Badmovies.org Forum

What are you favorite Killer animal movies?
What are your least favorites?
Do you know of any rare ones that you think most people have never heard of?

I've got a soft spot for the Aussie film "Razorback" about a giant, fast moving wild boar on the rampage in the Outback. I also derive plenty of enjoyment from "Alligator".

As I've said before here, "Night of the Lepus" pretty much tops the genre --

I'd give "Megalon 3" a vote too, though --

Giant killer bunnies are one thing, but badly enlarged Great White Sharks are something else entirely.  Both films full of cheesy goodness --

peter johnson/denny crane

Anything with massive sharks  :thumbup:

   There's a lot of good ones out there. I love Robert Forster in Alligator and I also like Swarm and Pirahna and of course Shatner in Kingdom of Spiders. There's also a littel film called Day of the Animals. It's got cougars, grizzlies and Leslie Nielsen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cIQj2gEAJg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G27f1pd4SfE&NR=1

The original Willard. A friend brought a bag of mice that he bought from a local petshop and dropped them from the balcony during the scene when the rats eat Ernest Borgnine. He practically emptied the theatre. Good times.

A tossup between "Strays" (1991), with killer house cats, and "Squirm" (1976), with killer earthworms. Of the two, "Strays" is slightly more plausible. Anybody who's ever lived with a cat knows they want to kill you and might be capable of it. But earthworms? What exactly is it they're supposed to do to you when they attack?

"maneaters are loose" because two tigers are loose and it just so happens a world famous safari guy lives right there where they are randomly loose, let out by a drunk

It's been a number of years since I saw "Squirm", but I think they were mutated by electricity(!?!) when a power line goes down, and they develop nasty pincers.  "They bite!"  was one of the taglines of the film, I seem to remember.   Some people eat them by accident in salads, and they burrow out from the inside.  Plus they eat people who fall on them.  I recall it had some good unintended laughs along with some intentional humor, and parts were genuinely suspenseful.
peter johnson/denny crane

Hard to pick one, but I have a soft spot for Kingdom of the Spiders. I have good memories of watching it with my best friend as a kid, and thinking it was a kick-ass movie, and of checking it out later and finding a lot of unintentionally funny stuff in it. Good memories, cheesy fun, and I can watch it again and again. I guess its my favourite.

All those mentioned, plus:

GIANT SPIDER INVASION
FOOD OF THE GODS
EMPIRE OF THE ANTS
THE PROPHECY
PIGS aka DADDY'S DEADLY DARLING
BUG
FROGS

All dripping with 70's-style cheesy goodness!

I believe it wasn't earthworms but rather bloodworms shown in that movie. Bloodworms are big, nasty-looking and have teeth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3_UYg6Qlaw

Apparently, you can find anything at all on YouTube these days -- Bloodworms!
But weren't the "Squirm!" worms thick and black?  I seem to remember thinking they'd made them out of snorkling hose or something similar.  The edible ones were probably molded from liquorice --
I just thought of another fave:  "Them!".  Can't beat that scene with the giant puppet ant stading over a pile of skulls --
peter johnson/denny crane

I remember them being reddish brown, but I can't say for sure. The closeups of the ones with teeth were bloodworms.

The Wikipedia entry for bloodworms actually mentions Squirm. Apparently, they used some 250,000 live bloodworms in that movie, in addition to all the surgical tubing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycera_(genus) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycera_(genus))

Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)  - classic! What's not to love about giant, intelligent, 'talking', brain-eating crabs?

While it's not a 'killer animal' movie, I've always liked this:
"Killer Rabbit" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg


Agreed.  I was gonna post that as well.

JAWS, ALLIGATOR, and PIRANHA are the big three for me. For pure camp value, THE BEES (Think THE SWARM done Roger Corman style). Though it is a terrible film I must confess a soft spot for SLUGS.

One the worst side, ALLIGATOR II: THE MUTATION instantly pops to mind. So does BATS. I can think of several Sci-Fi Channel stinkers that come to mind as well.

The folks behind the SHARK ATTACK franchise have a new shark flick coming to DVD in January. I already got my hands on a copy and reviewed it. Here's a link to my review of SHARKS IN VENICE (http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/sharks-venice-2008)

And for those interested, myself and some of the gang at DreadCentral.com did an hour long podcast entirely about killer animal flicks a few months back. Here's the link if you want to listen to or download DINNER FOR FIENDS: NATURE RUNS AMOK (http://www.dreadcentral.com/story/dinner-fiends-nature-runs-amok)

Those of us old enough to remember the Carter presidency were amused when, not long after this movie came out, Jimmy Carter experienced a real "killer rabbit". My memory of the incident is that the Secret Service shot a rabbit which they perceived as acting aggressively. I want to say that it was swimming after a canoe carrying the president, but my memory may be faulty on that point.

Your memory's pretty good.  Here's the full Jimmy Carter v. attack rabbit tale (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/950/what-was-the-deal-with-jimmy-carter-and-the-killer-rabbit).

That's kinda sad, actually.  I wasn't alive during the whole Carter presidency.  At this point, I only know him as that 'Habitat For Humanity' guy.

SHARKS IN VENICE airs on SCI FI December.14th,

PIGS aka DADDY'S DEADLY DARLING


What did you think of this movie?

I saw it on Elvira's Movie Macabre back in the early 80's, but it has stuck with me after all these years. It's a pretty twisted tale of a young woman who escapes from a mental hospital and takes up with an insane pig farmer, who feeds anyone who come poking around to his porkers.

Apparently it was a dream production by star/director Marc Lawrence, who was a very recognizable character actor, usually playing gangsters, from the 40s thru the 90s. His daughter Toni played the mentally disturbed woman. She was once married to Billy Bob Thorton!

I still remember that children's song that plays over and over in this!

