A documentary film crew ventures into the Amazon rainforest and gets hoodwinked into helping a mysterious snake hunter. A deadly encounter with The Predator ensues, with a Death Certificate waiting for AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and Jenny from the Block.   

Topics discussed:

📸 A quick snapshot of this polarizing movie

🎤 Where this fits in the hip hop canon

🎞️ Fun facts about this creature feature

💥 The impact this film had on the trope of Black people dying in horror films

😂 Fan reaction then and now

Also check out:

A new Anaconda film is coming out this year! Anaconda 2: The Wrath of Conda

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Today we discuss the 1997 jump scare horror flick, Anaconda Don't Want None Unless You Got...

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Okay, okay.

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Can't say the word Anaconda without slipping into Sir Mix-A-Lot mode.

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Real hip hop heads know what I'm talking about.

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Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, and hip hop legend Ice Cube.

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This is Hip Hop Movie Club, the show for serious hip hop fans who want to deepen their

cultural knowledge.

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We've watched over 75 hip hop themed films and in this episode...

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We will tell you if this B-movie creature feature is actually an A-plus good time or does

it deserve to be left for dead in the jungle.

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We'll give you a quick snapshot about this film, talk about where it fits in the hip-hop

canon, a few fun facts, what kind of impact this film had, and what fans said about this

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movie.

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That might be my favorite intro of our entire run here, DynoWright.

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Nice.

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So just a quick summary, Anaconda involves a documentary film crew that ventures into the Amazon rainforest.

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They get hoodwinked into helping a mysterious snake hunter.

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A deadly encounter with The Predator ensues with a Death Certificate waiting for

AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and Jenny from the Block.

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Yeah, still Jenny from the block.

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let's talk about, some of the key cast members.

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talked about a few, but also include a creepy Jon Voight.

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Playing himself, apparently

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Uh, yeah, that's true.

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Yeah.

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Shady, shady guy.

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Uh, Eric Stoltz, eighties and nineties legend, a film legend.

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Owen Wilson.

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I didn't even realize he was in this movie until I watched this one.

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Kari Wuhrer

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I enjoyed her work very much in Remote Control and on uh MTV.

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Yes, she was also on MTV.

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uh Jonathan Hyde, Danny Trejo briefly in the beginning.

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Yeah, they sacrificed them very...

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Oh man, I wanted to have more Danny Trejo!

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Yeah, we didn't get any tough guy, Trejo.

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He offed himself early with the creatures lurking,

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Yeah, it was an early J.Lo acting role and it was the same year as her huge breakthrough role in Selena, which I love that movie.

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I think she did an awesome job in that one.

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Yeah.

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But yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about the cast.

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how they presented themselves in this flick.

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So, Jennifer Lopez's character was named Terry Flores.

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She was director uh for the film that was going to be produced.

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Ice Cube played Danny Rich, who was one of her best friends and also was the cameraman on

the crew.

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Kari Wuhrer was uh Denise Kalberg, who was the production manager.

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Eric Stoltz played Dr.

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Stephen Kale, the anthropologist uh who was looking for an elusive Amazonian tribe.

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Jonathan Hyde played Warren Westridge who would be the quote unquote documentary narrator

his high proper English and that voice to carry.

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was, that's pretty good.

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uh Owen Wilson.

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I played Gary Dixon, who was the sound engineer.

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Then we had our guy, Mateo, who was the boat skipper, who was played by, Vincent Castellanos.

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And then we have Creepy Jon Voight, who played Paul Serone who was the snake hunter.

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a weird Uruguayan accent.

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Yeah, I don't know what that was.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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of like what, why wouldn't you just get a guy from Uruguay to play that role?

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Right?

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I know, but he's got some acting chops, but I was just cracking up.

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was just like these blank stares.

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tell me you're shady as heck without saying it.

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You know, he's in the background lurking around, you know, and everybody was just freaked

out.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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It was like.

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Luis Llosa, the director, did The Specialist and Sniper.

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He produced a lot of Spanish language shows and stuff.

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But two of the writers were Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., writers of Top Gun, and Dick

Tracy.

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They did this?

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Okay.

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project.

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uh But early on we see apparently he is well-trained in the river Amazon, but yet he needs to be rescued, right?

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And so that's shady in itself.

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And then they bring him on board and then just chaos ensues.

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Mateo is attacked by the uh Anaconda and he shows little remorse.

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He's always reluctant to try to kill the snake because his whole MO is to capture the

snake to get a big payday.

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I guess you get like a million dollars if you capture this huge anaconda.

