About a million years ago, while I was living in Denver, I rescued a Siamese cat from the streets who I named “Belle de Jour.” One day I remember the cat was glaring at me from across the room and I got this chill down my spine. I was positive she was thinking, “If you weren’t feeding me regularly, you’d be a dead man.” That’s why I’ve always been partial to movies where animals attack humans. I’ve always rooted for the creatures. Now, with Severin’s new Blu-ray releases of two choice entries in this sub-genre- Grizzly and Day of the Animals– it made me think back fondly on other cinematic epics where critters turn on their “masters.”
I was a teenager when I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in a movie theater that was situated near a body of water, and when the audience exited the cinema a flock of seagulls frantically squawked above us, causing little kids to clutch their parents and burst into tears. It was one of my fondest teen memories. Imagine how much better National Velvet would have been if the horse had stomped young Elizabeth Taylor to death at the end. Or if Old Yeller had wrestled the gun from the father and blown his head off.
What I loved about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was that, like the Daphne du Maurier story it was based on, there wasn’t any real explanation for why the birds were attacking people at Bodega Bay. Other movies have tried to shoehorn an ecological phenomenon for animal attacks, or, sometimes, blame it on, just plain “payback.”
There’s also something else that gravitates me to movies like this. I just get a kick out of imagining how (before CGI) they filmed scenes where animals are attacking. Now, Day of the Animals and Grizzly, out now on Blu-ray (and looking sensational) from Severin, are from one of my favorite crackpot directors- William Girdler, who directed Asylum of Satan; Abby; 3 on a Meathook; and the loony The Manitou where Susan Strasberg grows a giant tumor on her back which gets bigger and bigger and eventually she gives birth to an evil Native American medicine man/dwarf named Misquamacus. (I kid you not). In Day of the Animals, a hiking party in the Sierra mountains led by Christopher George, which includes Leslie Nielsen and Lynda Day George, suffer the radioactive effects of the depletion of the ozone layer and come under attack from mountain lions, owls, hawks, dogs, bears, rats and snakes. Grizzly was director Girdler’s shameless rip-off of the mega-hit Jaws– I’m surprised they just didn’t call it Paws. Christopher George plays a forest ranger watching over a nature park when tourists start getting chomped and torn apart by a very pissed-off 15-foot grizzly bear. The brawny beast even swats at a helicopter and in one jaw-dropping scene rips the leg off a little boy playing outside, while his frantic mother beats at it with a broom. Both nature vs. man films are a hoot. On Severin’s Blu-ray of Grizzly, author Stephen Thrower includes a fascinating extra about the career of William Girdler that is sensational.
Now cats always look like they’re up to no good and a prime subject for movie mayhem. Films like Cat’s Eye; The Uncanny; The Black Cat; Uninvited; Sleepwalkers; Pet Cemetary; Eye of the Cat– why, the list of feline movie assassins goes on and on. But I rather prefer The Shadow of the Cat, where the matriarch of the house is done-in by her servants and her pet cat systematically kills off each one of them in rather clever ways. It’s much more satisfying then watching a cat demonically sucking the breath out of a baby on film. Or once again walled up and left to die. (Thanks a lot, Edgar Allan Poe).
Dogs can be adorable on screen (although not particularly to me). They also can be scary, teeth-baring beasts. I prefer those on screen, chasing poor souls down and tearing their throats out. The Hound of the Baskervilles; Rottweiler; Baxter; Man’s Best Friend; Dogs; Play Dead The Pack; White Dog; They Only Kill Their Masters right down to Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell and Dracula’s Dog. Those are my kind of pups. But you’ve got to admire Cujo, based on a Stephen King novel. First of all, the dog is a St. Bernard, which is almost impossible to think of as frightening. Carrying a little keg of alcohol around his neck, yes. But ripping a man’s face off? Big old, shaggy Cujo gets bit on the snout by a rabid bat and becomes a foaming, snarling, rampaging beast, trapping a mother (Dee Wallace) and her son in a hot car, with no way to exit. The fact that the film kept such a slim premise going for 90 minutes is thanks to Lewis Teague’s masterful direction and an astronomical, fearless performance by Dee Wallace.
One of the great dog revenge movies has to be the extraordinary White God. It’s about a little girl searching Budapest for her lost mutt Hagen (who her mean father just let out of the car in a remote section of town). This poor animal’s incredible, terrible journey- chased by dogcatchers; captured and brutally trained for dog fighting- sets you up for the movie’s finale with hundreds of dogs (let by Hagen) rampaging through the streets causing havoc. This should probably be retitled “Lassie Gets Even.”
