In the history of “When Animals Attack” movies there is one entry that stands alone, a film with a premise so goofy and wonderful that it could only be improved by a scene of Leslie Nielsen wrestling a bear, and that film is William Girdler’s Day of the Animals, a man against nature story that even rivals his Spielberg rip-off Grizzly, which did not have Leslie Nielsen wrestling a bear, so let us look back to those halcyon days when man was the hunted instead of the hunter.
“For centuries they were hunted for bounty, for fun and food…now it’s their turn!” That was the tagline for William Girdler’s Day of the Animals, his follow-up film to Grizzly, but where that film was simply a Jaws rip-off this entry took the “When Animals Attack” genre to a whole new level as he also tossed in some eco-horror elements with the premise being that the depletion of the ozone layer has caused animals to become highly aggressive toward humans, with an opening crawl explaining that “This motion picture dramatizes what COULD happen in the near future IF we continue to do nothing to stop this damage to Nature’s protective shield for life on this planet” and while that is certainly true the film we get is pretty crazy and is certainly more science fiction than it is science fact, but with a bit of horror thrown in to spice things up.
“Ranger Smith, I just hope to keep Leslie Nielsen in check.”
This film may fall into both categories of “When Animals Attack” and “Eco-horror” but its basic structure follows that of what you would find in your typical 1970s disaster movie, where a group of character archetypes are introduced in the most economical manner possible and then through the film's running time the “disaster” would knock off a number of these people along the way, and for this movie, we have Steve Buckner (Christopher George), the film's primary hero, who runs some kind of hiking business where he would take a collection of tenderfoots up into the mountains for a long “survivalist hike” but this time out things don’t go quite as planned as we learn from a news broadcast that scientists have observed that due to the thinning of the ozone layer animals located in areas over 5,000 feet in altitude have become highly aggressive toward humans. This does not bode well for our group as they are about to be dropped off on top of a mountain, but just who is on the menu?
"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip."
First we have Professor MacGregor (Richard Jaeckel) an anthropologist and avid photographer who may as well have covered himself in Kibble as his chance of surviving this thing is almost nil, next is Frank and Mandy Young (Jon Cedar and Susan Backlinie) as a bickering married couple who hope this hike will rejuvenate their marriage, spoiling warning it won’t, then we have divorcee Shirley Goodwyn (Ruth Roman) and her son Johnny (Bobby Porter) to add some family drama to the proceedings, then there is Paul Jenson (Leslie Nielsen) a racist advertising executive, a man who will have you rooting for the killer animals to take him out with extreme prejudice as soon as possible, next is Bob Denning (Andrew Stevens) and his girlfriend Beth Hughes (Kathleen Bracken) as a teenage couple that really should have gone to a Drive-In instead of on this stupid nature hike, next there is Roy Moore (Paul Mantee) a former professional football player sidelined by cancer and Daniel Santee (Michael Ansara) as a Native American who will supply words of wisdom and be all noble and stuff, and finally we have Terry Marsh (Lynda Day George) as an anchorwoman and possible love interest for Buckner.
“Should I file the sexual harassment charges now, just to save time?
That’s a lot of characters to juggle and director William Girdler handles it all fairly well, falling back on standard tropes and cliches to save time, and while no one in this film comes across all that well-developed, or at least enough for us to become fully invested in whether they live or die – except Leslie Nielsen’s character who you will want dead from scene one – there is enough here on the page so you can at least tell them apart, which isn’t something that can't be said of most films from this genre and Girdler manages to do it in record time. What makes Day of the Animals stand out from many other eco-horror films is that, unlike such films as Kingdom of the Spiders or the made-for-television Ants! we don’t just get one type of animal turning on mankind, instead, we get quite a variety of species to terrorize our human protagonists, from birds of prey to wolves and big cats, and these creatures working in concert really rachets the tension as we watch these dangerous animals stalking our heroes.
“Have anyone of you guys seen a girl in a red hood?"
The animal wranglers and trainers certainly had their work cut out for them as bears and mountain lions are not known to suffer each other's company all that well – why the ozone layer’s depletion would make these disparate animals team up is never explained – and I did love how the one falcon looked to be keeping on eye on the interlopers and almost seemed to be marshalling the forces against them, almost like a winged George Patton, but as terrifying as the idea of being mauled by a wolf or having your eyes gouged out by a vulture the most frightening thing in this movie is the sight of shirtless Leslie Nielsen as he goes stark raving mad and murdering poor Bob, who tried to stop him from raping his girlfriend, in a scene that culminated with Nielsen wrestling a bear during a thunderstorm. This is high cinema folks and Nielsen’s brilliant monologue about "his place in the world" is one of the best moments in the film.
“If there's a God left up there to believe in. My Father who art in Heaven, you made a jackass out of me for years! It’s never been you for me! Melville's god, that's a god I believe in! You see what you want and take it! You take it! And I am going to do just that!”
Needless to say, Paul Jenson does not survive his encounter with the bear – I picture many cheering cinemagoers when he gets bear-hugged to death – but William Girdler wasn’t passing moral judgment on his characters but more so the whole human race as the people who die in this film do so in a fairly arbitrary way and one of the most surprising things to me was the death Frank and Mandy Young because in disaster films it’s often the drama and tension of the event that brings a couple back together, kind of like an ecological marriage counsellor, but in this film, Mandy is the first one to go and while poor Frank lasts quite a bit longer, even managing to rescue a wayward traumatized little girl on his travels, he does bite it in the end. And while the Native American contingent of the party survives, strangely enough, it’s not due to his being “one with nature” but more a case of dumb luck. The only obvious survivors from the outset would be Buckner and Terry Marsh, who are both pretty people and the film’s ostensible leads, but I personally think Buckner should have been eaten as his whole business model was very suspect and several of the deaths I lay right at his feet.
If only enough of them had survived to file a class action lawsuit.
Stray Observations:
• Actress Susan Backlinie played the doomed Chrissie in Spielberg’s Jaws, so it is fitting that she was the first to die in this other great “When Animals Attack” movie.
• Richard Jaeckel and Christopher George both starred in Grizzly, so you’d think they’d at least know what to expect when animals get all pissed off.
• Despite being of Syrian descent Michael Ansara plays a Native American in this film, which he would do again in William Girdler’s The Manitou.
• Steve Buckner is really bad at his job, not only does he constantly make passes at one of the attractive members of his party, which is altogether creepy, but when Mandy is attacked by a wolf he sends her and Frank off on their own to find help. This is how you get a one-star Yelp review.
• It’s odd that on such an extensive “survival hike” Buckner does not bring along any kind of communication equipment so that he could radio for help if anything were to go wrong, like a hiker twisting an ankle or getting attacked by wolves. Did I mention Buckner was really bad at his job?
• Frank comes across a little girl who is in shock after seeing her parents killed by animals, which could be a nice nod to the little girl in the classic giant ant movie Them!
• That Buckner is really bad at his job can not be disputed but the idea that anyone would decide to split off and follow asshat Jenson anywhere is less believable than various animals working together to kill humans. Humans working together to kill Jenson, that I could believe.
• Buckner suggests that Jenson’s behaviour, like the animals, could be caused by the depleted ozone layer but he was always a jerk and no one else in the group seemed to be affected, so that theory doesn’t hold water.
“And don’t call me Shirley!”
Like many films of this type, we get a rather abrupt ending, with the military showing up and stating that “Above 5,000 all animals are dying, human survivors appear to be immune,” which I guess is nice for the humans, and then we here that Environmental Protection Agency is claiming that “The shift in ozone levels continues to correct itself, the virus mutation infecting animal and human life was unable to sustain itself as the Sun’s radiation decreases to normal levels” and that is a pretty big load of technobabble bullshit and doesn't make a lick of sense. Are we to believe that the depleted ozone layer caused a mutated virus and then it just went away, is that really how you want to end your movie? I know you have to wrap up your movie in some way but I haven’t heard such a ham-fisted piece of expository dialogue since Simon Oakland explained away Anthony Perkins’ deal at the end of Psycho.
Alfred Hitchcock's film certainly could have used a Hazmat team.
That said, William Girdler’s Day of the Animals is a fun example of the "When Animals Attack" subgenre and the assembled cast all did their best with the film's ludicrous premise and the cardboard-thin characters they were given, it also has a very good score by Lalo Schifrin and you certainly can't fault the filmmakers for trumpeting a real environmental issue while also packaging it all up as an exciting eco-horror flick – sadly, our current climate issue doesn't seem to be "correcting itself" – but all in all, this is an entertaining entry and makes for a nice double bill with Grizzly.
Note: The animal attack sequences were wonderfully executed by the animal trainers and the editing for these scenes was quite horrifying at times, unfortunately, the one piece of optical work during Mandy’s encounter with some nasty birds was pretty bad and quite out of place and should have been left on the editing room floor.
No comments:
Post a Comment