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wild and he killed the monkey for bait and then at one point he pours the monkey blood on

some of the other members of the crew.

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eh was just deranged, right?

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Like using them as bait exactly to try to catch the snake.

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Wow.

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Woof.

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That was wild.

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I was talking about like animatronics with this one and you kind of cheesy a little bit,

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Like Jurassic Park really put CGI on the map for creatures and uh this kind of evolved out

of that or not evolved, you know, used the same.

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The classic man versus animatronic snake kind of story.

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Yeah, for sure.

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I mean, I've never seen an anaconda in the wild thank God, but for

that thing to be so huge, it was pretty agile.

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No.

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zipping across set like my god this thing is moving quick and when it went to wrap them up it wrapped them really really quick i'm like wow i didn't know they i mean constrictors i

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didn't think they wrapped their prey that quick but okay makes a good film

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The movie opens with last line of the crawl says that they usually regurgitate their prey,

which they actually don't.

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mean, they don't actually eat humans.

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It's never been documented, but whatever.

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It's a Hollywood sort of action movie.

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But it really set the, did Chekhov have a snake?

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I mean, this is like a Chekhov snake uh situation here, the regurgitation.

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There's some fun in store.

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in this movie.

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Yeah, I'm glad we actually got to see that.

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No disclaimer, but somebody does get regurgitated and won't say who and when.

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Chekhov snake.

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Yep.

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as far as hip hop, authenticity and hip hop canon, the only connection is that Ice Cube

stars in it.

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he was listening to Mack 10 on the radio.

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Well, I thought it was funny that if you listen closely Ice Cube's, very first line in

this film was, yeah, well, today was a good day.

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I had that.

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I like that.

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I think that was.

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Very intentional.

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He did co-write Foe Life, the Mack 10 song in this thing.

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It the debut single from Mack 10's album from 1995.

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it's low on the hip-hop canon, but on the spectrum.

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JLo is a pop star, but she has made some hip hop adjacent films and has songs and

has some videos featuring hip hop artists.

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So we can stretch it a little bit.

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And she did start off as one of the fly girls in In Living Color, So she's a

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She's a multi-talented American treasure.

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I'm over here reaching, I'm reaching.

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I'm reaching.

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Got tiny T-Rex arms.

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I'm reaching.

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if Jon Voight was playing himself, Ice Cube was definitely playing himself.

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He had like a Dodgers cap.

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This is true.

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Yeah, he wasn't intimidated by the creepy Serone character either.

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Except for when the gun was in his face.

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That's the only time he backed up.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah, of course, J-Lo was connected to Diddy for several years, not to go down that path,

but she's hip hop adjacent for sure.

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Yeah.

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There's this funny quote that I saw on one of the reviews about the snake is like, monster

looks like a maniacal garden hose in a couple of sequences.

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Still it delivers the necessary thrills and chills.

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That was Carol Buckland from CNN.com years ago.

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And another.

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Joe Layden from Variety said, a silly and plodding Jaws rip-off about a 40 foot man-eating snake on the prowl in the Brazilian rainforest.

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Oh man, it's one of those things that's like teetering on so bad that it's good, know,

cult classic.

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any behind the scenes and fun facts um to mention here.

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Apparently they show this every year on South African TV as a running gag.

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That's so good.

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Okay then.

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Okay then.

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And I've forgotten that there was a crossover with the Lake Placid uh cinematic universe.

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I have not seen it.

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I'm willing to wait until it has a crossover with the Snakes on a Plane cinematic universe.

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Call me when that happens.

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Anaconda takes out plane.

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Hehehe.

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did see background on Kari Kari Wuhrer other than MTV stuff.

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She did go on to become a quote unquote sex symbol in the film industry.

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She made the list of several magazines including FHM, Maxim, Playboy, Celebrity Skin, etc.

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In 2002, her breast implants encapsulated forcing her to remove them.

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oh I hate when my breast implants encapsulate.

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It's no good.

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what?

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yeah, I remember Eric Stoltz went through the eighties, but I remember him in Mask He was

pretty good as Rocky Dennis.

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Yeah.

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And creepy Jon Voight is Angelina Jolie's father.

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this is a precursor to Zoolander, which I like.

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Jon Voight and Owen Wilson are both in that together.

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Jon Voight plays Ben Stiller's dad and then of course Owen Wilson is in that.

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But I also was reading that, well, there was a big scare, a real life in the filming of

one of the scenes of Anaconda when one of the large mechanical snakes malfunctioned,

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losing control and it almost collapsed on J.Lo's stand-in.

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almost fell on top of her.