Troma released a DVD a few years ago. I need to look for it.

I have the old VHS release of this film.  It has been years, possibly a decade, since I watched it.  My memory of the film, and the review reflects this, is that it was confusing, aggravating, and painful.  However, Raffine has proved to be very resilient to truly awful cinema, as evidenced by his Andy Milligan fetish.

Ah yes, having experienced a number of Milligan film allows you to comfort yourself with "Well, that movie PIGS sure was terrible, but it was no BLOOD THIRSTY BUTCHERS."

Ha! I'd forgotten you had reviewed this one. Now that I clicked on the sound file I can count on that tune being with me for another 25 years.

1984's The Wild Beasts.

P.C.P. gets dropped in the zoo's water supply. Hell breaks loose. Lorraine De Selle does what Lorraine De Selle always does, though it doesn't quite resembling "acting." Awesome.


I'm a big fan of Razorback, too. Also, Squirm and Tentacles. Awful films, but I've got a weakness for worms and tentacles (anything gooey and gross, really).

Most of the good stuff is already up.  You need Day of the Animals, with its Leslie Neilson fighting a bear and all.

I also appreciate Razorback, though I felt the filmmakers didn't have enough confidence in their special effects team.  You see very little of the beast in the movie, and when it's over, you are left wondering if they built more than a head.

I'll go with the stuff that used to be on TV a lot when I was little. Devil Dog, Hound of Hell, Food of the Gods, and Frogs!.   I love Frogs!.

I haven't seen it, but I've heard interesting things about Shakma.

Cujo!

(http://www.reelfilm.com/images/cujo.jpg)

Oh, wow! I can't believe I forgot about Cujo!

I actually remember the first time I sat down to watch it. I'd heard for years how it was a classic modern horror flick, and I thought "what's the big deal? it's just a movie about a dog!" I just chalked up it's enduring popularity to "the Stephen King factor." But then I saw it and I was genuinely blown away at how good it was, to the point where now I think that Cujo doesn't get ENOUGH adoration. When it comes to Stephen King flicks, it kinda gets pushed to the back of the room in favor of the bigger, flashier movies (both good: The Shining, Misery, etc., and bad: Storm Of The Century, The Stand, etc.).

You know, I think Squirm is my all time fave. The weird kid voice-over, the spaghetti eating scene, the way Roger becomes more and more wormlike (even crawling upstairs which had me blinking in disbelief, then laughing until my sides hurt), plus the MST3K treatment. It was silly, creepy & unlike anything I'd expected. I like it, no matter how unbelievable it may seem to imagine a bunch of worms pushing a tree over onto a house  :twirl:

Second place: Prophecy made by the late John Frankenheimer. I used to own a paperback book version of the film, and it really made me see this as more than a crappy eco-horror film. Katahdin was originally supposed to look like a mix of different animal traits- kind of like that Cathoga thing in The Relic- but ended up looking like the half-melted gummi bear we all know and love  :drink: I still get a kick out of the guy who gets his head eaten near the end of the film. Crunch!

Least favorite: Tentacles, lame Jaws ripoff chose an octopus instead of something with speed. Devilfish was better- I mean, whales show up and take out the monster? Come on! The only highlight was seeing Shelley Winters get taken out by the beast  :wink: Empire of the Ants sucked, too.

Wow, I'd forgotten "Devil Dog:  Hound From Hell!", but that one's a keeper!:  Richard Crenna pretending to be scared of a puppy;  An obvious male stunt-man, with visible facial hair(!!) doing a body-burn scene for the nanny;  The "scary" image of the Devil Dog with what looks like a muff of turkey feathers glued around his neck . . . I could go on.  Occasionally, Dixie and I will simply look at one another and go "Devil Dog!" and just laugh:  A real-life version of the old joke about how you can simply say the number for a joke & everyone will laugh.
peter johnson/denny crane

Woof, you liked that one quite a bit more than me.  On a good day I'd give it two slimes out of four.  The tried and true method of gluing stuff onto something (as has been done to lizards quite a few times to create "dinosaurs") looked just awful.  Although, probably a better ending than just having Richard Crenna wrestle with a regular dog - but they could have had him back the devil dog into one of the electrical turbines by using a silver crucifix. 

The Killer Shrews (1959) has a similar appeal.  :wink:

With the mention of stuff stuck on dogs (always amusing), I just thought of another killer animal movie. Anybody seen White Dog? Kind of a weird cast, with Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield, Jameson Parker and Burl Ives in it, but an interesting movie. McNichol adopts a friendly pooch but soon discovers that somebody has trained it to attack black people, after it does that a couple of times. Winfield is an animal trainer who attempts to fix it. Very serious movie, but there is a cheese factor. For every scene where the dog flips out, they equipped it with some kind of appliance that held its lips open in a perma-snarl. Looks fine when the dog actually acts aggressive, but there are moments when his teeth are bared and his body language is perfectly calm. Then you notice his lips haven't moved for the entire scene. But even stranger is when they finally shoot the dog, his lips remain pulled back in a huge snarl, even in death. I suppose they had a dog that looked the part but couldn't quite do everything the role required. Their solution looked pretty goofy.

ORCA (1977)

All-star cast (Richard Harris! Charlotte Rampling! Will Sampson! Robert Carradine! Keenan Wynn! Bo Derek!) must battle a revenge-crazed Killer Whale. Seems Harris shot Orca's whale wife and made her abort their whale baby right on the deck of Harris' boat! Orca witnessed the whole thing with his big blood-shot eyes and now demands REVENGE!

Best scene has Orca destroying a house and biting off Bo's cast-bound leg! CRRRRUNCH!!

Another 70's classic from Dino De Laurentiis!

Music by Ennio Morrricone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlQ4VrHa7fU