got the shark there.
That's a problem.
What does she do to get away guys?
Cause it is extraordinary.
uh I'm still not sure.
is crazy.
She takes off her wetsuit, she folds it up, leaving her just in her underwear and shestands on it to ground her and then she electrocutes the shark.

(02:17:23):
Just like, wow.
Like that is a choice to make to put her in her underwear to uh electrocute this shark.
But unfortunately, the Alzheimer's cure gets fried as well.
So that's...
leak.
So now all that death really was for nothing.

(02:17:45):
Michael Rappaport, his character gets eaten because it's Michael Rappaport, so we want toget him out of the way.
And the three remaining survivors, they use oxygen tanks as bait for the last shark asthey ascend to the surface.
So they're going up this thing, they're ascending very quickly, they reach the surface,Preacher gets immediately grabbed by the shark, but guys, he's able to fight him off.

(02:18:08):
by stabbing him in the eye with a cross.
Symbolism.
Yes.
This movie's not subtle.
No.
No.
But that's when they have their revelation.
And this is the big revelation of the movie.
Son of a bitch.
What?
Those fences are titanium underneath, but on top they're just plain steel.

(02:18:31):
They've been hurting us, pushing us where they want, using us to flood the facility.
my god.
That's the answer to the riddle.
Because that's what an 8,000 pound Mako thinks about.
About freedom.
About the deep blue sea.

(02:18:54):
title drop.
I do love again, people you're playing with these tropes, the shark netting and the tight.
Oh, it's so strong.
But ah instead of you're just wrong.
And the shark is now strong enough to go through it.
It's the shark is smart enough to go over.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, honestly, they should have made all of the fencing out of titanium.

(02:19:17):
don't...
Yes.
Like you already did.
Just don't cheap out at the end.
Also a mistake to give the sharks the schematics to the facility.
They thought it was harmless.
They just wanted to keep the sharks occupied and, you know, that is a decision they shouldnot have made.
So ah they devise a plan to hit the shark with this explosive harpoon that has a battery,like it's got a line attached to a battery that will blow up.

(02:19:48):
But they got to lure the shark.
So McAllister cuts her hand open, jumps in the water.
She honestly...
At that point that thing she cut her hand did not look sanitary if she had survived sheprobably would have gotten tetanus but she she Lures the shark and it it eats her that it

(02:20:10):
she gets eaten And it's a weird moment where the shark pauses right before it eat like itswims up to where it stops and then it grabs her
It smiles.
It like makes this face.
It does.
Now, apparently, this is really controversial.
In deep blue sea fan circles, this is a big deal because the original cut, she lived.

(02:20:36):
She got out of the water and test audiences thought she should have died because she wasresponsible for creating the mutant shark.
So like a month before this movie was released, they did a reshoot in the tank on theUniversal lot.
And they reshot it, killing her off.
And, and it's funny cause like the whole movie, I thought, she's going to die.

(02:20:59):
That's going to be her penance for messing with the sharks.
But apparently the original ending she lived and apparently both Thomas Jane and, andReddy Harlan have gone on record saying they prefer the original end.
There's like online petitions to get it restored and stuff.
the, in the deep blue sea fan circle.
Yeah, I mean just from the standpoint of this character the original ending would make iteven worse in my opinion Yeah, think the movie doesn't address what she's done enough in

(02:21:28):
whatever fashion it would have and at least this addresses that
Yeah, least there's some consequence to her person.
And I guess technically a bit of a redemption, right?
Because the character knows what they've done.
The Alzheimer's cures destroyed.
Yeah.
And now because she is responsible, she cannot let this shark get into the open ocean.

(02:21:48):
Exactly.
I was surprised to read that the original ending had her surviving too.
That was shocking.
But, but I think that she did get home and she found the tape and it played the sharknoises that she could take to the cops and get Thomas Jane out of jail.
as a reference to the ending of uh the deleted ending of Fatal Attraction, which we use.

(02:22:13):
If you haven't listened to our Fatal Attraction series, you know, that might be a greattime as we're bringing Jaws to a close.
So, Cardo ends up going in the tank, he ends up riding the shark's fin like he didearlier.
Preacher takes the shot with the harpoon, hits the shark and Carter, and the shark breaksthrough the fence.

(02:22:34):
uh Preacher connects the wire.
blows up the shark in an explosion that makes the one at the end of Jaws feel likesomebody stuck a firecracker in a flounder.
But sure enough, John Carter of Mars pops up at the last minute having freed himself.
I don't know how he did that, but know, rescue ships show up and you know, hey, they'rebuddies.