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it's funny because they were like, hey, some of these actors or actresses were literally

afraid of snakes.

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And like, I couldn't find who it was.

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Like somebody mentioned that, but she, really kind of scarred JLo, that whole incident

where, yeah.

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I mean, plus you have animatronics and it's in the water.

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So the possibility of like electrocution and

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Yeah.

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It was pretty dangerous to make this work.

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So I give it credit for being bold in that regard of making this film with those dangers

around.

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this film didn't really...

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spark a lot of debates or inspire hip hop culture or anything like that.

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guess it was just kind of building on Ice Cube's film career and JLo's.

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Right.

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at number one.

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I forgot this, but it topped the box office for two weeks.

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Must have been a light season.

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Okay.

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I hope helped.

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times.

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I think it came out in April, not exactly summer blockbuster season.

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Yeah, I helped contribute to that.

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Hehehehehe

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there.

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It can't be perfect.

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was on the come up, like people want to see her, you know, so it's like she was.

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uh Sure, that definitely pulled in the people.

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They use their sex appeal too.

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mean, she's like...

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at that time of her career, they really leaned on that, but she had to gain more power and

could choose more selectively, those kinds of things.

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exactly.

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I mean, the movie did, know, spark a small cult following, though, and it sparked some

sequels.

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You know, we got 2004, Anaconda's The Hunt for the Blood Orchid.

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Anaconda 3, The Offspring.

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Anaconda's Trail of Blood, which came out in 2009.

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So we got a 2008 and a 2009 movie.

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Then in a weird twist,

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actually like we mentioned the crossover with Lake Placid Lake Placid vs Anaconda from 2015 but

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it actually like we mentioned the crossover with Lake Placid Lake Placid vs Anaconda from 2015 but it actually got somewhat of a reboot 2024 a Chinese filmmaker Anaconda Cursed

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Jungle it's almost like a remake reboot sort of thing it's like hmm i might actually check

that out

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Let's do it.

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can't wait for.

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thing is as we decided to watch this movie, was literally we decided to watch it the next

day.

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I see something pop across one of my social media feeds about the reboot that's happening

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And the trailer is funny if you watched it.

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They're just spoofing on themselves and like, so we're to reboot Anaconda.

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know, OK, should we do this?

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Should we do this?

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And they're just making fun of each other and wait, where's our snake?

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And it's just.

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slapstick kind of and I think that's the way you have to do it because you can't take it

seriously.

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No, this movie didn't take itself seriously or did it?

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Yeah, it's one of those like we talked about like a sharknado type thing, right?

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Where it's so bizarre.

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Snakenado.

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Precursor.

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know about you, but I'm looking forward to, mother effing snake in my mother effing

stockings this Christmas.

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You should give him a cameo in a movie.

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Mm-hmm.

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I like the premise.

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They encounter an actual Sir Snakes-A-Lot when they do this goof off remake of the film.

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Yeah, looks like it'll be entertaining.

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I mean, Paul Rudd and Jack Black can't really go wrong with that.

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Thandiwe Newton! Thandiwe Newton's in this.

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Automatic.

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Yeah.

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A couple goofballs, yep.

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Like Jack Black is made for this.

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Like when he did the reboots of Jumanji, like those were good.

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It's just missing like Kevin.

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Like I wish, yeah, Riverboat.

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I wish Kevin Hart would be in this too.

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Didn't they, what's the other one that the, yeah.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Can we get Shaq?

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Can we get Shaq?

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Oh god.

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LeBron.

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Yeah

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Oh man.

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I don't know what more we have on this one, but yeah.

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So yeah, so one of the interesting things, oh observations about this movie, I don't want

to call it a myth, but there's a mythos out there that um Black people don't survive

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horror films.

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And they're usually one of the first people to go.

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And Ice Cube survived

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And not only did Ice Cube survive this movie, but there are other hip hop artists who

starred in horror films who also survived.

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I'll name a few.

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We have the legendary Ice T, who appears in Leprechaun in The Hood.

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And he's listed as a survivor of the film.

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This guy's great.

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The Goat himself, LL Cool J, survived the sharks in Deep Blue Sea.

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And he survived Michael Myers in Halloween H2O.

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Twofer.

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Twofer, yep, yep, yep, yep.

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Rah Digga survived the ghost in the movie 13 Ghosts.

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And not only did LL Cool J survive Michael Myers, but also Busta Rhymes fought and

survived Michael Myers in Halloween Resurrection.

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Wow, look at that.

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Ice Cube kicked open the door.

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It's the Hype Williams moves that saved him.

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I thought when we did a deep dive on LL Cool J.