Sure, there’s Yogi Bear and Gentle Ben. But these lumbering clawed behemoths can also wreak havoc on screen. The Night of the Grizzly; Backcountry; Grizzly and many others show the flip side of a teddy bear’s picnic. A survivalist movie like The Edge starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin is like “ham vs. beast.” But you can’t do better than the sensational documentary Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog about the life and ironic death of Timothy Treadwell, who lived in the Alaskan wilderness studying grizzly bears, filming them in a video journal. Unfortunately, he and his girlfriend were eventually killed and eaten by one. This is the perfect “holy fool” that Herzog obviously relishes- like Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo. Treadwell, lean and good-looking, with his blonde Prince Valiant hairdo, is alternately funny, excitable, passionate and often annoying as hell. You really root for the bear.
Zoos (on film) are a perfect place for caged creatures to exact revenge on the public. In the Pre-Code shocker- Murders in the Zoo, a big game hunter and zoo owner (Lionel Atwill) dispatches his cheating wives by feeding them to the crocodiles. In Black Zoo, a crazed zookeeper (Michael Gough) leads a cult of people who worship animals. But if you cross him, he sends out his trained lions; cheetahs; tigers; black panther and gorillas to annihilate you. But in Wild Beasts, tainted water at a Rome zoo causes the animals to escape and hunt down humans. There is a hair-raising scene of a couple necking in a car who get attacked by rats. And a woman is chased down in her car by a hyena. In the “extras” on the Blu-ray the incredible sequence was achieved when a chicken was tied to the bumper of the car.
Pigs usually receive a lot of good cheer on screen, from Babe to Charlotte’s Web. But leave it to horror movies to have psycho killers feeding their victims’ bodies to a herd of hungry “I’ll eat anything” hogs like in the movie Pigs. Or having your parents transformed into pigs in Spirited Away. Boars don’t usually get that much love on screen, like in the Australian horror film Razorback, or in Chaw; Boar; Pig Hunt; etc. But I have to admit a fondness for the French thriller Prey, where a river contaminated with pesticide is responsible for a sounder of mutant pigs. Before long it’s just like a song by The Marvelettes, “What’s the world comin’ to/Things just aint the same/Any time the hunter gets captured by the game.”
Alligators or crocodiles make the perfect on-screen nemesis. They have all those big, sharp, snapping teeth and in the water, they move way too fast. There’s the witty John Sayles screenplay for Alligator. The enjoyable Lake Placid. Primeval; Black Water; The Great Alligator. Crazy, long-haired Neville Brand feeding his motel guests to his pet alligator in Tobe Hooper’s underrated Eaten Alive. Or the surprisingly scary Australian movie Rogue. But for my money, the film to beat is Crawl, a visceral, nerve-shredding. roller coaster of a thriller by Alexandre Aja about a professional swimmer (Kaya Scodelario) trying to get her injured father (Barry Pepper) out of a flooding basement during a hurricane with many, hungry alligators all around. When they play the song “See You Later, Alligator” during the final credits you laugh with a sigh of sweet relief.
Now the forest (and seaside) can be filled with many hidden terrors in movies. Look what happens to the bitter, littering couple in the 1978 Australian film Long Weekend.
Those who live in fear of bats getting stuck in their hair will absolutely hate sitting through such films as Bats; Nightwing; The Devil Bat; Chosen Survivors and The Roost.
Rats are called out for revenge in Willard, and the sequel Ben, not to mention gigantically showing up in The Food of the Gods. Then there’s Rats: Night of Terror; Graveyard Shift and the Moby Dick of rat movies- Of Unknown Origin.
Snakes show up on Planes, or poisonously slithering in homes like in Venom, or into horror films like The Killer Snakes; Anaconda; Jennifer; Sssssss; Spasms; Stanley; Rattlers, and in plenty of other serpentine shockers.
Even sheep can turn baaaaaaaaaa-d in the amusing Australian dark comedy Black Sheep.
But all these films pale in comparison to Frogs. Very few film make me laugh as much as this 1972 ecological horror film. First of all, the poster was perfection. It’s a picture of a giant frog with a human hand hanging out of its mouth. The plot is about a group of greedy relatives gathering at the island estate of a wealthy, tyrannical industrialist (Ray Milland), who has made his business polluting the planet. Gliding in by canoe comes a free-lance photographer doing a layout on pollution and played by a young, sexy Sam Elliott, fortunately often shirtless and wearing tight, incredibly revealing jeans. The guests begin to get attacked by snakes, spiders, clumsy lizards, alligators, birds, snapping turtles, crabs and other assorted reptiles. I constantly find myself re-watching Frogs just for the end where Ray Milland falls out of his wheelchair and gets hit with a bucket-full of frogs. What poor prop guy had to stand on the sidelines and throw live frogs at poor, old, Academy Award-winner Ray Milland?
The tag line for the movie is so hilarious it makes life worth living: “Today the pond! Tomorrow the world!” Kermit, what are you waiting for?
This is great!
Oh Bravo Dennis!!!
This is one of my favorite pieces!!!!!