Horror Roundtable - Week Eight
Name your favourite cinematic animal attack.
Does a spider count as an animal? If so, it’s the spiders vs. the Shat in KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, (eight) hands down.
And if not, screw you. It’s still the spiders.
Sean T. Collins - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat
Much as I love the climax of Jaws, I have to go with the charge of the mumakil, the giant war elephants from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King . When I first saw it on opening day, my jaw dropped to the floor and stayed there for the duration of the sequence.
The dog taking out the mutant in the new release of The Hills Have Eyes. I LOVE THAT DOG!!!!
William Girdler’s Grizzly: Little kid loses his leg during a not-so-cuddly bear hug.
Jaws.
Ok, this is real sketchy for me and if anyone out there can clear up the movie I’m referencing I’d love ya forever. Here’s what I remember. There’s a kid.. probably a teenager type and this movie is from around the 80’s. I saw this scene on the USA channel when they’d run horror shows and whatnot. Basically, the kid has some fat guy sweating on his couch because he owns (2 I think, possibly more) Dobermans. The guy begs and pleads with the kid not to sic the dogs on him, but the kid does it anyways. That’s all I remember but it’s absolutely burned into my brain to this day! Totally scary scene.
David Z. - Tomb It May Concern
I’m going to have to go with Shark Attack 3’s amazing “Megalodon Shark swallows escaping evil town mayor while he escapes on a jet ski sequence.” It looks horrid, but is SOOOO funny that I had to track down an anamorphic widescreen print from Hong Kong. As a very close second would be the dock attack from Fabrizio De Angelis’ great green Jaws rip, Killer Crocodile. CHOMP!
Curt - The Groovy Age of Horror
Gotta be that climactic bat attack at the end of Hammer’s KISS OF THE VAMPIRE. I just love that scene beyond all reason.
Mark - Exclamation Mark’s Vintage Sci-Fi/Horror Review
I suppose Hitchcock’s The Birds would be an obvious choice. I love how the birds amass on the jungle gym before attacking the schoolhouse. My second choice, though, would be the giant octopus attacking the Golden Gate Bridge in It Came from Beneath the Sea.
This question was tough. I could think of a lot of movies filled with cinematic animal attacks, but the details were foggy. The only specific attack I can vividly picture, and it is a good one, comes towards the end of 1981’s Wolfen, where a wolf rips off a man’s head. A terrific effect, I pressed rewind and watched it over and over.
It’s funny you should ask this. I just recently watched, back to back, the William Girdler animals-gone-amok masterpieces Day of the Animals and Grizzly. Both, are for the most part, similar in design and execution, but the thing that makes it hard for me to decide which one is better is because both have a stand-out scene that are so unbelievable, you press the rewind to make sure what you have just seen was for real and not some insane acid trip flashback. Both involve giant bears too.
In Day, a shirtless, child punching, woman-raping asshole ad exec, played with incredible ham by Leslie “Frank Drebin” Nielsen, punches the shit out of an attacking bear. Of course he gets his ass clawed up, but it’s definitely a battle that’s more epic than ten Vaders vs. Kenobis.
On the other hand, in Grizzly, it’s the titular grizzly facing off against a Goddamned rocket launcher—guess who wins that battle. All my life I have wanted to see a large animal blown up, and thankfully, Grizzly delivers. I suggest checking both out and deciding for yourself.
My fav cinematic animal attack has to be Piranha from the Joe Dante movie of the same name, nearly outdone by the flying piranha from the sequel Piranha II: The Spawning!
One of my favorite animal attacks was the deer attack in The Ring Two. It just seemed to come out of nowhere. One second, you’re watching the deer head off the road calmly, then the next second, it’s charging Rachel’s car. A close second would have to be in the movie Prophecy. In this one, we had a giant bear that had been born mutated by chemicals dumped in the lake near where it lived. The bear went through and attacked just about everyone that it could get ahold of, the chemicals having made it go crazy.
Joakim - Mexploitation
The octopus attack from Ed Wood’s “Bride of the Monster” (aka. “Bride of the Atom”), of course. At least that’s the one I enjoy the most. The one that scares me the most, that’s a little more difficult, although the critters attacking at the bottom of the canyon in Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” remake freaked me out, probably because I have a problem dealing with bugs in general.
Steven - The Horror Blog
There’s a scene in the made-for-television horror movie It Happened at Lakewood Manor that I can remember vividly even after more than twenty years. A young boy leaves his mother at the pool and scrounges around for empty pop bottles behind the fence so he can cash the deposit. It cuts away from the kid and back to the pool, and everything seems serene. Then, out of nowhere, the kid comes running around the fence covered in ants screaming “Mommy! Mommy, it hurts!” before jumping into the water. This was released in 1977, but I must have caught a later broadcast because I remember actively collecting pop bottles at the time. Or at least I was until I watched It Happened at Lakewood Manor.
August 18th, 2006 at 11:30 am
I remember It Happened at Lakwood Manor as ANTS–it was on video from either Continental or Wizard in the early 80s–the box had a woman’s breasts covered in ants, with the ants spelling out ANTS on her knockers. My dad rented it for us and I thought it was awesome to see Suzanne Somers take a header out a window and miss the pool.
August 18th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Another great roundtable topic! But I am surprised that no one mentioned NIGHT OF THE LEPUS which had Janet Leigh and DeForrest Kelly or better yet the Bert I Gordon flick, FOOD OF THE GODS for it’s man in a giant rooster costume “special effect”.
August 18th, 2006 at 11:43 pm
[…] I’m on The Horror Blog’s Horror Roundtable again this week, where the question is about one’s favourite cinematic animal attack. Go check it out. […]
August 21st, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Lucio Fulci’s “L’Aldila”(1981) where the horrific wind-up tarantulas mixed with real tarantulas attack the poor guy in the library.These mortifying mygalamorphs edge out the scene in Coscarelli’s “Phantasm”(1979) where Jody and Michael ward off the “angry bug” which is born out of the Tall Man’s disembodied finger.Mechanical bugs are more often than not,NOT sexy.Last but not least,Bill Shatner hamming it up with tarantulas on his face(and toupee) rolling towards the camera to reveal twin latex bitemarks in his cheek in 1977’s “Kingdom of the Spiders”.”Help…….me.”As if we could,Shat,as if we could.
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:31 am
Louis, I was aware that It Happened At Lakewood Manor is out on video, but I’ve never attempted to track it down. I guess I don’t want reality to intrude on what is probably just nostalgia.
Tim, this was one of those weeks where there was simply too much to choose from. I know my short list was about five movies long.
Thanks for the recommendations, B.W. I thought L’Aldila was The Beyond, but I wasn’t sure so I had to look it up. You and your tricky foreign titles. That was possibly my favourite scene in the entire movie. It just lingers… Phantasm was on the short list, and so was Kingdom of the Spiders. Too many to choose from.
And Rod, of course spiders count. So screw you!
August 25th, 2006 at 3:11 am
GlowStormLion,
The scene you describe is from the 1978 “Hitler clones” thriller THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, I believe. Which was based on an Ira Levin potboiler of the same name.
It starred Gregory Peck & Lawrence Oliver. Though, after his turn as the vicious nazi “dentist” in THE MARATHON MAN a couple of years earlier, this time Sir Lawrence played the good guy this time around, a nazi hunter.