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And I thought he has like some sort of clause in his contract that he will never die in a

film, no matter what.

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Cube when they asked him to be in the film, he actually said that.

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said, I'll be in the movie, but I need to survive and I need to be able to help kill the

snake at the end.

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Yeah.

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Trejo short appearance.

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uh

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Danny Trejo shoulda took a note.

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Yeah.

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Well, later on in his career, I'm sure he had more script control.

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yeah, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

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And I don't think we've mentioned the very limited soundtrack.

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We did mention “Foe Life” by Mack 10, which you said Ice Cube wrote.

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And the other, other song was “Tipsy Dazy” which was Ziggy Marley and Melody Makers, a little reggae joint, but that's it.

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I would think that they would have a longer soundtrack or Cube would have used some more

of his songs.

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this film in terms of reviews.

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It's right in the middle.

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4.9 on IMDb, about 41 % on Rotten Tomatoes.

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And on the other Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars out of four.

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But my favorite part about this is that had six Razzie nominations, including Worst

Picture.

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And it's in the Razzie

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top 100 most enjoyably bad movies list.

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Yes. It lost to the Postman for most of these nominations.

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But Kevin Costner.

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Oh man.

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Oh god.

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a polarizing movie.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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You wanna go around and give our ratings for Anaconda?

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I'm not sure how this one's gonna go, we'll see.

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So Boogie, for 1997's Anaconda, starring Ice Cube and JLo, would you bring that funky

flick back or leave it in the vault?

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I'm gonna leave this one in the vault unless somebody requests me to watch it.

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I'll watch it with them to get their reaction.

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That's about it.

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Yeah.

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I go check out that Chinese version though.

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Yeah, let me see the Chinese one.

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DynoWright, for Anaconda, would you bring that funky flick back or leave it in the vault?

298

leave this in the vault but it was you know kind of fun and stupid with two O's.

299

I'll watch this while I'm ironing my dress shirts think this is like good to put on in the

background.

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For the original Anaconda, I'll leave it in the vault.

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But I would see the other one, the new one coming out, uh Anaconda 2, Wrath of Conda.

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Yeah

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yeah, I want to flip the script and I'm going to say, bring this funky flick back.

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Not that it was great, but it, you know, it is, it has the entertainment value.

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You see a young JLo, young ice cube, young Owen Wilson, creepy Jon Voight, which, know,

don't really need to see, but I don't know, like the cast and like the concept of it, like

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a creature feature, like, uh, you know, bring it out at Halloween time.

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Put on, like you said, in the background.

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So bring it back and keep it in the,

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creature feature.

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Yeah.

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It's near the top of the stack in the vault.

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It's not the worst movie we've ever I've ever seen.

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think it's it had some redeeming value in it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah.

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I it in the vault but I didn't lock it.

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exactly.

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vault's not locked.

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into the river.

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Right, I didn't wrap chains around it and toss it overboard.

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I didn't choke it to death like Denise Kallberg.

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Definitely a flawed film, it's cheesy.

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Cheesy goodness at times.

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Eat them all.

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Eat every one of them.

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Thanks for tuning into the Hip Hop Movie Club Show.

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I'm Dyno Wright, filmmaker, designer, longtime hip hop fan, and my favorite Sir Mix-A-Lot

track is My Hooptie.

328

I'm JB, 80s and 90s nostalgia junkie, long time Hip-Hop fan, and I see that the Anaconda

reboot starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd indeed uses the famous Sir Mix-A-Lot refrain a

329

few times in the official movie trailer.

330

A philosopher king that Sir Mix-A-Lot is.

331

Yes, yes, yes.

332

And I'm Boogie, a DJ, long time hip hop fan.

333

And as I mentioned, I saw this film back in theaters back in 97, mainly because I'm a huge

fan of the films, yeah, there we go.

334

Yep.

335

Speaking of horror films, join us on Saturday, October 4th at the Frank Banko AleHouse

Cinemas at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA as the Hip Hop Movie Club teams up with the first

336

Saturday horror series and the hosts of the How Could You podcast for a special screening

of Tales from the Hood.

337

You will not want to miss this spooktacular event.

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See this movie on the big screen.

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And remember, don't hate, interrogate.

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Yes Yes

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interrogate

342

Yeah, get to the bottom of it.

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They're eating snakes.

344

interrogate Serone, give him some truth serum.

345

Yeah, that guy.

346

Yeah.

347

man, he does.

348

Yeah.

349

Mm-hmm.

350

Heart of gold, the Eric Stoltz

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right.

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Always count on Eric

353

You