The Hunt for the Blood Orchid

Last time, they were doing a documentary in South America. This time, they’re hunting for an orchid containing a chemical which may be the long-sought “fountain of youth”. They’ve also moved to Borneo, where — if you believe scientists, who obviously don’t know everything — there are no anacondas, at least if you can believe what you find on the web. But — surprise! — without anacondas, there wouldn’t be a movie, so now you find super-giant anacondas in the heart of Borneo.

Seems these orchids flower only once every seven years, for a few weeks, and our expedition has to sail up a river into the heart of Borneo in the middle of the rainy season to get to the flowers in time to collect them. Nobody wants to sail up the river at that time of year, so they have to hire a down-and-out special forces vet (Johnny Messner) who has something that he lovingly and laughably refers to as a boat. First problem — the boat, sailing upriver, goes over a waterfall. Funny, in the years I spent studying physics at Caltech I never learned that it was possible to go over a waterfall while traveling upriver. Second problem — the area in which they’re marooned seems to be swarming with big bad South American snakes, all of which just happen to be heading in the same direction our expedition is going (there does seem to be a rationale behind this, however). Third problem — one member of the expedition is so bent on getting those orchids that he’s willing to let everybody else be done away with if they get in his way. This is the mad scientist of literary tradition — except, of course, madness is here encouraged by potential stock options.

Well, I saw Anaconda, and I can only say that, after a while, snakes — even big ones — get old (though these ones don’t seem to). And one can be put off by the scientific blunders (the web pages also say that anacondas are relatively slow-moving creatures, but neither here nor in the previous movie were they particularly limited in speed). Finally, and perhaps most important, neither dark-skinned Salli Richardson nor blonde KaDee Strickland is likely to be mistaken for J-Lo, who brought a certain level of je ne sais quoi to the original film (which is mentioned in passing by one of the characters here).

Still, if you go to Borneo you might want to watch out for snakes. Anacondas or not, you might find reticulated pythons there, and one captured in the Celebes, not far from Borneo, remains the longest measured snake in the world at 33 feet. But who wants to make a film called Reticulated Pythons: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid?