10 movies with killer animals

Luis Llosa knew his way around a good action scene, as he’d proven with Sniper and The Specialist. And he delivered a bunch of them in the surprise hit Anaconda, in which the biggest fucking snake you’ve ever seen attacks the crew (Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Kari Wuhrer, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson) of a documentary being shot in the Amazon. Supposedly helping the crew is a jerk of a snake hunter named Paul (Jon Voight). Wilson dies a pretty good death, squeezed by the snake and pulled into the water, but Voight’s demise is one for the ages. The snake is coiled around Lopez and Cube, who are already tied up (by Voight, using them as bait), constricting tighter and tighter. Voight shoots at it, and it chases him up a ladder, which then comes crashing down. The snake, with an assist from Cube, coils around Voight. And here’s where the fun starts. Llosa goes in tight on Voight’s face nearly popping, then to a close-up of the pissed-off snake, then back to Voight’s head, then to Lopez and Cube, and to an overhead shot of the snake unhinging its mouth and closing in on Voight’s head. Then, Llosa delivers one of the nuttier shots ever, as we’re now inside the snake’s mouth! Finally, we get a wide shot of the snake devouring Voight whole. And it just keeps going, as the snake regurgitates a venom-mutilated Voight … who winks at Lopez before finally dying. It’s five solid minutes of bravura, batshit-crazy filmmaking (realized in large part with practical effects vs CG).