The world has a fascination with seeing large animals eat people, in the same way that they have a fascination with things like breathing.
The most famous examples of this would be films like Jaws, King Kong and Jurassic Park.
However, there are dozens more that don’t get that kind of press that are even better, in their own special way.
This is a list of 3 animal attack films that you should have seen by now, not only because they’re entertaining, but by not viewing them, you’re committing a kind of karmic treason.
And nobody wants that on their conscience.
I believe that the best films usually explain exactly what they’re dealing with in the title.
Using that sound logic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Alligator are, undoubtedly, the best films.
Alligator is concerned with, you guessed it, a giant alligator. This thing was flushed down the toilet when small and has been feeding on the carcasses of pet corpses that have been part of experiments with genetic growth formula. I don’t know the formula for what makes the perfect movie plots, but if the next words in that last sentence had been “and some samurais,” every reader of this site would have been struck dead by multiple, over-excited heart attacks.
The alligator, unsurprisingly, starts to devour the shit out of some of Chicago’s citizens, leading to an investigation by the police. I won’t tell you how the movie ends, but I will tell you that the epilogue would have concerned gator kabobs.
But what makes this movie so great?
Colonel Brock. Played by Henry Silva, Col. Brock, the arrogant big game hunter, is the greatest character ever committed to celluloid. He has so much weird swagger that it’s been argued that he’s a military project to create the perfect man to be your new step-father.
Look at his steely gaze.
It doesn’t matter that his role in the movie is about as long as this sentence. His name alone is Colonel Brock. I don’t know his first name, but I imagine that everyone who’s ever heard it never lived to speak it again.
He’s currently in a race with King Kong 76’s Fred Wilson to prove condoms wrong. He’s that awesome.
Grizzly (1976)
Once again, the logic of “a title explaining the movie automatically makes it a good movie” is exploited.
Grizzly concerns an 18-foot Grizzly bear that is pissed off because, and I assume, it’s 18-feet of bear.
There’s nothing in the world to tell it that it can’t be furious at everything, so it just goes on its business. Grizzly is a very simple film, unlike the deceptively complicated Alligator. It kills until it’s killed, with no genetic mutations or Henry Silvas (one of Grizzly’s few flaws) to hamper its A-to-B plot line.
The best part of this movie happens near the beginning. That’s not a diss on the rest of the movie, because the movie ends by means of rocket launcher into a damn giant grizzly bear, but the opening death is so beautiful that by the time the credits had come up, I considered it an ex-girlfriend. Let me give you the course of events that makes up this incredible slaughtering.
There are two girls at their tent. One goes off into the woods to use the bathroom.
Bear stalks the girl still at camp. It attacks.
The bear paws her so hard that her arm comes off.
And by comes off, I mean literally takes flight away from her stupid, medically ill-informed torso.
I’m not kidding about that last part.
We see the bears paw and then we see an arm blasting off. I’ve never been knowledgeable about physics or biology (my expertise in those goes no farther than the terms “gravity” and “cell”), but Grizzly presents a huge middle-finger to both of those subjects.
Take that, 11th grade.
Orca (1977)
In a trend only seen in biblical plagues, all of these films use my un-beatable film title theory.
Orca is about a giant killer whale that terrorizes a fishing village after its family has been killed.
Usually plots like these are reserved by films featuring Charles Bronson, and this is the Death Wish of giant, aquatic mammal movies. The orca doesn’t just attack people. It attacks houses. It attacks docks.
It’s one thing to simply piss off six tons of SeaWorld attraction, but you’ve done something special when it gets so angry that it takes out its frustrations on real estate.
The best part of Orca?
The ending. The whale ends up the victor. In completely unrealistic fashion, the previous two movies end with the heroes covered in pieces of whatever they were hunting.
This movie ends with the beast knocking the main character into an iceberg, killing him.
Then, as a helicopter arrives to help the main character’s love interest, the orca swims away.
That’s it.
The animal just figures “My job here is over. Peace” and swims off to, I assume, ruin the economies of other ocean-side towns.
If you enjoyed hearing about the greatness that makes up the previous three movies, here’s a list of other films to lopside your Netflix query.
- Alligator 2: The Mutation – This sequel is basically a re-telling of the first film, and that is in no way a bad thing.
- Sssssss – A man is turned into a cobra through injections given to him by a crazed scientist. That might sound a little art-house for some, but I assure you, there’s enough snake-related murders to satisfy your craving for, well, snake-related murders.
- Razorback – A huge wild boar massacres the Austrailian Outback. You’ll never look at The Lion King’s Pumba the same way again.
- The Valley Of Gwangi – Cowboys find a valley full of dinosaurs, including the titular allosaurus, Gwangi. Gwangi kills a midget and fights an elephant. I don’t even have a joke for this one and already it’s the most entertaining thing I’ve ever typed out.
- Frogs – I could do an entire essay on how great Frogs is, but I imagine that my computer would freeze up and refuse to be any cooler after the first sentence “I love Frogs.”
1 Comment