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Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid

Plot

A team of researchers funded by a New York pharmaceutical firm Wexel Hall, including Jack Byron, Gordon Mitchell, Sam Rogers, Gail Stern, Cole Burris, and Ben Douglas leave for a jungle in Borneo to search for a "blood orchid", a flower they believe can be used as a type of fountain of youth. Though their guide Bill Johnson has misgivings about which path to take, Jack bribes him to take an unsafe path. The team goes over a waterfall and has to wade through the river. A giant anaconda emerges from the water and swallows Ben whole, but the rest of the team escapes the river. Bill assures them that it was the largest snake he has ever seen and that it should take weeks for it to grow hungry again; however, most of the team demands that the expedition be called off. They travel to Bill's friend, John Livingston, who lives on the river to see if Johnson can borrow his boat; however, they find Livingston dead and his boat crashed.

They find themselves in a small native village consisting of thatched huts where a disemboweled anaconda with a pair of human legs hanging out of the snake's abdomen is displayed. The team realizes that the snakes are unusually large in size because their lives have been extended through the orchids, which are a part of the local food chain. Jack says that since they must be close to the orchids, they should press on. However the others contend that there is no evidence that the orchids will have the same effect on humans. Wanting to leave, they start building an escape raft.

Gordon discovers Livington's radio and gun and realizes he could have called for help long ago. Jack is unable to convince him to allow the expedition to continue, so he paralyzes him using a poisonous spider. As Jack joins the others at the raft, Sam discovers Mitchell and the spider bite. An anaconda drops down from the rafters and swallows Gordon alive soon after she leaves the building. The others arrive just as it finishes, so Bill sets the building on fire. Jack uses the commotion to steal the raft.

With no more material to make another raft, they bushwack through the jungle to beat Jack to the orchids and retrieve their raft. On the way they fall into a cave trying to escape an anaconda. Cole gets lost and panics after finding a skeleton. He runs into Bill's partner, Tran, and as they return to the others, Tran is eaten by an anaconda underwater. The terrified Cole escapes the caves behind the group seconds ahead of the snake. It follows him through the hole and gets stuck. Sam uses a machete to behead the snake, but another snake captures Cole. The team follows and find him being constricted but still alive. Bill throws his knife and impales the snake through the head, killing it and freeing Cole.

The group finds the raft just as Jack finds the blood orchids, hanging precariously above a pit in which a ball of male anacondas are mating with the queen. Byron shoots Johnson in the arm and forces the party to accompany him to the orchids. He has Sam cross the pit via a thin log to fill a backpack with orchids. As she returns, the log cracks. Jack orders her to throw him the backpack, but Sam threatens to drop the flowers into the pit unless he drops the gun. The log breaks, and she falls, landing halfway down the pit. As the others help her climb out, Jack attempts to retrieve the backpack. The spider he used to paralyze Gordon escapes its jar and bites him. Jack falls into the pit and is devoured as Sam and the others escape.

The female anaconda notices them, but Gail tricks it into biting their fuel container. Bill tries to shoot the snake, but the gun is empty. Cole shoots it with a flare, causing a chain reaction that kills the snakes and destroys the blood orchids. Bill, Sam, Cole, and Gail make it back to the raft and leave.

Source : Wikipedia

Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World

Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World is the titular character of a British children's film with dollops of unexpected satire and comedy released in 1973 starring Jim Dale, and directed by Joseph McGrath. A large supporting cast of British movie stalwarts includes Spike Milligan, Angela Douglas, Norman Rossington, Milo O'Shea, Dinsdale Landen and Victor Spinetti. The production included composer Edwin Astley and cinematographer Harry Waxman. The film was based on the novel The Biggest Dog in the World by Ted Key.

The film starred Fernville Lord Digby in the title role. Digby was then the reigning Dulux Old English Sheepdog; the company using the breed since 1961 in their advertisements that led to the breed's popularity around the world. ^[1]

Plot

The story is about an Old English Sheepdog who accidentally drinks a liquid growth formula (a form of experimental fertilizer), and expands to gigantic proportions. Two criminals then steal Digby, and sell him to a circus. Digby, however, escapes by breaking his chains, and running at will across the countryside of the United Kingdom. The boy who owns Digby, as well as the scientist who worked on the growth formula, both realize that Digby is constantly increasing in size, and will soon cause enormous damage unless something is done immediately. The scientist finds out he has created a chemical that might reverse the growth formula. The British military, however, is attempting to solve the problem of the oversized sheepdog in their own way: by use of bombs andartillery.

Source : Wikipedia

Giant garter snake

Biology and ecology

The giant garter snake is endemic to the Central Valley wetlands of California. It is active when water temperatures are at 68° F (20°C) or more, and is dormant underground when its aquatic habitat is below this temperature. Fish and frogs form a large portion of the diet of the giant garter snake.

Conservation biology

Destruction of wetland and habitat has been so widespread, this species is listed as endangered by the state and federal governments.^[2]The giant garter snake populations of the San Joaquin Valley are now tiny disconnected remnants.^[3] It has been extirpated from 98% of the former San Joaquin habitat.^[4] The giant garter snake has fared better in the Sacramento Valley because rice cultivation and the associated canals have provided habitat,^[2] when rice land is fallowed, populations seem to then move away from adjacent ditches.^[5]

In addition to habitat loss and fragmentation, introduced predators such as the American bullfrog may also be suppressing recovery.^[6]Attempts are underway to restore artificial wetlands to provide quality habitat for the giant garter snake, but it is too early to know if these efforts will significantly aid the recovery of this threatened species.

Source : Wikipedia

WWE : Company history, Prior to Titan Sports

WWE's origins can trace back as far as 1952 when Roderick James "Jess" McMahon and Toots Mondt created the Capitol Wrestling Corporation Ltd. (CWC), which joined the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in 1953. McMahon, who was a successful boxing promoter, began working with Tex Rickard in 1926. With the help of Rickard, he began promoting boxing at the third Madison Square Garden. Though, it was not the first time Jess McMahon promoted wrestling cards as he had already promoted wrestling cards during the 1910s.

In November 1954, Jess McMahon died and Ray Fabiani, one of Mondt's associates, brought in McMahon's son Vincent James.^[14] The younger McMahon and Mondt were very successful and soon controlled approximately 70% of the NWA's booking, largely due to their dominance in the heavily populated Northeast region. In 1963, McMahon and Mondt left the NWA and Capitol created the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), following a dispute with the NWA over "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers being booked to hold theNWA World Heavyweight Championship.^[15] Both men left the company in protest following the incident and formed the WWWF in the process, awarding Rogers the new WWWF World Heavyweight Championship in April of that year. He lost the championship to Bruno Sammartino a month later on May 17, 1963, after suffering a heart attack a week before the match.

Capitol operated the WWWF in a conservative manner compared to other pro wrestling territories;^[16] it ran its major arenas monthly rather than weekly or bi-weekly, usually featuring a babyface champion wrestling various heels in programs that consisted of one to three matches.^[17] After gaining a television program deal and turning preliminary wrestler Lou Albano as a manager for Sammartino's heel opponents, the WWWF was doing sell out business by 1970.

Mondt left Capitol in the late sixties and although the WWWF had withdrawn from the NWA, Vince McMahon, Sr. quietly re-joined in 1971. Capitol renamed the World Wide Wrestling Federation to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1979.^[18]

Source : Wikipedia

Green Anaconda vs. Jaguar

A jaguar heads to the Amazon River. A large anaconda is patrolling the shore, as the spotted cat enters the water, the snake sees it as prey and takes position, waiting for the right moment to strike. The cat can sense the danger, but cannot see the reptile beneath the surface. A bird call distracts it; the snake takes advantage of it and strikes without warning, wrapping its coils over the big cat. Soon, both mammal and reptile sink underwater, the jaguar gets away at first by biting the anaconda′s tail and cutting it with claws. Hurt and bleeding, the anaconda attempts to flee, but the jaguar, determined to have it for dinner, tries to fish it out of the water. On land, the snake turns around and launches a surprise attack, knocking the cat and coiling around it again. Too tired to fight back, the jaguar is defeated – and soon killed.

Source : Wikipedia

Horror film : History

The first depictions of supernatural events appear in several of the silent shorts created by the film pioneer Georges Méliès in the late 1890s, the best known being Le Manoir du Diable, which is sometimes credited as being the first horror film.^[3] Another of his horror projects was 1898's La Caverne maudite (a.k.a. The Cave of the Unholy One, literally "the accursed cave").^[3] Japan made early forays into the horror genre with Bake Jizoand Shinin no Sosei, both made in 1898.^[4] The era featured a slew of literary adaptations, with the works of Poe and Dante, among others. In 1910,Edison Studios produced the first film version of Frankenstein,^[5] following the 1908 film adaptation of the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The macabre nature of the source materials used made the films synonymous with the horror film genre.

Around the Weimar Republic era, German Expressionist film makers would significantly influence later films. Paul Wegener's The Golem (1920),Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and The Man Who Laughs (1928), based on the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, were influential films at the time. The first vampire-themed movie, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), was made during this time, though it was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Though the word "horror" to describe the film genre would not be used until the 1930s, after Universal Pictures released Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Hollywood dramas often used horror themes. Some notable influences on the genre include The Phantom Carriage (Sweden, 1920), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Waxworks (Germany, 1924), The Lost World (1925), and The Unknown (1927). These early films were considered dark melodramas because of their stock characters and emotion heavy plots that focused on romance, violence, suspense, and sentimentality.

The trend of inserting an element of macabre into these pre-horror melodramas continued into the 1920s. Directors known for relying on macabre in their films during the 1920s were Maurice Tourneur, Rex Ingram, and Tod Browning. The Magician (1926) contains one of the first examples of a "mad doctor" and is said to have had a large influence on James Whale's version of Frankenstein. The Unholy Three (1925) is an example of Browning's use of macabre and unique style of morbidity; he remade the film in 1930 as atalkie, though The Terror (1928) was the first horror film with sound.

Source : Wikipedia