Favorite Killer Animal Movies

[peter johnson]

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

[Andrew]

Wow, I'd forgotten "Devil Dog:  Hound From Hell!", but that one's a keeper!: 

The "scary" image of the Devil Dog with what looks like a muff of turkey feathers glued around his neck

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. 

[Newt]

The Killer Shrews (1959) has a similar appeal. 

[AndyC]

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.

[Raffine]

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