(02:22:55):
know, it's a beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Well, preacher says to him, Carter, bring me some sushi.
Yep.
Because every line LL Cool as good as LL Cool J is in this movie, every line he utters ispretty much a pun of some sort.
It's like some kind of witty quip.
this is the scream of shark movies.

(02:23:16):
So everybody's got to talk because they know that it's you know, they know they're in ashark movie.
But Chris, this is not the last we're going to hear from LL Cool J, it?
No, it isn't.
No, it isn't.
I'm so glad you brought that up because he contributes a song, couple of songs to thesoundtrack.
And we, with the credits roll over a song, an LL Cool J track, Deepest Blue, inparentheses, Sharks Finn is the title of this track.

(02:23:48):
And it is LL Cool J rapping in the voice of the shark.
He is the shark.
It's like the song is sung from the shark's POV.
Well, we got water POV earlier.
Now we get a song from a shark who, well, the sharks knock on doors.
They, kinds of fun stuff.
Um, yeah.

(02:24:09):
And, and, this movie also did well when it was released in 1999, it made around 165million and it was a bigger budget movie than Anaconda, but like Anaconda, also spawned a
series of direct to video sequels in recent years.
Uh, there've been a couple of deep blue sea.
don't think any of the original cast return, but more significant deep blue sea iscredited as kicking off.

(02:24:32):
a new wave of animal attack movies in the 21st century, particularly those featuringsharks because whereas, we've covered how many movies we've covered in this series, but
there have been way more even made in the 21st century.
A lot of those gone direct to video or direct to streaming or whatever.
And this movie sort of gets credit for sort of the second wave, second wavesharksploitation.

(02:24:59):
So,
I mean, that brings us to the end as we wrap up with Deep Blue Sea.
I'll ask the question I always ask guys, what have we learned?
What have we learned in this in the last 10 weeks?
What I have learned is a trend can be the circle of life.

(02:25:19):
can.
That's true.
The big budget studios can take from the B movie exploitation films, but it will come backaround again.
And the B movie exploitation will take from the big budget version of it and wash, rinse,repeat.
is a wonderful process to see the same beats expressed in either very different ways orthe exact same way, but just a lot cheaper.

(02:25:50):
Right, right, yes.
Yeah.
What I love is that some of the, stories are timeless.
Yeah.
And that's really what we found here because Jaws is a specific story.
It's not like a scorned lover.
It's not whatever we've covered in the past.
uh Right.

(02:26:10):
And the great stories, the beats live on.
They will endure through imitators, through people paying homage or whatever.
there are notes in pretty much all the movies that we've talked about in the series thatare tethered directly back to moments in Jaws.
So its influence remained strong, even in those that really veered off course.

(02:26:35):
In pretty much all of these, there's some kind of nod back to Jaws, uh which is a kind ofreverence that cinema doesn't always offer, I think.
eh And also I think it's fascinating, because we've covered so many different eras too,since
since when Jaws came out to now.
And so the movies that we've talked about from different cultures, different eras,different, during different cinema trends too, they're really reflecting what's around

(02:27:02):
them in a lot of ways.
And the farther we got away from Hollywood, the more adventurous everything became.
Now today we're talking about probably the two most polished Hollywood movies out of allof these, which are wild, but
As we discussed at the beginning of the episode, they're really more like action movies.

(02:27:24):
They aren't horror movies.
And there are moments of shock.
There are moments of some blood and things like that.
But I wouldn't classify either of these as horror movies necessarily.
when we're talking about the more independent stuff where people aren't being bridled byproducers and things like that, man, that's where the real fun is had.

(02:27:47):
For as enjoyable as you guys found these two movies today, I never need to see them again.
I will take Crocodile Fury a hundred times over watching Anaconda or Deep Blue Sea again.
And that's just because a movie like Crocodile Fury, it lacks the breaks that are inherentwith this kind of production.
so yeah, it's as chaotic as Deep Blue Sea, like in terms of pacing and how fast it movesand all of that.

(02:28:15):
But movies like that and Piranha and the others that we discussed are so much moreenjoyable to me because there's a sincerity there.
And yes, it's riffing off something that's established, but it's doing it with so muchheart.
that is in a lot of ways very organic to just being an independent production.
have to figure your problem solving process is very different on Piranha than it is onDeep Blue Sea with millions of dollars in hand.

