Anaconda (1997)

Although this cheesy nature-bites-back movie is technically far too recent and too high profile to sit comfortably alongside the likes of Night of the Lepus or Tentacles, it’s certainly stupid enough to qualify – especially as most people forget that the monster snake’s first victim is current comedy megastar, Owen Wilson.

The butterscotch stallion plays Gary, the sound recordist for a small team of documentary makers heading up the Amazon to film a fabled lost tribe. Bear in mind that this documentary crew features scowling rapper Ice Cube as its cinematographer and Jennifer Lopez as the director, so it’s clear that realism was never really an issue here. They rescue a barking mad snake hunter (played by a barking mad Jon Voight) from his sinking ship, and are promptly coerced, bullied and finally forced at gunpoint to help him track and catch the monster serpent of the title.

Owen’s perpetually horny character is the first of the crew to realise that, actually, giant snake hunting might be both more fun and more profitable than farting around with lost tribes and is thus the first to fall prey to the anaconda. Crushed and gulped, being swallowed alive just isn’t punishment enough for going against the wishes of Cube and Lopez, so we’re treated to a CGI enhanced view of his screaming face bulging through the distended belly of the beast as it spirits him away under the water.

Of course, Jon Voight also gets swallowed later, but is then vomited back up again, partially digested. So Owen gets off rather lightly, all things considered.

Honourable mention: Wilson also suffers the indignity of playing another sex-obsessed buffoon who is the first to die in the absolutely terrible 1999 remake of the classic ghost story The Haunting. His head gets knocked off by a giant lion-shaped pendulum, which achieves the remarkable feat of being an even more stupid and random demise than being digested by a computer-generated snake.

Availability: Anaconda is readily available on DVD.