(02:28:43):
And the result
even though we're talking practical effects, even though we're talking about a fraction ofthe budgets of the bigger stuff, it's better.
It's more magical.
And that's the stuff that I'm gonna always return to.
And that's why I think shark, shark exploitation, whatever you wanna call this, everythingthat came in the wake of Jaws that tried to play around with that story, more often than

(02:29:07):
not, they succeeded in ways.
And none of these movies completely flopped for us.
None of them, oh none of them, maybe Tinturera.
Yeah.
That's as close as we You have the Thropple.
Yeah.
So anyway, think that those are the lessons for me throughout this because I'm a huge fanof these movies anyway.

(02:29:31):
I love the animal, Ghana muck kind of thing.
I'm super into that.
And, it was a true joy to watch through this stuff together.
it was.
The thing that struck me is so interesting is just how many variations, like when you havea simple premise, but that is such a core, like a solid core premise, how many variations

(02:29:55):
you can have, variations of animals, variations of setting, say filmmakers from around theworld putting their own spin on new ways to make creatures in the natural world
threatening to man.
And I just, the endless variation
I just, it was a joy every week to explore something new.

(02:30:19):
Which is why we're planning a Get Me Another Jaws Volume 2 somewhere down the line,because there are so many more movies that we couldn't fit into just one series.
So we, you know, at some point, you know, in the not too distant future, but down the roada little bit, we'll look out for Get Me Another Jaws Volume 2, just when you thought it
was safe to go back on the podcast.

(02:30:40):
Yeah.
But we have plenty of exciting things in store for the rest of this year.
And we're not even done with sharks yet, because next we have a Get Me Another Jaws bonusepisode coming up and we think it's going to be a pretty special one, because we'll be
exploring one of the most popular shark movies in recent years.

(02:31:02):
That's right, folks, we're going to be talking Sharknado.
And joining us to talk about all things Sharknado,
will be the director of that film, Anthony C.
Ferrante.
This will be the first time we've had a director on to talk about their work and we couldnot be more excited.

(02:31:22):
So join us in three weeks, Tuesday, September 23rd for our Sharknado bonus episode withdirector Anthony C.
Ferrante.
And then following that, in October, as we often do, we are gonna be circling back.
to horror, one of our favorite genres, for two Halloween bonus episodes looking atHalloween II and Halloween III Season of the Witch.

(02:31:49):
If you recall our Get Me Another Halloween series, we didn't have a chance to cover any ofthe Halloween sequels and we are so excited to look at those two sequels, Halloween II and
Halloween III.
Our good friend Carmelita Valdez-McCoy will be coming back to help explore those landmarkslasher sequels.
And then guys, and this is the big one, and we are very excited.

(02:32:13):
Our next Get Me Another series will be starting in November and carrying us through theholiday season.
Grab some Twinkies, watch out for broken glass because it's time for Get Me Another.
Die Hard.

(02:32:45):
That's right, we'll be exploring one of the greatest action films of all time, a Christmasclassic that has basically spawned an entire sub-genre of die-hard-on-a-blank films.
And we could not be more excited.
This has been on the list from the very beginning.
Welcome to the party, pal.

(02:33:06):
Get Me Another Die Hard starts this November.
my God, yeah.
Yeah.
And as always, we are your hosts Chris Iannacone, Rob Lemorgis, and Justin Beam.
And if you've enjoyed our show, please consider subscribing and following us on Blue Sky,Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at GetMeAnotherPawn.

(02:33:28):
Make sure to check out Justin's book Roadside Memories at JustinBeam.com or wherever booksare sold, as well as Justin's new album, Phantom Lightkeeper, which you can listen to the
first tracks of on Spotify and Bandcamp.
If you've liked the show,
Tell your friends about it.
Tell your enemies about it.
Tell that genetically engineered super shark about it before he breaks through that cheapass fence.

(02:33:54):
And join us next time as we continue to explore what happens when Hollywood says, get meenough.
I'm terror, hungry for the jaws of death.

(02:34:15):
Paddle across my depths, I'll pause your breath.
I'll caw check your sink down.
Bleeding to death with no arms or short sleeves My world's deep blue, killers gotta eattoo Looking for human flesh to rip my teeth through Other fish in the sea but barracudas
are equal To a half human predator created by a needle Jet black eyes, baby they starewhile you sleep When your titanic sink, I'm the one you gon' meet Hearing terrified

(02:34:39):
screams, they surround my team All you see is trails of blood, either God won't interveneNightmares of darkness, my appetite is heartless Even if we related
In the deep blue underwater walls Half man, half shark, my jaws don't fall